The Crucible review: A clever revival that shows the perils of self-righteousness

There’s a sensuous beauty to Lyndsey Turner’s production of The Crucible. An extravagant curtain of rain cascades from the top of the stage, flickering and sparking in the light like TV static. The action is constantly underscored by the sound of the human voice, in hums or hymns from a hidden choir that rise to yells at moments of emotional intensity. This gorgeous richness contrasts perfectly with its author Arthur Miller’s subject: a puritanical 17th-century community whose girls, deprived of beauty and pleasure, turn to more violent sources of satisfaction.

Erin Doherty plays the girls’ leader, Abigail, as a harsh, broken thing. You might have seen Doherty playing a wry, horsey Princess Anne in The Crown. Here, her straggly blonde hair and puppet-like ungainliness dispel any memories of that performance. Brendan Cowell doesn’t bring much glamour to the central male role of John Proctor, either. This part can become irritatingly saint-like: a man who rejects Abigail’s advances and chooses the path of probity. But here, Cowell is a shambling (if principled) hick who grabs the girls around him by the collar of their pretty dresses in moments of rage.

Miller’s play is as precisely constructed and as brutal as a metal mantrap in the woods. This nearly three-hour revival doesn’t waste a single scene. When young servant Mary Warren (Rachelle Diedericks) realises she has life-or-death power over her employers, the Proctors, she seems to shine with an inner light of self-righteousness.

There’s a clever irony to Turner’s production. The moments of the play that feel the most beautiful, the closest to transcendent, are the ones based on falsehoods: on imagined encounters with supernatural forces. And Turner also makes it clear that religious hysteria hasn’t gone out of style. Instead of being set in the Puritan era, this production lightly references present-day American cults, with Catherine Fay’s costume design putting the women in the kind of Laura Ashley-esque cotton dresses favoured by fundamentalist Mormons.

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The Crucible is a play with another, more unfortunate kind of contemporary relevance. When first written, it indirectly referenced the witchhunts of the 1950s McCarthy era in America, when Miller’s friends were interrogated about their supposed links to communism. Since then, it’s been lazily called upon in complaints about the #MeToo movement and online cancel culture. “The little crazy children are dangling the keys to the kingdom,” says John Proctor, in a cry that could easily be claimed by any number of right-wing political commentators as the culture wars rage along generational lines. But The Crucible can’t really be claimed by any one cause: hysteria happens on every side.

Still, I’ve long struggled to fully love Miller’s play because of the bitterness at its heart. It paints the teenage Abigail as a one-dimensional villain who condemns dozens of people to their deaths, just because she’s rejected by Proctor, an older man who seduced her. Turner’s production doesn’t do much to soften its misogyny. If anything, it heightens it, by having the cast read out Miller’s concluding notes, which announce that Abigail ultimately became a prostitute in Boston.

But, thankfully, this production also prevents Proctor from being a heroic figure, dragging him into the murk of this warped society. It’s a play of sensory beauty and moral ugliness, showing that no drug is more powerful than self-righteousness, whatever side you’re on.

The Crucible runs at the National Theatre until 5 November