Amid the tense drama of Sink or Swim's fine staging of The Crucible, there's a quiet scene that encapsulates both the strengths of this production and the genius of Arthur Miller's familiar yet still-mesmerizing 1953 play about the Salem witch trials of the 1690s.
The tragic farmer John Proctor (a stalwart and charismatic Seth McNeill) has just watched his long-suffering wife Elizabeth (played with gut-wrenching stillness by Whitney Kaufman) dragged away to jail on suspicion of consorting with Satan—even though to us, through the "sane" eyes of retrospect, she's the moral center of the story. John's two old neighbors have also seen their loving, hardworking, devout wives taken by the witch hunt. Exhausted, the distraught men take leave of one another for the night, agreeing to talk more in the morning. But what hope do they have that the dawn will bring better tidings or renewed possibilities?
The crisis spans generations and genders. A group of hysterical teenage girls, led by Abigail Williams (played sympathetically, even rather sweetly, by Kristin Parker), center the most dramatic and scary moments. In one chilling scene, the girls ape in unison every utterance made by the vacillating Mary Warren (played superbly by Lauren Sowa); in another, they begin to scream at sudden visions of a huge, terrifying bird, right in the courtroom. And never have I seen a scarier performance of "Ring Around the Rosey."
But the play is as much about men as women, and it treats sensitively even the worst of the witch-hunters, the crusading Reverend Samuel Parris (a fiery Michael Hardart), the seemingly weakest of the husbands (old Giles Corey, played heartbreakingly by Ashton Crosby), and the officials, some of whom do their cruel duty through gritted teeth and even tears.
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