Hot on the heels of the final weekend of season openers “Mary Poppins” and “Bug,” Spokane Civic Theatre is presenting a staged reading of one of the most revered plays in American theater, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”
The play is both a fictionalized look at the Salem Witch Trials and a commentary on McCarthyism.
Directed by Susan Hardie, “The Crucible” begins the day after Rev. Samuel Parris (Kim Berg) found his daughter Betty (Addison McAllister), his slave Tituba (Adell Whitehead) and other girls from the village performing some sort of strange ritual in the forest.
The girls swear they were just dancing, but, listening to the influential Thomas Putnam (Kris Kittelson) and his wife Ann (Sarajoy Van Boven), Parris invites Rev. John Hale (Matt Rindge), a supposed expert in witchcraft, to investigate.
As Rev. Hale questions the girls, Tituba eventually breaks down and falsely claims she and others in town have been bewitched by the devil. Abigail jumps in, adding names to the growing list of the accused.
As life in the village gets more and more out of control, the ensuing trial begins to tear the town apart.
Article by Azaria Podplesky of The Spokesman Review