\n<\/p>\n
Yet \u201cJohn Proctor\u201d is not an anti-\u201cCrucible\u201d tract. (Substantial excerpts from \u201cThe Crucible\u201d have been authorized by the Arthur Miller trust.) Though Belflower argues, straightforwardly and successfully, that the older play fails to take seriously the misogyny behind the witch hunts, she essentially admits its dramaturgical power, in part by imitation. Her own characters and situations take more than a page from Miller\u2019s. She borrows but reframes the idea of a crucible as the kind of hothouse you might find in any high school. And in ways that feel perfectly natural, her girls fall into paroxysms of laughter, screaming and wild dance that, if viewed unsympathetically, could well look like witchiness.<\/p>\n
Taymor\u2019s production is entirely sympathetic \u2014 to the characters and to the text. Though thrilling in its refusal to tamp down the show\u2019s sometimes anarchic spirit, it does not ignore the dangers of abandon. Sink\u2019s Shelby is beautifully positioned just at the spot where you can\u2019t tell the difference between impulse and illness. The other girls stratify at in-between altitudes, from Scott\u2019s firmly grounded Nell to Strazza\u2019s high-pitched Beth.<\/p>\n
But the overall tone, expressed by Natasha Katz\u2019s convulsive lighting of the classroom set by Teresa L. Williams (working with the AMP collective<\/a>), embraces the extremes. The disturbing sound design and original music, by Palmer Hefferan, are especially vivid. At the play\u2019s climax, when Shelby and Raelynn present their \u201cjunior honors lit interpretive project\u201d \u2014 dressed in homemade versions of Salem garb (costumes by Sarah Laux) \u2014 all of Belflower\u2019s touchstones, and Taymor\u2019s skill at choreographing emotion, come together in a wild scene that restores to the girls the power taken from them.<\/p>\n You could argue, I suppose, that the tight twisting of themes \u2014 Lorde, in \u201cGreen Light\u201d mode<\/a>, turns out to be the point-for-point antidote to Proctor \u2014 is a bit overdetermined. The girls are universally wonderful; the male characters, except for the dim boy, who gets a small shot at redemption, not. The script sticks relentlessly to its topic, a common enough trait of early work. (This is Belflower\u2019s New York debut.) One of the features of \u201cThe Crucible\u201d it ignores is how Miller\u2019s play succeeds as allegory<\/a> because it is porous: It is about many things.<\/p>\n No matter. \u201cJohn Proctor Is the Villain\u201d is too urgently necessary about its one thing to make it worth wishing it were even a little different. That the urgency comes in an often hilarious, often ecstatic, highly accessible package is all the better. I hope a lot of high school girls \u2014 and boys \u2014 see it. Both need to understand that the case against John Proctor is just beginning.<\/p>\n John Proctor Is the Villain<\/strong>
Through July 6 at the Booth Theater, Manhattan; johnproctoristhevillain.com<\/a>. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n