Miller “The Crucible” Brighton Little Theatre

We’re transported to girls dancing in a wood, with some added incantations, then to the Reverend Parris of Act One. Steven Adams’ metallic trees resemble pewter-green gibbets: half-haunting, half-mechanical instruments of torture. It’s helped as the stage atmosphere is swung through Beverley Grover’s lighting to give it body along with props. And where Gary Cook’s sound discreetly points up the tension over two hours fifty. This is also a fleet-footed production: no longeurs. Everything goes at pace with aching pauses.

Andy Bell again leads as John Proctor, and you immediately see why he pinned back ears at BOAT, a tricky venue acoustically: the 2018 cast triumphed. At BLT, though projection is initially too much in this bijou space, Bell for instance knows how to modulate. It needs to be said at once that he’s on balance the finest Proctor I’ve seen. He bestrides the play morally and emotionally. He can smooth his guttural rage to swoop down on diminuendos, and rasp despair. The only point missed in this production (as in several, but here through spatial consideration) is how Proctor seasons the strew himself behind his wife Elizabeth’s back: symbolising the lack of it in their life.

From the start there’s division and havering in Thomas Dee’s fine Irish-inflected Reverend Paris, initially super-rational, then flipping to preserve his job, willing to side with unreason (Miller has hm proclaim his Harvard credentials; score-settling perhaps). Lily Wilks takes his comatose then hysterical daughter Betty with aplomb, attended by Tituba: exuberantly, seethingly taken by Zarrina Danaeva (a “clarion-voiced Dodger” I said of her in Sheridan’s Oliver Twist at BOAT last year, and Monday in The Man Who was Thursday). It should be said, knowing the character is Caribbean, that when checking the historical account, I found the original Tituba was Native American; and subsequently that Sheridan knows this too. They’re joined by Izzy Boreham’s anxious Mercy Lewis. Recalling her superb Amy in Bobby and Amy at BLT earlier this year, it’s no surprise Boreham details Mercy’s mix of fright and complicity.

It’s here that Polly Jones as Abigail Williams is introduced. Instigator of the witch scare, largely forced into it but amplifying accusations, Jones, known for her BLT roles as Emily in Bronte and Jo March in Little Women, is chillingly authentic with her violence more reined in than one or two with more stage-floor scope. Everything in Jones gears to control as she stares out the other girls. Against Bell Jones is half-wile, genuinely half-amorous, with a shudder from Bell. Faith McNeill’s Mary Warren, soft-voiced then bullied into speaking out is a role you have to ratchet from contained, even smug to terror-struck. McNeill sashays throughout, swayed this and that by Proctor and Abigail, more clearly than I’ve seen before.  

Elizabeth Proctor (Joanna Ackroyd, who also arranges the Lullaby) is more assertive than some Elizabeths and the more welcome for it. There’s a shivering moment when the couple finally come together, almost overwhelming. Sheridan has blocked their encounters well, particularly in the climactic trial test, when Elizabeth is brought in to testify, unaware of what’s passed. Ackroyd manages a tremulous stand-offishness before then, provoking Bell’s “Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.” Her final reunion with Bell is achingly drawn as Elizabeth repeatedly tries not to judge by saying she doesn’t, but can’t help herself. Ackroyd gleams truth.

By contrast, there’s an explosive, disputatious thoroughly believable Giles Corey (Colin Rogers-Marsh, also on costumes). There’s great chemistry between him and Bell, who’s always trying to moderate Corey’s litigious lusts (even once on Proctor, who cheerfully forgave him). With a sturdy Marshall (Steven Adams, as ever designing everything) we see on a more mundane level a turncoat role like Parris but with more excuse: sometimes tripping up Proctor to his enemies, latterly pleading for him. Adams insinuates a doggedly blank literal-minded official.