The script is getting flipped on The Crucible. Kimberly Belflower's new play, John Proctor is the Villain, is coming to Broadway under the direction of Tony-winner Danya Taymor and starring Sadie Sink.
At a high school in a rural town in Georgia, an English class is studying The Crucible, but the students are more preoccupied with navigating young love, sex ed, and a few school scandals. As they delve into the American classic, the students begin to question the play’s perspective and the validity of naming John Proctor the show’s hero.
With deep wells of passion and biting humor, John Proctor is the Villain is a new comedy from a major new American voice, capturing a generation in mid-transformation, running on pop music, optimism, and fury, and discovering that their future is not bound by the past.
The Crucible is a 1953 play by Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in Massachusetts in the 1690s. Belflower received permission to use excerpts from The Crucible from Miller's estate in the play.
Before arriving on Broadway, the play was first produced by the Studio Theatre in Washington D.C in 2022 before being staged at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston in early 2024.
The play doesn’t discard “The Crucible.” It wrestles with it—closely, critically, personally. The students point out how John Proctor remains emotionally distant and never fully acknowledges the harm he has caused to others. These aren’t acts of revisionism; they’re acts of engagement. And in that sense, “John Proctor is the Villain” becomes not just a critique of a text, but an embodiment of how literature should be read: actively, critically, and with full awareness of who gets to tell the story.
Central to the appeal of the production are the five actors who portray the female students. Their frank conversations about sex and celebrities, their shifting enmities and alliances, are funny but also feel spot-on. Their extended moments of laughing and crying and dancing together, even shrieking together, are infectious.
| 2025 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| 2026 | West End |
West End |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Direction of a Play | Danya Taymor |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play | Amalia Yoo |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design of a Pl | Natasha Katz |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Kimberly Belflower |
| 2025 | Drama League Awards | OUTSTANDING DIRECTION OF A PLAY | Danya Taymor |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Direction of a Play | Danya Taymor |
| 2025 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | John Proctor Is the Villain |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Direction of a Play | Danya Taymor |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Lighting Design of a Play | Natasha Katz |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Lighting Design of a Play | Hannah Wasileski |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Gabriel Ebert |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Fina Strazza |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Sadie Sink |
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Sound Design of a Play | Palmer Hefferan |
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