Agreed, all around.

I first saw The Crucible in its first New York revival, 0ff-Broadway in 
1954, the production that won the play acclaim as a classic (the Broadway 
production, a year earlier, had received mixed reviews). It was the first 
performance I'd ever seen in the round. The performance space was a 
rectangle maybe 40 by 30 feet surrounded by four rows of seats--intimate 
and then some. It was an overwhelming and terrifying experience for a 12 
year old raised in a politically-terrified "pink" household. Les Sorcieres 
de Salem, the first film version, scripted by Sartre, was almost as 
powerful. It was released in the US in 1958 (I think its French release was 
in 57). Despite Sartre's conversion of the text to a revolutionary tract 
much of the original was left intact. And the three principles, Yves 
Montand, Simone Signoret and Mylene Demongeot, were simply spectacular. The 
play's (and film's) aggressive, manipulative sexuality were also pretty 
overwhelming--puberty was a new experience for me at the time. I haven't 
seen the 1998 version.

Of Miller's plays I think The Crucible survives best, for all of the 
reasons Alison discusses, and particularly for the strength of its language.

The waves of repression or hints of repression that began with the great 
migrations of the 1880s have never really abated in the US, tho their 
intensity waxes and wanes. It's not an easy place to live.

Mark


At 12:17 PM 9/14/2005, you wrote:
>Gotta say, Alison, that your theatre notes are not only full of subtle 
>responses, but often make me really want to get to Melbourne to catch the 
>damn plays!
>
>Although maybe not this particular version... <g>
>
>Doug
>On 13-Sep-05, at 4:22 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
>
>>On Theatre Notes this week:
>>
>>The Crucible
>>
>>The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Directed by Anne Thompson and William
>>Henderson. The Eleventh Hour, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy, until October 1.
>>
>>It was not only the rise of McCarthyism that moved me, but something which
>>seemed much more weird and mysterious. It was the fact that a political,
>>objective, knowledgeable campaign from the far Right was capable of creating
>>not only a terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mystique which
>>was gradually assuming even a holy resonance...the astonishment was produced
>>by my knowledge, which I could not give up, that the terror in these people
>>was being knowingly planned and consciously engineered, and yet that all
>>they knew was terror. That so interior and subjective an emotion could have
>>been so manifestly created from without was a marvel to me. It underlies
>>every word in The Crucible.
>>
>>Arthur Miller
>>
>>Miller could be writing about contemporary America: a consciously engineered
>>terror which attains a "holy" mystique, where dissent against the ruling
>>powers attains the status of blasphemy. The Crucible premiered in the US in
>>1953, but its political insight strikes fresh sparks in the age of the
>>Global War on Terror (or GSAVE - the Global Struggle Against Violent
>>Extremism - for those who missed the changing of the acronyms).  If ever
>>there were a play for our times, The Crucible is it.
>>
>>It also happens to be a personal favourite of mine. With Death of a Salesman
>>and A View from a Bridge ,The Crucible shows Miller at the height of his
>>dramatic powers, in fruitful agonistic struggle with theatrical aesthetic
>>and form.  He was not yet America's Great Playwright, and the urge to
>>didacticism - always strong in Miller - had not yet gained the upper hand.
>>Here is passion tempered by formal intelligence, ideological critique
>>informed by intuitions of human contradiction and frailty.  These plays
>>exemplify the very best of the American liberal tradition.
>>
>>The timeliness of The Eleventh Hour's decision to stage Miller's masterpiece
>>(for it may be fairly called that, especially if, following Randall Jarrell,
>>one thinks of a masterpiece as a work of art with "something wrong with it")
>>is therefore praiseworthy. But it must be said that the company's treatment
>>of the text is utterly baffling.
>>
>>Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>>
>>All the best
>>
>>Alison
>>
>>
>>Alison Croggon
>>
>>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>>Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
>>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>>
>Douglas Barbour
>11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>Edmonton  Ab  T6G 0B9
>(780) 436 3320
>
>The temper is fragile
>as apparently it wants to be,
>wind on the ocean, trees
>moving in wind and rain.
>
>                 Robert Creeley