The Crucible review – an engrossing, fiery evening

I went to The Crucible half-expecting the director Yael Farber to have shifted the action from the Massachusetts of 1692. After all, her magnificent Mies Julie made Strindberg’s hard play work by placing the action in 21st-century South Africa. Yet Farber has made no such alteration. She shows that Arthur Miller’s drama can press on tender current concerns without any updating. The Old Vic is having a season in the round. So the audience encircle the fine, dark design of (yes, she again) Soutra Gilmour. The stage is sometimes lit by lantern glimmers but often filled with darkness, penetrated by swirls of smoke. You might be sitting around a cauldron; you might be taking part in a witches’ sabbath. Miller’s dramatic rendering of the Salem witch hunts is most celebrated as a response to McCarthyism. The playwright went off to look at the records of Salem trials just after he had heard from his friend Elia Kazan that he had decided to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the States after 9/11 it has been thought of as a reflection on the Patriot Act. Actually, it provokes varied interpretations each time it gets a good staging. And Farber’s staging is strong, if sometimes overemphatic. The play looks newly acute about religious fundamentalism, and the way a sexual encounter between a young girl and an older man can come back to haunt him. Its eloquence about the unreliability of confessions made under duress also strikes with fresh force.