In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

II. The non-Shakespeare productions B. A. W. JACKSON With productions of Shakespeare overflowing from the Festival Theatre into the Avon, the only other piece produced at the old theatre in downtown Stratford this past season was Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Thus the first summer for Shakespeare at the Avon was also the first summer for an American playwright at the Stratford Festival . In 1952, when it was first presented in New York, Miller's play about prejudice and persecution in old Salem was intended as a protest and a warning against the influence of Senator McCarthy and the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. No audience in the inquisitorial atmosphere of that time in America could fail to take Miller's po·int. In the summer of 1975 the piece was bound to be seen mainly as a history play about the horror that beset a New England town. The witch-hunting metaphor, so immediate to the audiences of the McCarthy era, was in that reference itself historical, or only in a non-specific way a message for our time. In short, the play had to stand on its own merits as a dramatic work, deprived of the contemporary interest that had guaranteed its impact in the early 1950's. The event demonstrated that, in writing The Crucible, Miller did not allow his work to be distorted by the cause he hoped it would serve. However strong his passion may have been at the time, he maintained his skill as a dramatic craftsman and his integrity as an artist. As a result, The Crucible is a good play, dramatically sound and, independent of any cause, powerful theatre. John Wood directed the Stratford production with careful attention to the values of Miller's close-fibred language, so skilfully worked into dialogue that seems to fit the townspeople of l·ate seventeenth century Journal of Canadian Studies Massachusetts. Mr. Wood, who was responsible for the outstandingly good Billy the Kid at the Third Stage in 1973, seems to have a special gift for endowing a production with a quality that can only be described, however inadequately, as the right atmosphere. At Stratford there seemed to gather about the action of the play as it proceeded a darkness that was non"'physical, a deepening gloom created by the draining of light from the human spirit. This effect is, of course, implicit in the play itself, and it was implemented by the work of the actors and by Susan Benson's stark settings ·and subdued, 'puritan' costumes, but it was Mr. Wood who put it all together in a way that made the total effect more than the sum of its parts. If I am in danger of talking nonsense here, it is a testimony to the e~tremes to which a good director can drive a critic who wants to bestow deserved praise. Mr. Wood moved the production at top speed, abetting the play's demonstration of a rapidly mounting hysteria that left no man time for second thoughts about the prejudice and suspicion that were turning neighbour against neighbour and child against parents. In the epidemic of paranoia so created it was totally believable that only one or two had the strength of mind to question the truth of Abigail Williams' wild stories and accusations, and that no one paid attention to the sceptics. Gale Garnett's Abigail was sly, cruel and vindictive - an acceptable interpretation considering the havoc she wrought - but it seemed to me that Miss Garnett created a monster more aware of what she was doing, and pleased by it, than that demented child could have been. As her principal victims, Stephen Macht and Martha Henry made the marriage of John and Elizabeth Proctor the strong central core of the play, showing a couple bound together by mutual courage and undemonstrative affection , a durable stronghold of humanity in the midst of the dehumanizing actions of those around them. Mr. Macht had about him that homespun ruggedness of character 61 that refuses to give way to desperation. A man of reason beset by the forces of unreason , he let us imagine what it is to...

pdf

Share