The Crucible at the National Theatre: a ‘visually sumptuous’ production

Latest revival of 1953 Arthur Miller play is ‘masterly’ – but also rather on the ‘safe’ side

Still from The Crucible
A production ‘full of good ideas and atmospheric flourishes’

A key requirement for any revival of The Crucible is that it “doesn’t feel too much like a lecture in disguise”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Famously, Arthur Miller wrote his 1953 play – about the “juvenile-led spasm of denunciation and execution” that seized Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-3 – as a “chilling quasiallegory” for McCarthyite anticommunism.

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