Image via First Stage
There is a brief and vivid visual introduction. Women dance in the snow in ancient colonial garb. Then darkness falls. What follows is an all-audio production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The video is a simple, unmoving image of a small colonial village. Drama bleeds out over the audio in a production brought online by the First Stage Young Company. Director Ann Joseph-Douglas channels the intensity of the drama straight through Miller’s words with no other distractions. Though the specific relations between a substantial ensemble have a tendency to get lost in emotional gravity of the drama resonates powerfully through the voices alone.
The concerns of a few people in a small community radiate through the script without embellishment. Emotion and accusation rolls through fearful and angry voices carved into the ether by an ensemble of very young actors. Joseph-Douglas tempers the cast through the tensions and suspicions that wind their way across Salem from 1692-93. It’s an ensemble illuminated by some very powerful performances. Sam Bower summons a weighty passion in the role of protagonist John Proctor. Daisha Lafford reaches into the heart of torment as Reverend Parris’s Barbadian slave Tituba, who is accused of engaging in black magic.
The all-audio format might lose the aggressive immersive-ness of visual human presence, but it gains substantial emotional momentum of Miller’s emotional contortions. There’s a nebulous nightmare energy crawling its way through the presentation as characters put each other through the hell of secrets and suspicions. The power of the script comes across in subtler tones than might occur in a fully-staged production. Accusations and denials are given a spectral life in audio alone as the story carves its way through the air in a pleasantly unsettling drama.
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First Stage Young Company’s production of The Crucible runs through March 7 online on broadwayondemand.com. For more information, visit firststage.org.
