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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. The Crucible Also see Susan's reviews of The Invisible Hand and Titus Andronicus
Director Eleanor Holdridge is working with a sizable cast on Andrew R. Cohen's set, which frames the realistic interiors with an upright tangle of wooden slats suggesting a bonfire under Nancy Schertler's dramatic lighting design. Some images are fleeting, glimpsed through a window or distorted by frosted glass, adding to the general sense of unease. Chris Genebach is earnest and determined as John Proctor, the man of integrity standing up against rabid, unthinking hatred, and Rachel Zampelli makes the brave choice of showing his wife Elizabeth, at first, as abrasive and unsympathetic. Dani Stoller is suitably demanding and seductive as Abigail Williams, Michael Russotto plays Reverend Parris less as dogmatic and more bewildered by events he can't explain or justify, and Paul Morella is a stentorian Deputy Governor Danforth convinced of his own rectitude. Miller was writing for his own time, which makes the prescience of some of the lines more surprising. A minister states confidently that "evil can never overcome a minister"; the court tells a witness, "The pure in heart need no lawyers"; a member of the court refers to the need to "touch the bottom of this swamp"—all phrases that have taken on meanings unknown in 1953.
Olney Theatre Center |
