Friday 8 June 1990

GRIPPING REVIVAL

Paul Anderson, review of The Crucible by Arthur Miller (National), Tribune, 8 June 1990

Howard Davies’s National Theatre revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a delight. Some have said that the play, which uses a seventeenth century witchcraft panic in the Massachusetts village of Salem as an allegory of the anti-communist hysteria whipped up by Senator Joseph McCarthy in fifties America, hasn't worn well, but I can't agree.

This production, the first of several Miller revivals on the London stage to mark his 75th birthday, is gripping from beginning to end, with some extraordinarily energetic acting all round. Tom Wilkinson is particularly good as John Proctor, the honest farmer whose one-time lover, Abigail Williams (Clare Holman), starts the whole process of denunciations and trials; while Zoe Wanamaker puts in a sterling performance as his wife, Elizabeth.

William Dudley's sets are a little too fussy at times, and the West Country dialects of a few of the cast somewhat rocky, but these, I feel, are minor quibbles. Most of the other members of the audience on the second press night seem to have had no quibbles at all: I haven’t seen a standing ovation quite so enthusiastic for ages.