I’m in a weird post-theater funk (half-‘wow I love art’, half-‘why am I a person who writes about art and not a person who creates it?’; the latter is something I suspect I’ll never escape), but I wanted to say a few quick words about the Ivo van Hove production of The Crucible that I saw today, because it was superb.
One thing I loved was how different and new it felt. The Crucible, as one of my favorite shows, is one I know quite well. I’ve seen the 1996 Nicholas Hytner movie with Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen too many times, probably, and I’ve seen it performed twice previously (the 2002 Richard Eyre production starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney and the 2014 Yaël Farber production with Richard Armitage and Anna Madeley), and as a result it is tough to surprise me when it comes to this show.
When I say ‘different and new’, though, I’m not talking about the cosmetic aspects of this particular production--the classroom setting and the contemporary costumes did not, I found, add a ton to the show, though I did appreciate the decision to a) end Act 2 with Mary scrawling ‘I cannot I cannot I cannot’ across the blackboard, and b) keep those words visible for the remainder of the show. In the design’s defense, I will say that the classroom effectively emphasized the cold, institutional nature of the conflict and heightened the absurdity of the entire premise--having all of these adults gathered around, debating the behavior of a bunch of girls in school uniforms, made this feel like a PTA meeting gone horribly wrong. Okay, maybe I’ve brought myself around on the set.
But what I mostly meant by ‘different and new’ were the performances of Ben Whishaw and Sophie Okonedo, playing one of my favorite fictional couples of all time. When I first heard that Whishaw had been cast as John Proctor, I was honestly confused--Proctor, in my experience (Neeson, DDL, Armitage) is usually played by big, strapping actors, to fit his image as an intensely sensual man who makes his living with his body (as a farmer!). Whishaw obviously does not fit that profile, but he’s still marvelous--he brought this intensity, this live-wire wit, to his performance. He was constantly moving, propelling himself around the space and into other characters with the force of his emotions--at various points, he basically dove on top of Abigail (a wonderfully forbidding Saoirse Ronan), Mary (Tavi Gevinson, surprisingly fantastic), and even Danforth (played by Captain Wentworth himself, Ciarán Hinds!). This John’s smallness actually magnifies and focuses his passions to a really effective end. Also this show does have some hammy moments, and I really appreciated how much Whishaw underplayed ‘I say God is dead’ and ‘Because it is my name’, because I have watched DDL shrieking those lines so many times that I’m sort of deaf to them (I still love you in that movie, DDL!).
And Sophie Okonedo!!!!!! Her Elizabeth also bucked convention, in that she did not adhere to the normal ‘Elizabeth is a cold ice-hearted woman who has a lot of difficulty showing the love she feels for John’ formula, which was deployed really well by Joan Allen in the movie. This Elizabeth is not cold--she’s borderline daffy. She possesses the same energy as her husband, but hers is all nervous, a dance around emotions rather than a mad dash through them. There’s a clear through-line from her first moments onstage, in which she neatly shows John that she is still upset about his affair without ever saying anything to that effect, and her last moments, when she helps him to see that choosing death is the only honorable path open to him, without ever telling him that directly. She feels things deeply, she is as honest as any Elizabeth Proctor must be, but she rarely seems to be as present as John is--she steps far more lightly on the earth than her husband. I loved this version of Elizabeth. She was nothing I had ever dreamed of before, but this performance really helped illuminate the romantic/sexual dynamics of this show for me, simultaneously highlighting why John and Elizabeth are such a good couple (she is the spirit to his body, the only person who can effectively guide him to his own soul) and why he cheated on her in the first place (here, the John-Abigail match is not just mechanically sexual, it’s also a matter of two deeply similar people recognizing themselves, their deep intensity, in each other).
So, yay for a production that helped me to see a beloved show in a new light! Also, I would not be me if I failed to mention that Reverend Parris was here played by Jason Butler Harner, who was Turgenev in the Broadway production of The Coast of Utopia, and who is thus automatically one of my favorite people ever. He was great then, and he was wonderful in this--just as loathsome as Parris must be, but funny in his pettiness and pathetic in his desperation. Yay for Coast of Utopia alums continuing to be awesome!
