REVIEW: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS Is Told With A Female Awareness That Removes The Double Standards Imposed By A Patriarchal Society.

Wednesday 23rd April 2025, 8:30pm, Wharf 2 Theatre Walsh Bay

Presented as part of Herstory Arts Festival, Rebecca McNamee’s (Playwright & Director) ABIGAIL WILLIAMS is a response to Arthur Miller’s 1953 THE CRUCIBLE where the young woman is finally given the chance to tell her story.  The solo work performed by Ebony Tucker highlights that through history, to the present day, women have been treated with an unfair double standard that has excused and dismissed men’s behaviour while demonising the same from a woman. 

Abigail Williams, a real person, was one of the children whose accusations against their neighbours triggered the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.  The story of the Trials was fictionalized in Arthur Miller’s play, THE CRUICIBLE, where he reimagined Williams as a young woman rather than a child and created the idea that Williams had an infatuation and affair with married farmer John Proctor, for whom she had been a servant.  While Miller’s story paints Abigail as the antagonist in Proctor’s story, this work seeks to more appropriately apportion blame and liability as Abigail tells her story.

Production Designer Angelina Daniel has adorned the black box stage with simple but striking elements with a continuing theme of suspended ropes that are used in a variety of ways.  A largely monochrome aesthetic, from the Puritan black dress and white collar and cap, white petticoats and corset to the whitewashed stepladder, all of which stands out with Chris Milburn’s lighting design, echoes the stark image of 17th Century Salem where people did seem to see things as black or white.  The only colour comes from the red candle that burns down through the course of the performance and serves to evoke ideas of the blood shed during the Trials.  Overlayed over the story that becomes increasingly foreboding as Abigail deals with the challenge of being painted as a liar and a homewrecker is Keelan Ellis’ sound design that starts with light birdsong and descends into ominous deep tones from string instruments.

This retelling of Abigail’s story is presented with clarity and charm as Ebony Tucker brings Rebecca McNamee’s adaptation to life.  McNamee has given Abigail a bright awareness of the inequities of society, something which remains which she includes as an aside during Abigail’s musings.  While Abigail remains the narrator of her own story, McNamee has included the other key characters that featured in Miller’s play.  Tucker expresses the shift between Abigail and the other characters with physical and vocal signatures with particularly delightful shifts occurring during a conversation between Abigail and her young friend Mary as Tucker sits atop the step ladder, the placement of her feet shifting between the more confident Abigail and the nervous Mary. 

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS serves as a reminder that we need to have female creatives telling female stories as history and contemporary society has shown that women’s stories in the hands of men may often get distorted with the woman coming off as second best.  In art and in real life, the source of information should be interrogated to determine if there are biases altering the story and painting an unfair portrait of the subject while other characters of the same story may be let off lightly.

https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2025/abigail-williams

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