
Most moving is Stacy Keach as John Proctor, who fights to salvage some good from the trials that destroy Salem. The young girls playing at witchcraft shriek in irregular counterpoint to the quiet, terrifying judgments rendered by Reverend Harris (Michael York), and doubt is ever more audible in the voice of Reverend Hale (Richard Dreyfuss). The star-studded cast ratchets the tension to a disturbing level as the town disintegrates.

In a searing portrait of a community engulfed by panic - withВ ruthless prosecutors, and neighbors eager to testify against neighbor - The Crucible famously mirrors the anti-Communist hysteria that held the United States in its grip in the 1950’s.Īudiofile Magazine review: "At once an allegory of the 1950s' anti-communist witch hunts and a spotlight on seventeenth-century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, this play shows how ignorance and good intentions can interweave to destroy lives. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town. Later he blazes, raging against the paranoid insanity that engulfs him - and also against his own fallibility.Richard Dreyfuss and Stacy Keach stars in Arthur Miller’s classic The Crucible, a central work in the canon of American drama that remains required reading in most high school and college English courses. … at first smoulders, all dark looks and muscular seriousness.

He combines moral and physical strength with human weakness in a way that is entirely credible – Daily Express – Broadway WorldĪrmitage commands the stage without overwhelming everyone else. The New York TimesĪnna Madeley and the smouldering Richard Armitage as Elizabeth and John Proctor have fantastic chemistry and play the parts with so much raw emotion that is sometimes painful to watch as the village is torn apart. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site. docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Armitage gives palpable, sinewy force to John’s struggle, making the moral instinct feel primal, something that’s genetically coded but hard to bring into dominance. Interior monologue John Proctor - Free download as Word Doc (.doc /.

His first instinct, like that of his fellow townspeople, is to survive, and in “The Crucible,” surviving and doing what’s right are not synonymous. His rumbling voice comes from his viscera, and he stands like a man who feels undressed without his plow.
