BROADWAY FOR KIDS

The play centers on a group of small-town Georgia high schoolers, some of whom have been seduced by a charismatic teacher.  They can’t help but side with Abigail Williams, who was also an abused teenager seduced by her much older employer.  And Miller (and Proctor) call HER a whore?   Filled with equal parts joy and anger and intelligence, it builds to a climax in which two of the students imagine a scene between Abigail and Elizabeth Proctor that is nothing short of a cathartic primal scream that builds to an unbridled group dance (to Lorde’s “Green Light”).  That it echoes the dance at the start of The Crucible is totally intentional.

 

With performances scheduled only through June, I can only hope it gets extended into July (**), when my next NYC sojourn will (hopefully) happen.  Atlanta venues should jump on this one as soon as rights become available.  Perhaps in repertory with The Crucible itself – I will NEVER be able to see (or even read) Miller’s classic again without Belflower-tinted glasses.

 

Now that I’ve re-read the play (more than once) and seen it performed by a Broadway cast and production team (working at peak creativity), I have to confess that I find it one of the most compelling, most moving, and most important plays of the last ten years.

 

Yes, it is (at surface level) a deconstruction of John Proctor’s heroic status, born of the McCarthy era’s elevation of “name” and “reputation” as the be-all and end-all of integrity, making the statement (through a contemporary #MeToo lens of course) that John Proctor was, at heart, a sexual predator, seducing an underage orphan (his servant), then blaming her for this “indiscretion.”

 

In the play, we see three instances of contemporary sexual assault, one (maybe) a generational disconnect between different modes of “acceptable behavior” (Ivy’s Dad),  one a classic violation of power dynamics (that echoes – uncomfortably – that in The Crucible), and one, (seen on stage) of what (to males) is “being aggressively affectionate” and (to unwilling females) is totally an unwelcome violation.  As to the accuracy of the various “off stage” occurrences, we hear of the first primarily through teenager gossip (and “vibes” from the father involved), with no effort made to parse factuality. The second is the classic “She Said / He Said” conundrum. The third, seen on stage, is blatant and ugly and endemic of teenagers of every region, every generation, every demographic.   Which is the point – putting us in the position of emotionally responding to “evidence” analogous to witch hunts of 1692, of 1953, of 2018.

 

Witch hunts are, after all, based mainly on fear and vibes rather than rationality, and part of their insidious nature is that they may be true.  Sometimes.  Maybe.  It should be noted that my (Gen Z) daughter was a firm believer in Ivy’s father’s guilt, whereas to my (Boomer) mind, it was possible but not without-a-doubt certain.  And, to Ms. Belflower’s credit, that was (I believe) the intended response(s) from an audience of wildly differing ages and backgrounds and expectations.

 

Which is to say, Ms. Belflower’s script not only echoes Arthur Miller’s critique of “witch hunt” mentality (falsehoods used as judicial evidence) but expands them to contemporary issues and paradigms, even suggesting that part of that mentality is calling valid (evidence-based) accusations “witch hunts” to avoid accountability.

 

That this play is told totally from the point of view of female teenagers (the two young males only serve to reflexively echo the male-dominant power dynamics) is essential to illustrate these abuses of power, these seductions, this behavior.  Is Ivy’s father really a predator?   Perhaps.  We only hear of him through he gossip of the teenage characters.  Is Shelby’s teacher really a predator?  That is clearer and more obvious, even though we only have her side of the story, and some compelling history from his past. (I believe her.)  Are these teenage girls lost in a societal matrix of power dynamics that favor the adults over the victims?   Absolutely!  And the climactic dance (to Lorde’s “Green Light”) is a cathartic “taking back” of what has been denied, a passionate “fuck you” to those who would negate their pain, their victimhood, their youth.

 

It was, to be perfectly honest, one of the most compelling and moving moments I have ever witnessed on stage, a moment that solidifies the playwright’s theme, the director’s conception, the actors’ passion.  It is a moment I will not soon (if ever) forget.

 

To digress a moment, this final scene also served as a dramaturgical echo to the (usually off-stage) teenage dance that sparks the action of The Crucible.  What were the accusers in Miller’s Salem other than bored teenagers playing with love spells and getting their dance on?

 

As an autobiographical aside, The Crucible was one of the first plays I did in my college years (fall of 1971), and, at the time, I was 100% willing to accept John Proctor as a tragic hero.  To be sure, the actors cast as John and Abigail were contemporaries (of course any college production will involve actors of  a similar age).  So I was blind to the power dynamics, that John Proctor is at least 20 years older than Abigail.     My daughter also her own Crucible experience, playing Betty Parris in Next Stage’s 2013 Production.

 

Every production I have seen or have been part of since then (and there have been many) has kept that same paradigm – even the 1996 movie had a pairing (Daniel Day Lewis and Winona Ryder) that had the characters (more or less) of the same age.  In Ms. Belflower’s script, the character of Shelby has an impassioned speech in which she “takes down” the traditional reaction to Miller’s play, in which she (IMHO correctly) calls out John Proctor for choosing to die to preserve an ephemeral “reputation,” over a ”name” that is as relevant to a person’s character as … well … as nothing, and yet gives him a “pass” for seducing an orphan half his age and calling her a “whore” for HIS lapse. For leaving a widow and unborn child to cope alone with a farm in 1692.  For castigating himself for not “shouting down” his wife’s suspicions about his affair.  For not even telling his wife he loves her.   It was another moment (of many) in this play that strikes to the core, that drives a stake through the heart of all the lessons we were taught about heroism and Proctor and The Crucible.

 

I have to commend this production for its cast, twenty-something actors convincingly playing teenagers.  Sadie Sink (so memorable in Stranger Things and The Whale) dominates the production, even though her first entrance isn’t until halfway through Scene Four.  That gives us time to really get to know the other characters – Raelynn (Amalia Yoo), the preacher’s daughter, supposedly betrayed by Ms. Sink’s Shelby.  Beth (Fina Strazza), the over-achiever with a not-so-subtle crush on their teacher (Carter Smith).  Nell (Morgan Scott), the recent arrival from Atlanta, trying to cope with the (to her alien) high school hierarchy and ethos of this rural Helen County GA school.  Ivy (Maggie Kuntz), trying to cope with her father’s “fall from grace” following an accusation of “inappropriate behavior.”  Lee (Hagan Oliveras), Raelynn’s ex-boyfriend, who thinks he has the charm to win her back (he doesn’t).   Mason (Nihar Duvvuri), the jock who joins the “Feminist Club” to boost his college potential (and finds himself more involved with his classmates’ struggle than he expects.  Bailey (Molly Griggs), the young guidance counselor, only a few years older than the teens in the class, struggling to “do the right thing” for them all.  And Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert), the teacher who seems to care about his students, who oozes charm that seems, at first glance, a perfect quality for a teacher, but who just may be hiding (more than) a few secrets of his own.  (For the record, my daughter also read the script before we saw the play, and she was suspicious of him from the start.  I wonder if she’d have had the same reaction if her first exposure was Mr. Ebert’s layered and magnetic performance?)

 

But it is (indeed) Sadie Sink who centers this production. (*)  Her Shelby is a revelation, a steel soul who has undergone the worst that any teenager could imagine, but comes out strong, resilient, defiant.  Even with her late entrance, she dominates this play, drives it towards its satisfying conclusion, talks like a teenager but expresses thoughts and arguments (and literary analysis) like an adult.  Her performance is breathtaking in its depth and satisfying in its breadth.  I loved every minute of her time on stage.  And, yes, she dominates the stage merely by entering (which is not to diminish the performances of her co-stars.)  In one scene, in particular, with Ms. Yoo, she not only is able to convincingly reconcile with a friend who felt betrayed by her, but also to descend into a round of faux laughter that soon becomes real, becomes contagious, rises to a level of hysteria that is truly engaging, truly cathartic. 

 

I also really appreciated how director Danya Taymore kept the action flowing quickly for an intermissionless 100 minutes, how transitions let a single character “bridge the gap” with a combination of music and lighting (every character -- I think -- gets a moment of isolation, another leit motif used by Ms. Taymore), how all the tech (especially lights by Natasha Katz and set by AMP and Teresa L Williams) synced perfectly into a compelling whole, keeping (almost) 100% in Mr. Smith’s Classroom (the single elsewhere scene staged on the lip of the stage).   Lights convincingly evoked the fluorescents of a classroom and the pre-school-day morning sunshine through the window, with surreal flashes of color and pulsation during transitions and for the final dance.  This was a brilliantly designed show, and all the elements coalesced into a truly memorable whole.

                               

There are moments in John Proctor is the Villain that send me into a nostalgic wallow in high school and college lit-anal discussions (and arguments), but, more vividly, make me look at a classic theatre piece from new perspectives, totally shifting the paradigms by which I will view future productions of The Crucible.

 

To be honest, can any of us ever again picture John Proctor as anything but a predator who thinks something as ephemeral as “my name” is worth dying for, a pride-riddled choice that leaves his widow alone in a hostile town raising a baby on her own?  I think not.

 

    --  Brad Rudy   BKRudy@aol.com  #JohnProctorIsTheVillain   #BoothTheatre   #TheCrucible    #KimberlyBelflower

 

 

(*)    For the record, Universal will be releasing a film version of this play with Ms. Sink as executive producer.  No cast (or release date) has been announced, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if she moved up to play the guidance counselor.  BTW, I was told by the Box Office that she hasn't missed a performance, so if you go wanting to see her understudy, you will probably be disappointed.

 

(**)    John Proctor is the Villain has been extended through September 7 at the Booth Theatre in New York City.      Tickets are available HERE.

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