Review: St. Petersburg College Theater Department Presents THE CRUCIBLE

There are so many reasons why Arthur Miller’s harrowing THE CRUCIBLE, currently playing at SPC until October 25th, is one of the greatest American plays ever written. Here are 13 of those reasons…

1. IT’S TIMELESS.  Arthur Miller scribed The Crucible with such a burst of anger, passion and vengeance. (Yes, vengeance fueled one of our country’s greatest plays.) Although set in the 1690s, it still resonates today (as it did when first written in the 1950s in response to the McCarthy Red Scare).  You don’t need to update it in any way; it’s so purely strong that the modern-day parallel is made right away.  In the SPC production, cell phones are used in it, as well as Big Brother-like video monitors, and Katrina Stevenson’s costumes are a weird amalgam between the past and present; sometimes the production doesn’t quite know what it wants to do with this visual updating. Is it modern day, or is it hundreds of years ago?  It sort of works in this department, making it vastly interesting, but the play’s power goes beyond all of these add-ons.
2. IT BURIES THE LEAD CHARACTER.  If you’re watching the play for the very first time, you would have no idea John Proctor is the lead until the second scene.  And suddenly Mr. Proctor becomes our flawed Everyman, although integrity such as his is hard to come by.  At the play’s start, he comes in, makes his mark, and departs.  And by the end he becomes our ideal.  I always ask myself after watching it: Could I do what he did, stand up for what is right even if it means certain death?  I hope the answer is yes, but you never know until you are faced with those life-or-death circumstances.  But John Proctor, played here by the dynamic and heartbreaking Ayden Stencil-Raddatz, is our hero for the ages.
3. IT’S BIG IN SCOPE YET INTIMATE.  The SPC production is almost immersive.  This is an “event show,” where the audience sits in onstage, surrounding the action.  There’s not a bad seat in the house.  The audience even gets to be part of the experience, with several women viewers dressed as Halloween witches, as if they were members of a “Wicked” cult.  And a trio of cohorts donned “DOMINIC EHRLICH FAN CLUB” t-shirts; the name was familiar to me but I couldn’t remember who “DOMINIC EHELICH” was.  Then  I opened the playbill and saw that Mr. Ehrlich was in several shows that I previously saw and here was playing the part that I actually portrayed decades ago: the crusty Giles Corey.   
4. YOU DON’T NEED AN ELABORATE SET TO TELL THIS TALE.  It works so well in the intimate, no frills surroundings of the SPC stage.  All that was there was a gigantic neon cross that reminds us of what happens when religion strays too far and enters the realm of paranoic fear, hatred for others, power and greed run amuck, and the need to find a scapegoat for the ills of mankind.  It sure sounds like I’m  describing the current world of Christian Nationalism, doesn’t it?
5. YOU CAN MAKE A PERFECT “CRUCIBLE” SOUNDTRACK.  That’s what the SPC team smartly did with their pre-show and intermission musical selections: “Gimme Shelter,” “Strange Days,” “Superstition,” “Abracadabra,” “Evil Ways,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “The Killing Moon.”  It played like a boomer fever dream. Also, Sean Stringer's sound design is a wonder, like something out of a horror flick, especially the anxiety-inducing dripping of a leaky faucet.   
6. IT INCLUDES INCREDIBLY-WRITTEN VILLAINS (PART 1).  If you like villainy on stage, then the Crucible must be your cup of Hemlock.  Abigail Williams, the chief accuser of witchcraft in Salem, is a part that a young actress gets to tackle, and Mikaela Diana does just  that.  There’s a Manson Family member quality to her—Susan Atkins of the Puritan Era.  And her fellow accusers—played by Sarah Venable, Billie Jo Darnall, Bridget Ganey, and Athenry Schaffer—become a tribe of puppets.  Special mention must be made of Ms. Venable as Betty Parris, who goes through some of the most horrific convulsions, seizures, I have ever seen on the stage.  Eyes at the top of her head, mouth agape, she brings back terrifying memories of Linda Blair in The Exorcist…it’s THAT effective. 
7. IT INCLUDES INCREDIBLY-WRITTEN VILLAINS (PART 2).  We have to wait until Act 2 to meet the chief villains—the symbol of the law (Judge Hathorne as played by a particularly sniveling Tyler Hogan) and the symbol of politicians who lust for power (Deputy Governor Danforth as played by James Rosa).   Mr. Rosa is quite strong as Danforth, but he yelled much too much for my tastes (Dominic Ehrlich as the heroic Giles Corey comes a close second in the yelling department).  True villainy is sometimes best served cold.  Here, it seemed as if an “important” man like Danforth was going out of control, losing his grip, which is still quite effective.  But I miss the shadings of the character, the lethally quiet strength of those who  think they know it all and have the power to kill on a whim.  This quietness in parts like this one would be even more chilling; it’s at least something to explore.  We get it—he’s desperate and feels he’s losing control, so he yells and yells some more.  But strong as it is in this young actor’s hands, the yelling eventually becomes one note to my ears.     
8. IT CONTAINS THE SINGLE BEST SCENE IN AMERICAN THEATRE.  The Danforth inquisition scene in Act 2 is easily my favorite scene in the annals of American theatre.  It’s like having a favorite album and finding that killer track that haunts you for days—“A Day in the Life” on Sgt. Pepper or “Gimme Shelter” on Let it Bleed.  And it’s brilliantly done here.  Yes, this Danforth hollers a bit much, but the entire scene is so heated that I felt the young woman sitting near me was going to faint from the intensity.  She sat, almost falling off the edge of her seat, her hands covering her face the whole time.  For me, the scene has everything—Danforth’s examination of Mary Warren; the teen accusers eventually going after one of their own and soon creepily mimicking her every word; Elizabeth Proctor lying for the first time in her life to protect her husband, ironically sealing his fate; all of this culminating in hysteria scaled at an “11”  on the Spinal Tap meter.  There is no scene I love more, and it’s done quite chillingly brilliant here.   
9. THE CHARACTER WITH THE BIGGEST ARC IS NOT WHO YOU THINK. In The Crucible, it is Reverand Hale who gets the full gamut of emotions.  In Act 1, he starts off as a well-read, holier-than-thou man who thinks he is doing the right thing in his quest to find witches.  But he starts having doubts when Elizabeth Proctor is accused of witchery, and eventually becomes a defense counsel when John Proctor is brought in for questioning.  In the end, burdened with guilt, he rejects the courts that he actually help empower.  In the SPC production, Bobby Ramiriz holds the show together; it is an exceptionally strong and grounded interpretation of the role and he gets my vote for Best in Cast.
10. WE CAN’T DISMISS THE PROCTORS.  As mentioned earlier, John Proctor is my ideal.  And in the SPC production, Ayden Stencil-Raddatz is sensational playing a strong man who is also quite vulnerable.  It’s a very different interpretation of the role—especially with earrings and tattoos—but it more than works.  We see the character’s growth from cynic to hero, from world-weary-don’t-give-a-shit-about-anything to a man who stands by his values and never sells out.  It’s a whirlwind performance, heartbreaking and commanding. And he connects wonderfully to his wife, Elizabeth, played by Elizabeth Daley.  There is a realness to Elizabeth, a good woman who doesn’t hide from life’s hard truths.  She has an icy nature to her at first, a distance.  She knows of her husband’s past indiscretion with yon Abigail and is obviously deeply hurt by them.  But still, she stands by her man and remains strong in her own right. Ms. Daley plays all of this winningly.    
11. IT’S A BEAST OF A SHOW TO MOUNT WITH SUCH A LARGE CAST.  There is no such thing as staging a simple Crucible.  There are too many parts, too many moments, to contend with.  And the SPC cast is wonderful; yes, some parts are more strongly interpreted than others, and yes these are young people discovering a love of life on the stage, but they are an impressive lot.  Aside from those previously mentioned, they include Griffin Abrams (who makes one of the most unlikable parts in the show, Reverend Parris, actually likeable); Taliya Smart (a wondrous Tituba); Kate Murphy; Isiah Hernandez; Genevieve Witham; Sebastian Ragosta; Dominic Witham; and Kyle Rosario.  My hat’s off to the cast for bringing this behemoth of a production to life.
12. IT WORKS WITH OR WITHOUT A GOOD DIRECTOR.  The Crucible is rarely if ever bad, even some namby-pamby high school production of it.  The play is so strong that it can weather no direction, or worse, bad direction.  (I once saw an awful production of Sweeney Todd, but the glories of Sondheim's best work still shone through mightily.) This is where the SPC production shines, because a  visionary director, Scott Cooper, is at the helm; he has done a magnificent job in telling this horror tale.  Yes, I have questions about some of the decisions made by the actors, but here’s a director who is fearless, who doesn’t shirk from making bold choices and he takes a big swing with this American classic.  The stage movement is out of this world, like a chess master at the height of their power.  Bodies come in and out of the stage, constantly moving but never without a reason (it's not movement for movement's sake).  It’s a tight show, never boring.  And the director must be congratulated for being able to pull this off and to do so with such gusto and power and purpose. 
13.  LASTLY, IT STAYS WITH YOU LONG AFTER IT’S OVER.  The Crucible never goes out of style.  This is its sad legacy.  We can never get away from the term “witch hunts,” whether coming from the right or the left.  And when we see our modern world mirroring the town of Salem from over 300 years ago, it just makes me sad.  But that’s what truth does: It hurts.  When a work is specific and tells the ultimate truth—that mankind is the worst of all creatures (I’m looking at you Abigail, Danforth and Hathorne) and the best (here’s to you, John Proctor, my ideal)—it will last forever.  And you have just two more chances to catch the harrowing, heartbreaking and ferocious SPC production of this American classic.

SPC’s production of THE CRUCIBLE ends its run on Sunday, October 25th, at 2:00 PM.    

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