The primary phrase spoken in “John Proctor Is the Villain” is “intercourse,” a portent of issues to come back. Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert), a highschool English trainer, has been tasked with dealing with sex-ed for his junior honors college students; this module principally consists of the scholars studying aloud definitions of phrases together with “intercourse” and naturally “abstinence.” They don’t seem to be receiving a lot sexual training right here, and Mr. Smith is definitely not an excellent man for the job. However that is the one highschool in a one-stoplight city in Appalachian Georgia, so he’ll should do. His precise job is to show his college students “The Crucible,” a ceremony of passage for nearly all American schoolchildren. He explains to his college students how Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials in 1692 as an allegory for McCarthyism; this play takes place in 2018 and to maintain issues topical for the children, he relates it to ongoing conversations about “witch hunts,” together with #MeToo. 

However #MeToo is just not merely a premise or backdrop. Playwright Kimberly Belflower has crafted a compelling rebuttal to “The Crucible” and the best way it’s most frequently learn (because the title makes clear). She brings the play updated, remodeling Miller’s Purple Scare allegory into yet another suited to our present political local weather. Within the course of, she makes “The Crucible” really feel surprisingly recent, particularly as seen — and rejected — by the teenage ladies within the class. Belflower additionally performs with the allegory, devising a metatheatrical work that adapts “The Crucible,” with varied characters turning into stand-ins for Miller’s and related beats revisited anew. 

Beth (a young and hilarious Fina Strazza) is our passionate but not sure Mary Warren; the trustworthy however betrayed Raelynn (Amalia Yoo, delicate and honest) acts as an adolescent Goody Proctor; and Shelby (Sadie Sink, of “Stranger Issues”) is a Gen Z Abigail Williams. Right here although, Shelby goes from a scandalously sexually-active lady to a survivor bent on not preserving silent. 

It’s commendable that Sink has chosen to lend her star energy and field workplace enchantment to this play, which speaks to her politics, her maturity, and maybe most significantly, her humility. Elsewhere on Broadway, huge names from movie and tv star in self-importance tasks reviving Shakespeare, Mamet, and even their very own movie. As an alternative, Sink seems in an ensemble piece, and has helped increase a brand new, feminist play by a feminine playwright, in a manufacturing directed by a lady (Danya Taymor, director of “The Outsiders”) and that includes a majority-female artistic group.

Sink provides a spellbinding efficiency as a lady who’s deeply pained however shielded with thick armor: She’s sensible however underestimated, and able to harness her rage towards the patriarchy. Sink is surrounded by an excellent forged who work superbly collectively. Belflower molds characters with notable depth, together with the smaller roles like Atlanta transplant Nell (Morgan Scott) or the “male feminist” Mason (Nihan Duvvuri). The important thing mediator between the scholars and their trainer is Ms. Gallagher (Molly Griggs), a steering counsellor who’s recent out of faculty and an alumna of this highschool; Griggs artfully performs this liminal place, triumphantly asserting herself at an important time. 

A number of ladies in school, led by Beth (with a big binder in tow), band collectively to kind a feminism membership, a proposal which is initially shot down by the administration till Mr. Smith agrees to sponsor and Mason is dragged in. As the scholars learn “The Crucible” and maintain membership conferences, scandals are unearthed and #MeToo goes from a dialogue subject to an more and more close-to-home problem, testing the women’ feminist stances. 

Belflower successfully captures the best way pop music is ingrained into the vernacular of those teenage ladies, with lyrical references to Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lizzo, and Lorde sprinkled all through. For these characters, pop songs are the references at their fingertips, each for his or her introductory feminism and their expression of the numerous heightened feelings of adolescence. As is so typically the case, when issues get heavy, they flip to music. On the play’s climax, a pair of ladies do an interpretive dance to a perfectly-selected pop tune for a classroom venture about “The Crucible” — their efficiency is heart-wrenching, guttural, cathartic, and some of the highly effective dramatic finales in latest reminiscence. 

In one other memorable scene, Raelynn and Shelby skip college and hang around at a fuel station. Their lifelong best-friendship has gone by means of a serious tough patch, and on this touching scene they course of trauma collectively. However what makes this so charming is the singular accuracy with which it represents the distinctive approach teenage ladies speak to one another when they’re alone: the shared language, the gestures, the within jokes, the intimacy, the laughing so laborious it hurts. Belflower’s writing, Taymor’s course, and the efficiency of Sink and Yoo mix in beautiful methods, creating one thing magical. 

Taymor’s course is impeccable all through, however a few of her greatest work can also be her quietest, evidenced in lots of small particulars. The transitions between scenes are extraordinary artworks themselves. After every scene, an actress lingers and we’re handled to an emotional epilogue, a silent soliloquy, the place we see, for yet another minute, what they’re pondering and feeling. As this occurs, eerie techno is pumped in by sound designer and composer Palmer Hefferan whereas Natasha Katz’s lights and Hannah Wasilkeski’s projections flicker, subtly highlighting particulars within the classroom in a horror-adjacent scenographic transfer. It’s an especially efficient maneuver, making a meal out of the logistical breath between scenes. 

The play has a number of reveals which increase the stakes and keep the play’s lightning velocity, however all of them are nicely earned. The classroom wall has posters about “lightbulb moments,” and plenty of take this type, together with when Shelby, paradoxically and fittingly, declares that John Proctor is definitely the villain of “The Crucible.” This provokes dismay in Mr. Smith, who defends the character’s supposed heroism and morality, however Shelby’s revelation conjures up a number of of the opposite ladies in school. This play will probably without end change how you concentrate on “The Crucible,” including depth, layers, and a feminist studying that counters the best way it’s typically taught in faculties. 

“John Proctor Is the Villain” is the perfect play of the season, however much more considerably, it’s a feminist masterpiece certain to change into one of many defining artworks from and in regards to the #MeToo period. In a similar way to “The Nice Gatsby” (additionally on Broadway) — one other favourite of excessive faculties, and likewise mentioned on this play — Belflower astutely managed to seize a second whereas it was nonetheless occurring: the play is about in 2018, which is when Belflower first workshopped the piece. Regardless of this lack of temporal distance, Belflower nonetheless retains nice readability in regards to the historic happenings of the #MeToo motion, together with the complexities and messiness, the speedy unfold of feminist fervor, the wrongdoings each massive and small, the pressing crucial to (lastly begin to) consider ladies, and the generally scary velocity of cancel tradition. 

The play asks the important query of when a witch hunt turns into a witch hunt — but in addition invitations us to ponder who will get declared a witch, who’re the hunters, and who deserves to be hunted. “John Proctor Is the Villain” is a feminist reinvention, turning “The Crucible” on its head and demonstrating the facility of female solidarity and rage — and proper now, solidarity and rage sound like fairly good methods for preventing again, and even only for coping. In some ways, it is a good play for our second, an pressing response to a time of disaster and a battlecry within the face of a terrifying world. So let’s go dance within the woods, scream on the moon, burn all of it down, and make one thing new and higher, collectively.