Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is one of the classics of 20th Century theatre. A fictionalised (or at least in part) account of the witch trials that took place between 1692 and 1693 in the small settlement of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, New England. Miller wrote it in 1953 not as a historical piece, but as an allegory for McCarthyism, rampant at the time of his writing, where people were shamelessly persecuted for alleged Communist ties, without evidence. The accusation in and of itself was considered damning enough regardless of its origin, and there was the link to that earlier, dark time.
At best, ‘The Crucible’ was an ambitious reach for Workshop, but this was a ‘troubled’ production, as they call it in some circles. Originally slated to be the Spring 1990 production, it had been proposed by Christine Blake and Wendy Cole, who, it was intended, would co-direct. However, the project was almost completely derailed when both of them left the group. This left Paul Ford, who had been drafted in as an assistant director, to carry on in their stead but with no real vision for what the show should look like. One of the immediate difficulties was the presence in the cast of the key character of Tituba. Although her ultimate origin is disputed, it was thought that she was Barbadian, i.e. from the island of Barbados. No-one in the existing membership of the time could pass themselves off as such, and even in 1991, ‘blackface’ was a no-go. And so Paul elected to shift the entire thing into space. Salem became a settlement of puritan theocratic colony on a planet orbiting a distant star. It covered off the Tituba problem, but of course caused others.
The staging was abstract, geometric shapes painted to look as if they’d been scavenged from old starship hull-plating. They could be moved to form different combinations, which would represent various rooms and locations. An over-sized fan behind a grill turned throughout, with a ever-present ‘tic’ as its malformed blades hit the grill.
Despite some eventual outstanding performances, not least from the young girls in the cast, it nearly didn’t make it. The first weekend’s performances were billed as ‘previews’ as even at that last stage, the production was not pulling together. The review picked out that there were beautiful moments, and as ever, Madgwick was right. When it worked, there were some truly excellent scenes, but overall it really didn’t do the script justice.
