The Crucible - The Crucible

Yes, the photos look good. Plus I think Rose Shalloo is an excellent actress - I could be tempted to jump on a train to see this.

Thought this was great.

Less about the infectiousness of hysteria, more about the insidiousness and effectiveness of repeating lies over and over, which feels like much of modern politics.

The stripped back vibe was creepy.

Sargon Yelda, Laura Pyper, Rose Shalloo and Anoushka Lucas are all excellent.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I never realised how creepy it is for people to converse underneath a table. But when its the only real set, and when actors are crawling there, and when there's a sinister tone, and the lighting dims, I felt my goosebumps raising.

But these atmospherics are just mood setters really, as the actual substance of the staging is to have the liars simply boldly stride to the microphones and lie blatantly again and again and again.

This is different from the Old Vic and National Productions, for example, where the "witches" were racing around like scary wolf packs hunting prey.

Here the "witches" don't form mobs as such, they just separate out and take to spaced out microphones and start boldfacedly lying. It's less viscerally frightening, more intellectually frightening.

Where this production really excels is in bringing out the slow-build of Arthur Miller's script, whereby we complacent frogs really aren't aware the water around us is boiling until its all too late.

Sargon Yelda, in particular, is SO good at making the Reverend Paris seem utterly civilised and reasonable for the longest time, and then SO good at showing how his self interest is served by willingly succumbing to the poisonous lies on repeat. He feels like a prototype of your modern self-interested person selling out democracy by embracing lies, without thinking through where this will all end.

Laura Pyper invests such intelligent and sharp-witted, yet complacent, indignance in her two characters' resistance to all the lies around her, that its actually quite shocking when she starts to drown in them.

And as the principal liar, Abigail Williams, Rose Shalloo becomes ever increasingly assertive and perversely thrilled and reveling in the sound and power of her own words.

And as the tragically honourable Elizabeth Proctor, Anoushka Lucas is especially poignant and sensitive in the eye of the storm.

This take on Miller's play really brings out the overwhelmingly destructive snowballing effect of self-interest and lies. And by being so stripped back, it reveals how brilliant a piece of slow-building drama the writing is.

4 stars from me.

Steve, do you regularly travel north to see productions at the world-famous Crucible Theatre?