Even if Ben Whishaw weren鈥檛 making his Broadway debut this season in The Crucible, he would have no trouble imagining that he is a stranger in a strange land.
It鈥檚 not just the occasional levitating teenage nymphet floating by or the unnamed beast patrolling the Walter Kerr stage. It鈥檚 the citizenry that producer Scott Rudin has assembled to mix it up with the 35-year-old Brit鈥攁 strong, savvy assortment of actors who include the likes of Thomas Jay Ryan, Jason Butler Harner and Tony winners Sophie Okonedo and Jim Norton.
A shy guy by nature, Whishaw is thus lightning-quick about abdicating his star spot. 鈥淚鈥檓 not being modest here,鈥� he insists, 鈥渂ut, in reality, this is an ensemble piece. It鈥檚 very much about a community of people, and everybody鈥檚 caught in that somehow.鈥�
Of course any feelings of isolation go right into his role鈥擩ohn Proctor, an honorable, just and flawed Everyman swept up into the mob hysteria of Salem鈥檚 1692 witch-hunts.
Arthur Miller wrote the political-play/parable in the early 1950s as an allegory of McCarthyism when he was hopping mad and freshly singed around the edges by the finger-pointing House Un-American Activities Committee who were on the hunt for supposed Communists.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 unusual about this play in relationship to others I鈥檝e done,鈥� Whishaw notes, 鈥渋s that it feels as if Miller was really writing about intimate, private, personal things and how they relate to the community and the wider world鈥攈ow we are all part of that big picture. He鈥檚 always got one eye on the tiny details of the Proctor marriage and the other eye on John鈥檚 position in the community and how that functions.鈥�
Ivo van Hove, the Belgian director who staged a fiercely revitalized revival of Miller鈥檚 A View From the Bridge earlier in the season, has stirred The Crucible cauldron with some idyllic typecasting: Saoirse Ronan, who has been wrecking lives with lies since she was a bad seed in 2007鈥檚 Atonement, continues accordingly, identifying devil-worshippers for Ciar谩n Hinds to punish. He, of course, has no problem spotting the devil鈥檚 handiwork, having played a Mephistophelian entity himself in The Seafarer.
鈥淚vo can open up a play without making messages,鈥� Whishaw points out. 鈥淗e鈥檚 more interested in ambiguity, complexity, irresolvable questions. The end of the play devastates, but there鈥檚 no clear moral to take away. It鈥檚 much more of a conundrum.
鈥淎ll the characters in the play live within a society that imposes a very rigid moral code on their behavior. They think in terms of angels and demons, God and sin. As Ciar谩n鈥檚 character says, 鈥楾here is no road in between. You are one or the other.鈥�
鈥淲hat happens in the play鈥攚hat Ivo is brilliant at doing鈥攊s unpeeling the fact [that] we are a mixture of both. We鈥檙e capable of doing good things and bad. We slide around constantly. Those things exist within鈥攊f not all of us, most of us鈥攁ll the time.鈥�
