Review: In Arthur Miller’s ‘Crucible,’ First They Came for the Witches
8 / 10
The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast...have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'...And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels like the freshest, scariest play in town...Parallels between Miller's then and latter-day nows have never been hard to reach for. What makes Mr. van Hove's interpretation so unsettlingly vivid has little to do with literal-minded topicality. Instead...Mr. van Hove divests a historical work of period associations, the better to see its inhabitants as timelessly tragic and as close to you and me as the people in the seats next to us -- or, if we're honest, as our fallible selves. And more than any of the many 'Crucibles' I've seen, this one insists that we identify with not only the victims of persecution but also with those who would judge them.
