Is The Crucible the ultimate post-truth play? Although it was written in 1953, Arthur Miller’s drama holds particular significance in the current political environment, as we’ve found during rehearsals for our new production.
Consider the opening scene of Act 2, a delicate depiction of a husband and wife, John and Elizabeth Proctor, overcoming adultery. The scene ends with the townspeople crashing in with news that warrants have been signed for the arrest and examination of 16 innocent individuals, including Elizabeth. In rehearsals, I ask our cast to think of Donald Trump’s travel ban and a rumoured executive order repealing LGBT anti-discrimination laws. The scene works. It generates the fear and fervour that Miller has written.
Miller wrote The Crucible when America was prosecuting alleged communists. Originating with a presidential executive order, the “red scare” became an obsession, ripping through all aspects of American life from the state department to Hollywood. It was a campaign of fear that turned people against each other, destroying lives, careers and friendships in its wake. Miller wrote that it “paralysed a whole generation and in a short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration”. Miller felt compelled to respond. Worried about being identified as a “red” himself, he turned to the Salem witch trials of 1692 as an allegory.
In Act 3 of the play – the big trial scene – the judge says: “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.” It bears a stark resemblance to US press secretary Sean Spicer’s less eloquent words regarding dissenting government officials: “They should either get with the programme or they can leave.” The “programme” in The Crucible is the prosecution of more than 150 men and women accused of witchcraft. Miller talks about the paradox of a community that has created a society grounded in the idea of “exclusion and prohibition”. Its sole function is to keep the community “together, and to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction”. The Daily Mail’s recent branding of the judges presiding over the Brexit supreme court ruling as “enemies of the people” if they voted for it or “champions of the people” if they voted against, has the same whiff of exclusion and prohibition. UK citizens are now more likely to identify with leave or remain than they are with a political party.
Miller’s 17th-century Salem is a place rife with anxiety; it is a community in the midst of great change and flux, where social structures are weakening. Some parts of the community feel as if they are losing control – the world isn’t the same as it was. Licensed by a series of convenient lies, post-truths and “alternative facts”, long-held hatreds of neighbours are openly expressed and vengeance taken. Hysteria takes hold. The most vulnerable are targeted.
Eighteen months ago, David Hutchinson, director of the touring company Selladoor Productions, approached me with the proposal of making The Crucible together. I’d wanted to programme more work that would appeal to schools, and of course the play is one of the greatest stories ever told – it is precise, human, domestic, deeply moving, political and, more importantly, an emotional rollercoaster for audiences. It has also recently been removed from school curriculums. Neither of us could foresee how pertinent the project would become.
Miller said: “I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit there – it is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past.” It would be presumptuous to say that our production will be a hit, but until we have a new great play that will expose the machinations of our times, Miller’s allegory will do, and it will do it brilliantly. Salem in the 17th century was a place where fear was used as a political tool, where outside threats were invented to explain current woes, where scapegoats were identified, hunted down and judged, and where truth holds no currency. Sound familiar?
- The Crucible is at Queen’s theatre, Hornchurch, 17 February to 11 March. Box office: 01708 443333. Then touring.
View all comments >