Review: JOHN PROCTOR IS A VILLAIN at Kansas City Repertory Theatre

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It is fitting that a play about questioning the stories we inherit has a story of its own worth revisiting.

Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain, now being presented by Kansas City Repertory Theatre at the downtown Copaken Stage, has so far traveled a remarkable road.  I Imagine Kimberly as Luke Skywalker with a laser pistol taking comic potshots at almost everyone in her galaxy. But there is something darker going on in this play too. 

How to start?  This play begins in a third-year high school literature classroom.  Where are we?  This is going to take a little explanation.  The place is rural Georgia just before the Covid epidemic.  This town is so conservative that Atilla the Hun looks like a liberal. It is literally a one stoplight town.  A proposed second stoplight in town is a big deal. Zing!

Most of the kids in the class have been together since second grade and they are the usual suspects.  More about the usual suspects in the next paragraphs.  The state curriculum guidelines state that “Health and Sexuality” will be taught before graduation. 

Someone in this educational ecosystem has made the decision that if they can delay this discussion, it will go away.  They have mandated the first ten minutes of the lit class will be the “Health Discussion.”  And the discussion leader will be the popular Literature teacher Carter Smith (Shane Kenyon).  Zing! Zing!

The usual suspects deserve some explanation. They exist in all small towns in America.

Raelynn (Avery Moss) is the minister’s daughter.  Outside of school she leads a purity circle and holds off a horny ex-boyfriend. Zing! 

The awkward ex-boyfriend is Lee (Sam Moore). Lee is not ready to be an “ex.” Raelynn has kicked him to the curb because he has fallen off the fidelity wagon with Raelynn’s best friend, Shelby (Mizha Lee Overn). Zing!

Shelby is mysteriously missing from the beginning of the class session. No one has seen her in several months. Wonder where she is? Zing!

Beth (Jo Pellow) is the eager beaver kind of nerdy straight-A student every school has.  Her major concern is how her high school resume will look to a college admissions counsellor. Zing!

Ivy (Lilly Gerend) is the successful businessman’s daughter.  He participates in community activities.  He coaches the girl’s teams.  He has been accused of an extra-marital affair and sexual harassment. This play takes place as the Harvey Weinstein Casting Couch scandal is everyday news.  Of course, Dad’s accused behavior has blown back on Lilly. Zing!

Nell (Amari Lewis) is the outsider. She is a black transfer student from Atlanta.  She has seen the big outside world. (How you going to keep em down on the farm after they have seen Paris) A lot of what is going on here looks suspect to her. Zing!

Mason (Sheridan) is the school jock. He is taking this course for extra credit.  Mason is also more perceptive than he first appears.

Finally, we have Miss Gallagher (Elaine Elizabeth), the guidance counselor.  She has been a fairly recent student at the very same school.  She has just graduated from college and is beginning her teaching career.  Zing! 

See, the usual suspects! You know all these people or their parents. Zing!

After we get past all this “Health and Sex” talk, we learn that the subject of the class is Arthur Miller’s 1953 play “The Crucible” about the 1692 Salem MA Witch Trials.  “The Crucible” was a thinly veiled response to the then current McCarthy Congressional hearings on un-American activities.

John Proctor is the protagonist of the play and a real historical character. Proctor called out the witch trials in 1692 as the fraud it was.  An early American example of group think. His wife had been accused by an ex-employee. The ex-employee turned around and claimed Proctor was a witch and he ended up being the only man hanged.

Commissioned by The Farm Theater in 2017, the play was developed through workshops before an early production at Centre College in 2018. It went on to Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre in 2022 and Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company in 2024, gradually building an audience before arriving on Broadway.

Its Broadway journey starred Stranger Things actor Sadie Sink as Shelby, the production began previews in March 2025 and opened at the Booth Theatre on April 14. It became a seven-time Tony Award nominee, including a nomination for Best Play, and ultimately completed its extended Broadway run on September 7, 2025.

That history gives KCRep’s production an intriguing position in the play’s continuing evolution. This is no longer an unknown new work being introduced to an audience. It is a play that has already made the journey through regional theatres, Broadway and international stages—and has demonstrated that its questions about power, gender and the stories society chooses to believe have resonance well beyond its Georgia high-school setting.

Belflower's most effective device is making these questions personal. The students aren't debating history from a safe distance. Their discussions about Proctor, reputation and the treatment of women increasingly intersect with their own lives. The result is a play that moves easily between teenage humor and much more serious questions about sexual harassment, consent, power and who gets believed.

That mixture of humor and discomfort is one reason the play has connected with audiences since its earliest productions. It is also what keeps John Proctor Is the Villain from becoming simply a contemporary response to The Crucible. Belflower isn't rewriting Miller's play so much as putting it on trial.

The title itself is the provocation. The play is a metaphor for Miller’s classic and what is going on in their own lives. For generations, John Proctor has been taught as a flawed but sympathetic hero. Belflower's teenagers aren't willing to accept that interpretation. They ask a question that sounds simple but proves increasingly complicated: Who gets to decide who the hero is?

KCRep’s production, directed by Laura Alcalá Baker, gives Kansas City audiences an opportunity to consider a play has already established itself as one of the more talked-about new American dramas of recent years.

And perhaps that is the most satisfying part of its journey. A play that began with young theatre artists helping shape an unfinished work eventually reached Broadway, earned seven Tony nominations and now continues its life in regional theatre.

In that sense, John Proctor Is the Villain is doing exactly what its characters do: taking something familiar, looking at it again and asking whether the old interpretation still makes sense.

For audiences who remember reading The Crucible in school, the experience can be especially provocative. For those encountering Belflower's play for the first time, it offers a lively introduction to a playwright unafraid to challenge literary conventions and cultural assumptions.

For those like me, who know of “The Crucible” but only vaguely. I’ll share a quick synopsis.  A group of teen-age girls in early Massachusetts accused their neighbors of witchcraft. Remember, these folks had fled religious persecution in the old world to practice their own brand in the new world.  This includes having ill-defined witchcraft defendants as victims of a kangaroo-court and a potential hanging offense. Twenty-five people were eventually executed.  This really happened in 1692.  Does anyone see a little irony in the history?

Arthur Millers play is one of those acclaimed butt-burners that was a 1953 metaphor for governmental misconduct.  It has four Acts and twenty-two named actors.  It is still taught in schools like “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Odessey,”  The Scarlet Letter,” “Moby Dick,” and one or two Hemingway novels.

Smart, funny and deliberately unsettling, KCRep’s John Proctor Is the Villain demonstrates why this play has traveled so successfully—from a developing script and college stages to Broadway and now Kansas City. Its most powerful achievement may be that it doesn't simply ask audiences to reconsider John Proctor. It asks them to reconsider how easily we accept anyone else's definition of a hero.

The KC Rep production of Jon Proctor a lot to recommend it.  It is promoted as an ensemble piece with a number of internal cross currents. I have already described all the various metaphors between the characters in their community and politics in 2018 and perhaps even today.

The actors are certainly earnest.  The show runs slightly less than two hours without intermission.  The Lit teacher Carter Smith (Shane Kenyon) is accused of being a serial abuser, but the school board in this small Georgia town kind of lets him get away with his potential crimes.  They are more afraid of admitting they have made a long-term hiring error than protecting their children. 

Shane Kenyon comes off as a very nice dedicated teacher. I would have expected there to be some “tell” in his behavior. I did not see one if it was there. 

The girls in the class were certainly well schooled in their parts.  Shelby (Mizha Lee Overn) look perhaps a little overwrought in her first appearances. Later she settles down as we get to know her. Raelynn(Avery Moss) is a nice counterpoint to her although he character may have been a tad overwritten.  The others I found were true to life in a small town.  My only complaint is that Mr. Smith is ultimately let off the hook despite an ever mounting  volcano of evidence against him.

Ms. Belflower has a talent for quick one-liners buried in the playscript.  I thing good things can be expected her down the road.

One last note.  You can never escape the lesons of history.  You may let them slip your mind but at your own peril.  President Trump was schooled at the knee of a hard charging attorney named Roy Cohn.  In 1953, Cohn was the chief counsel to the Senate Un-American Activities Committee in chaired by Joseph McCarthy. Make of that what you will.

I think this version gives the journey from development → regional productions → Broadway → KCRep enough prominence without turning the review into a history lesson.

KC Rep’s John Proctor is a Villain continues through October 25 at the Copaken Stage, inside the H&R Block building in downtown KC.  Tickets are available at www.kcrep.org or by telephone at 816.235.2700.

Photos by Don Ipack

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