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$42.00 - $149.00
A limited number of $35 lottery tickets are available for each performance
The Devil has returned to Broadway, with the power to make the strong tremble. It is time to be afraid, very afraid, of a play that seemed perhaps merely worthy when you studied it in high school English class.The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast — led by Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo, Saoirse Ronan and Ciaran Hinds — have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which opened on Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels like the freshest, scariest play in town.
-----New York Times
I think the mistake critics and teachers often make about The Crucible is that they read it like a novel, and sometimes it’s staged that way, all bonnets and doublets. Van Hove sweeps all that away, letting us feel more strongly the role the play’s overwhelming structural brilliance plays in locking us down. It’s not that Miller isn’t interested in characters, it’s that he sees society as a kind of Über-character, and not a very magnanimous one. (HUAC revoked his passport to attend the play’s 1954 London opening.) The result isn’t medicinal, it’s terrifying, when done right. This is the first production of The Crucible I’ve seen in which the devil, which is to say us collectively, is really given his due.
-------Vulture
Van Hove is the master of visually arresting moments: The alarming third-act opening will have audience members clinging to their seats, eyes glued to the stage. That same act concludes with a gale force. Unfortunately, the beats between these set pieces often seem neglected. When the director does intercede, it regularly comes off as stagey, as when the advisers of the court vigorously circle Danforth, like flies on rotting fruit. This may be van Hove's way of dressing up Miller's overwrought dialogue and uneconomical plot development, which causes even the strongest mountings of this play to sag. This is the best production of The Crucible I've ever seen. It is by no means a perfect drama, but as long as a crusading morality is a part of our national character, it seems destined to continue punching audiences in the gut.
------TheaterMania
The Devil has returned to Broadway, with the power to make the strong tremble. It is time to be afraid, very afraid, of a play that seemed perhaps merely worthy when you studied it in high school English class.The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast — led by Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo, Saoirse Ronan and Ciaran Hinds — have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which opened on Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels like the freshest, scariest play in town.
-----New York Times
