WDoes Arthur Miller's best game? Many would say the death of a seller. For me, it is the crucible multilayer, which currently benefits from a wave of renewals. The Scottish Ballet is on tour The popular version of Helen Pickett And, in London, Shakespeare's Globe, breaking his usual Bardid custom, this week begins a series of nine weeks from the new production of Ola Ice. Welcome as a concentration of Miller's masterpiece, she also raises a number of questions.
You can see why the crucible is so visible at the moment and why the globe is nilting it a “opportune thriller”. Miller's story on witch hunters in Salem in 1692 was initially considered as a political parable on the investigation of Senator McCarthy on the alleged communists in America in the early 1950s. Since in America of President Trump, freedom of assembly, press and speech are no longer guaranteed and that you may be threatened to have participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration, It is not surprising that people turn to the crucible.
Its popularity is also part of a renewed fascination for the climate of fear in the McCarthy era. David Edgar Here in America explored the tension between Miller and its director, Elia Kazanwho appointed names to the McCarthy committee, while Retrograde of Ryan Calais CameronOn the other hand, shows a young Sidney Poitier refusing firmly to bow to political pressure.
While recognizing that the rise of the McCarthyism was one of his motivations to write the crucible, Miller said that there was something more: “It was as if the whole country was born again, without even memory of certain elementary decency that no one would have imagined could be modified, not to mention forgotten.” In other words, there is more in the crucible than one political parallel and, each time I see the play, I am struck by its ability to take new meanings and reflect the pressure of the time.
I would quote three alarm clocks in evidence. I was lucky to catch Broadway production in 2002 by Richard Eyre With Liam Neeson in the role of John Proctor and Laura Linney like his wife Elizabeth: his performances stick in the memory for his perfect mixture of Puritan reproach and palpable love. But what was extraordinary, at a time when the word “terrorist” was used with promiscuity abandonment after September 11, is Miller's conscience of the trend of society to demonize what it fears or does not understand.
In 2006, Dominic Cooke made A brilliant production For the RSC which almost literally allowed us to see the game in a new light. The set of Hildegard Bechtler gave us glimpses of the Rousseau type forest beyond the board houses and the lighting of Jean Kalman showed that the sun penetrated the plain interiors as if he were looking for authorization to enter. And when Vice-Governor Danforth, who investigates the accusations of witchcraft, said “a person is with this court or he is against him”, he strangely anticipates a sentence used by President George W Bush, designed to remove the internal criticisms of the Iraqi war: “Either you are with us or with the terrorists.”
Miller's game has taken on another dimension with The amazing renewal of Yaël Farber At the former VIC in 2014. Proctor had sex with Abigail Williams, 17, and it was her subsequent rejection that pushes her to testify against her former employer and his wife. But far from portraying Abigail as a vindictive minx, the production of Farber and the performance of Samantha Collene suggested that she was more victim than mean. By looking for reprisals for a real harm, she exposed the residual guilt of Proctor and helped destroy an already divided Salem.
My admiration for Miller's game and my belief in his ability to take new meanings are clear, I hope. But it is precisely because it is rekindled at a time when President Trump removes dissent and creates a world chaos that I would raise another question: should we, as a form of intellectual protest, would gradually take place from our dependence on the American drama? I avoid the word “boycott” because I suspect that it is both impractical and undesirable, but I remember that I once asked Harold Pinter, because of his disgust towards American foreign policy, which he once assimilated to that of Nazi Germany, if he had never thought of removing his pieces from American performance. There was – of course – a long break, before Pinter replied that he hoped that the production of his pieces would provide support for groups as opposed to the destructive lies of American politicians.
It was a right point. But even if a boycott of American pieces, movies and television is out of the question, I would say that we change our viewing angle. I read countless articles in the last month urging the United Kingdom to strengthen its political and economic links with Europe, so why not add the arts to the list? It is of course true that the United States and the United Kingdom are divided by a common language, but I have long pleaded for a greater conscience of the riches of the European drama, which – apart from the work of the citizens of Glasgow at its peak, of the Almeida during the mandate of Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid and societies such as Cheek by Jonte and Complite – has become widely spread. This is now a good time to reassess our priorities. And although I have no doubt that the next production of the crucible by the globe will encourage the thoughts of the vicious polarities of Trump America, the very fact of that will remind us that there is a world elsewhere.
