Sunday 4 September 2016

485 The Crucible


First  viewed  : 12  April  1981

This  was  a   full  length  ( apart  from  the  authorial  interjections )  adaptation  of  Arthur  Miller's  classic  play  about  the  Salem  Witch  Trials  on  BBC  1  with  a  ten  minute  break  for  the  news    half  way  through.   We'd  had  a  look  at  the  play  in  English  a  year  or  so  earlier  but  I  don't  think  we  finished  it  ; probably  the  teacher  abandoned  it  because  it  was  going  above  everybody's  heads.

For  those  who  aren't  familiar  with  it, Miller's  play  was  a  fictionalised  account  of  the  Salem  Witch  Trials  of  1692  where  a  number  of  townsfolk  in  the  early  colony  run  on  Puritan  lines  were  hanged  on  the  evidence  of  a  number  of  hysterical  young  girls. Miller  took  the  bare  bones  of  the   historical  record  and  filled  in  the  gaps  to  come  up  with  a  compelling  human  drama , altering  one  or  two  facts,  notably  the  age  of  the  villainess  Abigail  Williams  to  achieve  this. He  also  intended  that  his  audience  make  the  connection  between  the  groundless hysteria  in  Salem   and  the  current  McCarthy  hearings. It's  long  and  complex  and  certainly  no  barrel  of  laughs. There's  no  happy  ending  for  any  of  the  characters  and  most  of  them  are  seriously  flawed   such  as  the  vengeful  psychopath  Abigail, the  self-regarding  hypocrite  Parris, the  adulterer  John  Proctor , cowardly  Mary  Warren  and  self-seeking  Thomas  Puttnam.

The  BBC  production  was  faithful  to  the  period  and  strongly  cast  with  stalwarts  like  Dennis  Quilley  as  the  despicable  Parris, Peter  Vaughan  as  inflexible  Judge  Hathorne  and  Daniel  Massey,  superb  as  Hale  , the  supposed  expert  on  witchcraft  desperately  trying  to  get  the  genie  he  has  helped  unleash  back  in  the  bottle. Despite  that,  the  strongest  performances  came  from  newcomers  Michael  N  Harbour  as  Proctor  the  weak  man  driven  to  the  end  of  his  tether  - "I  have  known  her  ! "  - and  Sarah  Berger  as  the  murderous  Abigail. Berger  was  20  or  21  at  the  time  and  you  would  have  thought  stardom  was  assured. That's  not  turned  out  to  be  the  case  although  she's  still  a  working  actress  with  a  long  list  of  TV  credits.

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