‘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.