Review: Portland Players Does Justice to Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE

Choosing to mount Arthur Miller's enduring classic, The Crucible, can be tricky business. The timeless masterpiece is a well-known, beloved staple of the stage and literature, though its very familiarity often makes it difficult to bring any new insights to the piece. Nonetheless, Portland Players takes on that challenge and manages to mount a stirring, fresh account of Miller's tragedy.

Director Michael Donovan approaches the play with a stark simplicity and spare emotional intensity. Despite the archaic diction Miller consciously employs, Donovan elicits from the cast a naturalness of spoken dialogue that bridges the centuries. He gives us a Salem whose citizens are so completely ordinary as to be recognizably modern; there is no artificial heightening of their speech or actions; they are our neighbors, our friends, our enemies. Using a plain but attractive clapboard unit set of his own design (with props by Lisa Bulthuis) that serves all the locales of the play, he stages the action with great fluidity that keeps the pace flowing smoothly, and he builds the moments of hysteria with a keen instinct for surprise. The decision to open with the forest conjuring played out behind a scrim lit in lurid red light makes for an eerie start and he bookends the play with a brief glimpse of the red shrouded silhouettes of the three hanged victims, a disturbing counterpoint to Elizabeth Proctor's famous last line.

Lighting designer Jason Robinson makes these effects work masterfully and otherwise captures the hard-edged white light of the cold puritan community and the sense of electricity in the girls' "visions." Megan Bremermann's costumes opt for what the program calls "modern puritanical," a skillful use of simple black clothing to suggest the straight-laced world of the play. Samuele Rinaldi's sound design adds a jarring, contrapuntal note with its contemporary music for the scene changes and finale.

The large cast performs with a deep commitment that even surmounts the last minute substitution of Alex Pratt, who was forced to go on with book, in the role of Judge Danforth. Cullen Burke makes John Proctor's plainspoken honesty palpable, and he gives the character just the right blend of self-possession and doubt, ironic skepticism and inner moral strength, vulnerability and simple courage. Kristen Riley, as his wife, gives a towering and touching performance of Elizabeth's restrained feelings and rigorous inner strivings, but she also evokes the character's compassion and warmth. Together their last scene is enormously touching and credible.

Amanda Mullen is a mesmerizing Abigail Williams, manipulative, cunning, charismatic, vindictive, and unabashedly sexual in the few moments she unleashes her desire for Proctor. Grace Foster effectively rides the roller coaster of Mary Warren's emotions, convincingly adding to the tension between mass hysteria and elusive truth. John Craford creates a wonderfully quirky portrait of Giles Corey, odd enough and yet strangely heroic in his own brand of dignity. Janie Downey Maxwell captures Rebecca Nurse's shining honesty without being saccharine, while John Schrank, as her husband Francis, limns a kind and gentle spouse.

Kevin Reams gives Reverend Parris the right mixture of self-importance and insecurity; Bob Pettee is a stern, lawyerly Judge Hathorne, and Karl Livonius gives a convincing account of Reverend Hale's transformation from didactic preacher to a man undone by the very principles he has come to champion, his soul shaken to the core.

Among the other townsfolk, Jeff Campbell is an avaricious Thomas Putnam with Mary Meserve as his accusatory wife; Bianca Brown as Susanna Walcott, Alicia Fournier as Betty Parris, and Sarah Thurston as Mercy Lewis effectively convey the girls' repression and hysterical release; Jasmine Lee is a touching Tituba, a Barbados native caught up in a world she cannot understand. Elizabeth Chasse-King makes a fine cameo of Sarah Goode; Christopher Gray is a mild-mannered, somewhat dim Ezekial Cheever, and Anthony Marvin a befuddled John Willard.

While Portland Players devotes most of its season to musical theatre, its annual straight play is always a highlight, and they are to be congratulated for their bold choice of this classic and for the unsparing honesty with which they have presented it.

Photos courtesy Portland Players, Tommy Waltz, photographer

The Crucible runs from March 25-April 10, 1016, at Portland Players, 420 Cottage Rd., South Portland, ME 04106 www.portlandplayers.org 207-799-7337