‘The Crucible’ a disappointment at Barrington Stage

David Begelman, Theater Critic

There are surprises in store for anyone immersed in the history of witch panics. Arthur Miller relied on one study of an American version of the craze in crafting his powerful drama, “The Crucible.” One of his motives in writing the play was to highlight affinities between the events in Salem Village in 1692, and our national obsession with rooting out Communists during the McCarthy era.

One surprise is that the analogy goes only so far. Confessing to pacts with Satan was a product of torture, a fear of execution, or a voluntary false confession inspired by delusion. That there were Communists in our midst was hardly a fiction, although the “hysteria” of the fifties could be construed as the overreach exploding in a national epidemic of suspicion about one’s neighbors.

Another surprise is that the injunction in the King James Bible, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” may be a mistranslation of a Hebrew term referring to a person more akin to a spiritual channeler or poisoner, rather than women entering into pacts with the devil in exchange for magical powers.

Director Julianne Boyd’s production of “The Crucible” at Barrington Stage falters because it delineates characters in Miller’s drama as embodiments of good and evil. As a result, her performers emerge as caricatures of persons caught up in the hysteria, rather than as human beings grappling with events that terrify them.

The pace of the show was altogether too rapid, with characters hurtling forward in action as if a reflective attitude were somehow beyond their ability. The result was an absence of breathing time for events to simmer before building to a shattering climax.

In Miller’s play, several teenage girls, including Abigail Williams (Jessica Griffen) are discovered practicing pagan rituals with Tituba (Starla Benford), a slave originally from Barbados, but now a servant in the home of Reverend Parris (Peter Samuel). Caught in the act, the teenagers start experiencing “spells” attributed by such religious authorities as Reverend Hale (Fletcher McTaggart), Governor Danforth (Robert Zukerman), and Judge Hathorne (Edward Cating) to witchcraft. Events escalate to a point at which the entire community becomes involved in the arrest, imprisoning and hanging of alleged witches.

Miller’s drama deals with actual historical figures caught up in the hysteria, albeit with a novel spin on their relationships. In the play, Abigail, the leader of what some scholars and the playwright believe to be a conniving brat-pack, hardly a bevy of mentally disordered adolescents, contrives to implicate John Proctor (Christopher Innvar) and his wife Elizabeth (Kim Stauffer) in the cycle of accusations. The result is catastrophic for all involved.

Unfortunately, the acting in the production tended to be histrionic at crucial points in the action, with the result that the show took on a hurried, melodramatic aspect. Characters like Reverend Hale make entrances as though they were bursting on a stage in a Rossini opera. In his case, he enters in a tizzy laden down with a pile of arcane theological books.

Someone should have told him that the author of one of them, Cotton Mather, was understandably skeptical about spectral evidence—verbal disclosures by a victim that she was being invisibly assailed by a witch—relied on exclusively in sentencing the witches of Salem. So much for missed opportunities.

“The Crucible” runs until Oct. 24, at Barrington Stage Company’s Mainstage Theater, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield, MASS. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. There is an additional matinee performance on Wednesday, October 20 at 2 p.m. tickets are $15-$35. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-236-8888, or online at www.barringtonstageco.org.       

 

 

     

 

  

 

“Sweeney Todd” scores at Barrington Stage

David Begelman 

Theater Critic

begelman33@gmail.com

 

In director Julianne Boyd’s visually and vocally arresting staging of the Stephen

Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler musical thriller, “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” human passions are depicted as though they were stretched to a breaking point. The eponymous hero (Jeff McCarthy) is a hapless victim of the lecherous and corrupt official, Judge Turpin (Ed Dixon) and his obsequious sidekick, Beadle Branford (Timothy Shew). The judge, a caricature of civic probity, has traduced Sweeney’s wife, Lucy (Christianne Tisdale) and his daughter, Johanna (Sarah Stevens). Both have survived, but only under unfortunate circumstances.

“Sweeney Todd,” while a musical, is also a revenge drama in the tradition of “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Comeuppance for the dastardly deeds of villains, however, exceeds what was envisioned in the fertile imagination of Alexander Dumas. It takes the form of cannibalism run amok, as though slashing throats and converting people to meat pies went considerably beyond the retribution Sweeney should have contrived as the lot of those responsible for his lowly plight. Many turn up as dishes relished by a growing coterie of customers flocking to sample the new treat in town. Ugh.

Sweeney’s rage converts to unbridled misanthropy. In his barber shop above a restaurant on Fleet Street, even innocent folk are dispatched with a razor, and their lifeless bodies dumped from a collapsible chair into a chamber below. The fortunate few who elude his capers include his accomplice in culinary homicide, Mrs. Lovett (Harriet Harris), the soulful Anthony Hope, (Shonn Wiley) a lad who has fallen in love with Sweeney’s daughter, Johanna, and the simple Tobias Ragg (Zachary Clause), a hanger-on who eventually comes to play an important role in Sweeney’s fate.

Barrington Stage’s current production of the popular Sondheim vehicle is enhanced by Boyd’s imaginative, and often stirring, direction of her cast, and the latter’s consistently accomplished vocal renditions of group and individual numbers. As in all Sondheim works, melodic numbers of great beauty alternate with those in which the composer’s preference for vocal polyphonies and intricate harmonies has affinities with more classical musical forms. Examples of the former are the exquisite love song, “Johanna,” (sung beautifully by Wiley), “Not While I’m Around” (managed soulfully by Clause and Harris), and “Pretty Women” (delivered skillfully by McCarthy and Dixon).

Kudos go to Harriet Harris’s bravura performance as Mrs. Lovett, while Jeff McCarthy’s Sweeney Todd provides a sturdy backbone characterization for the entire production.

Phillip S. Rosenberg’s lighting design was a thing of beauty, while Wilson Chin’s set design underscored the ominous ambience of a London beset with dark premonitions.  The acoustic properties of miked musical numbers tended to obscure the words in several songs.

In this reviewer’s opinion, a key to staging “Sweeney Todd” is striking a proper balance between an upbeat emotional tone and the murkier Tim Burton-type of treatment that bedeviled the film adaptation of the show. The darker side of things is underscored only when thrown into relief against something else. Happily, the Barrington stage production went some distance in achieving this.

‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ runs through July 17 at the Barrington Stage Company’s Mainstage Theater, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield, MA. Performances are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Friday matinees at 2 p.m., and Sunday matinees at 5 p.m. there is an additional matinee performance on Wednesday, June 30 at 2 p.m. tickets are $15-$58. Seniors, $35 all matinees. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-236-8888, or online at www.barringtonstageco.org.