Theater: The Crucible meanders tediously

Some famous art is really good. Some you may want to actually travel long distances for (Machu Picchu, Carravaggio's Crucifixion of St. Peter, Parsifal at Bayreuth).  Then there is Arthur Miller's The Crucible. It fits into the class of iconic things you read or studied as a kid in the USA, perhaps because it is thought to be an intersection of cultural and historical competency (see also: Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Scarlet Letter). Similar to my recent experience re-reading The Great Gatsby, seeing The Crucible last week reminded me that fame does not always equal quality. Despite a much-lauded director and production, the play for me seemed mediocre placed next to similar mid 20th century icons like Streetcar, Long Day's Journey, or even Miller's earlier A View from the Bridge, whose emotional excesses were stripped raw by Belgian director Ivo van Hove last year on Broadway to exhilarating effect. I had hoped his minimalist approach might be just what this play needed. It was not to be.

For all the play's fame as a mid-1950s metaphor for McCarthyism, I have always felt the play's flabby construction diminishes the desired point of view. Like a junior playwright, Miller incorporates far too many ideas and creates far too little feeling inevitable progression--a characteristic of almost all good music and theater, in my experience. Here, characters come and go, few are developed really well, some disappear after the first 30 minutes (e.g. the potentially riveting black servant-witch Tituba, unfortunately). The beginning and ending are relatively weak, never a good design in theater, symphonies, or opera. Despite his reputation, director van Hove actually muddles up this goulash even more, here by taking a point of view in act 3 that there actually are supernatural things happening here, complete with clicheed stage effects (trash blowing wildly thru windows, falling props, etc.). This interpretation could have been interesting if really pushed to the limit, even if it was not Miller's intent, but such a re-interpretation needed far more set-up than was given here. In fact, the first 2 acts were quite conventional, not preparing us at all for the directorial chaos of act 3. I am still not really clear what the director intended, unlike his laserlike focus in A View from the Bridge. 

While the acting was fine, I was left even more with the sense that this emperor has no clothes. The play seems like a film before it has been edited and, as many great film directors will say, the editing is often more important than the on-camera directing. Maybe someone should take a stab at this some day for a real re-thinking of The Crucible, copyright allowing