Wolves are at the door in seductive Broadway revival of 'The Crucible,' starring Saoirse Ronan
7 / 10
A lone wolf prowls through Salem, Mass., in Ivo van Hove's eye-popping and wholly unconventional revival of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' that great dramatic cautionary tale about the perennial dangers of a rampant theocracy fueled by ignorance and mass hysteria...But van Hove is not so much interested in McCarthyism and history as in tyranny of the more perennial sort; this production feels more attuned to our world of school shooters and suicide bombers than blowhard anti-communists...But in Miller's play, the hysterical girls are the antagonists...With Ronan as his chief asset, and Ciaran Hinds as a relentless political prosecutor, van Hove brilliantly manipulates that counterintuitive aspect of 'The Crucible.'
