Great art often grows from times of great strife and sorrow. Considering the political and social complexities and struggles of the modern-day world, it’s easy enough to peer back and understand the angst and anger which led Arthur Miller to write his play The Crucible in 1953. It was famously designed to draw a parallel between the then recent communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy era and the reckless murders and finger-pointing and careless self-destruction wrought by the Calvinistic puritans of the early 1690s. Since its debut, the play has become a landmark piece of American drama and a commonly known work, taking its basis in history and teasing the reality into a tragic tale of jealousy, faith, lies and principles.
While his work was explicitly aimed at pointing an allegorical finger at the dogged search for communists under the charade of seeking out ‘Un-American Activities’, the broader evocation of the perils of othering, condemnation without proof and the puritanical chastisement of others is as universal and timeless as ever, instead telling the story of constrictive and damaged community consuming itself in the throngs of teenage acting out and adult finger-pointing to settle old scores and shift the baleful eye of blame from one person to another.
It was still a bold move by Scottish Ballet to adapt such a complex, verbose and nuanced piece of landmark American theatre into a near-wordless ballet as part of their 50th anniversary season in 2019. It’s a bold choice, which has found broad acclaim and recognition during the original tour both in the UK and abroad before this return to Scottish stages. This interpretation, choreographed by Helen Pickett and scored by Peter Salem, reframes the tale to a more feminist perspective, playing harder into the themes of adolescent confusion, peer-pressure and the obsessive nature of young love and budding expressions of sexuality.
The story of The Crucible recounts the semi-fictionalised version of the real events in 1692 Salem Massachusetts, where a Puritan community led itself into a storm of accusations of witchcraft and devil-worship. This fervour led to many in the town being imprisoned and executed on little more than the say-so of a handful of frantic people, many of whom were little more than children, under the steely gaze of the Inquisition-like men of God.
It’s on this theme of childish naïvety that Pickett, along with her artistic collaborator James Bonas, begins the piece, with shadow puppetry of a house and figures being played with by teenage Abigail Williams. It’s a thematic piece of imagery that is visited again, as the young girls of the town laugh and joke, making stories of romance and horror. Their stolen moments of childish glee are echoed by the midnight dance they enjoy in the woods with the slave-girl Tituba (guest artist Xolisweh Richards), only to be discovered, and the ensuing moral panic spins the whole community into the fatal spiral.
In this incarnation of the story, despite being very much an ensemble piece, much of it is thematically a contrast between the characters of Abigail and of her employer, Elizabeth ‘Goody’ Proctor, whose husband John is tempted by Abigail into a brief but torrid affair. This indiscretion on his part further ignites the spark of enmity and dissension that helps seal the fates of many.
With the adaptation of something as wordy as The Crucible to the ballet stage, there’s always the inherent concern that the complexities of the narrative and the character beats, so eloquently farmed out by Miller in his play, might be missed without the specifics of the dialogue. It’s a testament to the gumption of Scottish Ballet and all involved that they would even begin to attempt to convert a play this layered in nuance and textual duality into a ballet where the only words spoken are deliberately incoherent and cacophonous babbles of blame and terror. But while the dialogue is not present, the subtext is exactly why the themes and humanity of the story still express firmly through the music and motion of the dancers.
It’s fitting that, with a piece such as this, so many aspects of it are a complimenting schism, echoing the dualities of the story. There’s a beautiful balance in the blurred lines between pure need and greedy obsession, lust and love and the warring battles between the sacred and the profane. This is similarly echoed in Salem’s music, which blends more traditional orchestral thematics into harsher, more modern, almost cinematic themes of horror and strife. Equally, the merging of the classical and the modern are forced together as Pickett’s choreography slides between more traditional moments of balletic grace and often more violent and staccato moments of contemporary dance. As is always the case, the Scottish Ballet Orchestra acquit themselves marvellously under the baton of guest conductor Daniel Parkinson.
The design and formation of the dancing is also worth noting. At one stage, the company forms into an evocation of the church hall in a stage-wide ritualistic series of harsh synchronicity, the townsfolk mimicking the Reverend Harris (Andrea Azzari) and showcasing the constrictive confines and rigidly observed lines of social conduct in this puritanical society. Contrastingly, there’s also an incredible amount of character work, giving almost all of the 22-strong named characters in the ballet moments of individual signature styling.
However, this does present an issue for the audience, particularly a non-American audience, as even with the synopsis provided in the programme and the general cultural understanding of the story, it’s a lot to ask of an audience to follow it closely. As mentioned above, there is a complexity to the narrative that means things may be lost in the mix. There’s also an additional issue with such a strong cast of specific characters. During some moments, there is simply so much going on that it becomes unclear who is who, particularly during the trial scenes, where it’s rather unclear who the rest of the townsfolk are, especially from the higher tiers of the theatre, and in the throng, even I lost track at times of who was who and where they were onstage, so heaven help anyone who was a first time entrant to the ballet.
This is in no way to impugn the great work of Emma Kingsbury’s costume design, clothing everyone in a stylised form of period garb, as even with colour variations and styling choices throughout the troupe, it’s not going to be immediately clear to an audience on first blush for the 90 minutes of stage traffic exactly who each minor character is. Equally, Kingsbury’s work on the set design with David Finn is an immaculate use of symbolic minimalism, with a large square backdrop folding itself in and out of the stage by degrees as a wall, the light pouring through it, in the form of a cross never letting go of the weight of religious totality literally hanging over the town.
All of which is a fine series of technical accomplishments, but it remains to ask, does it work as a ballet, as art and as entertainment? The short answer is, enthusiastically, yes. While Scottish Ballet’s The Crucible does not supersede the original in this adaptation between theatrical media, it asks a different question of its audience.
While the focus of the original play and its legacy has rather become focused around John Proctor, many interpretations have looked at him as a flawed but heroically tragic martyr figure, with some notable exceptions, such as Kimberly Belflower’s feminist play, in which John Proctor is the villain. Indeed, there is the risk that John Proctor may remain a somewhat less than sympathetic character without Miller’s explicitly over-eager narratorial voice and the characterisation of the grim but flawed man. However, reduced to his emoting and the vehicle of dance, Principal Artist Miocchiardi manages to carve a relatively sympathetic figure who, although central to the narrative, is not so much to the thematic and emotional arcs of the ballet. Instead, Scottish Ballet has left any judgement of Proctor somewhat to the side in favour of balancing the dualities between Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor.
Abigail was portrayed on the press night by the diminutive but ever-reliable First Artist Kayla-Maree Tarantolo, playing the sexually precocious but carelessly teenage rabble-rouser with a mixture of naive greed and hysterical power-tripping. It’s easy enough to mark her as a villain, but the performance is nuanced enough that it’s possible to find some sympathy for this young woman, lost in an obsessive haze of teenage lust and vindictive jealousy, power-drunk on the promise of making accusations against those she perceives have wronged her. There’s a sly elegance to the performance, whether it’s during the surprisingly steamy simulated sex scene, performed as a pas a deux between Abigail and John, or her angrily threatening the other girls into following her lies, with the threats of a pointy reckoning.
Comparatively, much of the emotional work is left to Principal Jessica Fyfe as Elizabeth Proctor. The aptly titled ‘goodwife’ is a sentinel of measured calm, finding forgiveness for her errant husband and standing the injustices and indignities with calm and steely grace in her movements. It’s an ocean of difference between the styles, and as the play wends through the somewhat convoluted path, it allows Fyfe to bring a feminine strength with a believability that belies the hyper-reality of the balletic trappings of the whole.
Ultimately, The Crucible is as evocative a story as ever. Recaptured in essence, with a beauty that is unique to this form and an execution which in fusing the old and the new in a timeless manner, is both a delight and a marvel. While the specificity of the allegories behind it have shifted over the generations, it’s as prescient as ever and as applicable to the mores and fears that move society today, decades and centuries after the events and the fiction were set down. It’s a fascinating piece of ballet, moving the form forwards whilst looking back and never forgetting.