Brendan Cowell, as Proctor, is a rough, gruff farmer whose core of earnestness is revealed gradually.īrendan Cowell as John Proctor. Some Bostonian accents are distinctly off kilter and lines are spun lightly so that they cause ripples of laughter in the audience which defuses the sense of threat.Įrin Doherty, as Abigail, is full of urgent energy but her fearful anger seems overplayed and her character stays oddly flat: even her tender, pained private conversation with John Proctor in which she begs him to rekindle their passion, ends up sounding like an angry child’s strop without the accompanying vulnerability. Still it kicks off with wobbles and appears like a play being performed by numbers at the start. In terms of the drama itself, it is difficult for a play of this calibre to go awry: the dread, suspense and horror is all in the script, from Abigail’s young, blindly destructive passion for John Proctor, to the hysteria that swarms this 17th-century Massachusetts community to bring out all its grudges and betrayals. A stunner … Es Devlin’s set for The Crucible at the National Theatre, London.
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