The ultimate effect, however, of the measured pace was less thought provoking than perhaps intended, creating not so much a sense of fear and reverence than a torpid atmosphere of over-played earnestness and the inescapable feeling that a long play was being made longer.Īrmitage, perhaps best known for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy of films and the BBC television series Spooks, physically embodies the role of Proctor well, with a strong stage presence and an instinctually defensive posture. These theatrical touchstones are of course also symbolic, as the audience is presumed to remember the historical backdrop against which Miller wrote The Crucible-McCarthyism and the HUAC hearings. The studied effort emphasised again and again how very important and portentous these dramatic proceedings were, an attempt, possibly, to overlay a patina of forced reverence over this play, in which questions of the sacred and the profane, sin and redemption, faith and loyalty loom so large. (The fog machines seemed to run throughout the show.) Following her incantations, cast members placed the set pieces with slow, deliberate, somewhat ritualized movements.įarber, with the assistance of Imogen Knight who is credited with the movement, makes this deliberate languid stylization a hallmark of the production, drawing out the transitions between scenes.
Before the first dialogue is spoken, Tituba (Sarah Niles), the slave from Barbados, whose influence on several young girls is viewed as Satanic by the Salem, Massachusetts townspeople, is discovered smudging the perimeter of the stage, adding a smoky density to the already hazy atmosphere. Starring Richard Armitage and Anna Madeley as the ill-fated John and Elizabeth Proctor, the production was part of The Old Vic’s second season in the round.įarber sets a bleak and somewhat ponderous tone from the outset.
Yaël Farber, director of the international hit, Mies Julie, and writer and director of the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award winning Nirbhaya, brought her vision to London’s Old Vic theatre for a highly anticipated production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
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