Process LVI

Thespian Humor.

“These medieval witches knew …”

The witches are all around this week. On a single day I’m revising a spectral visitation for The Witches, debating novelist Caren Beilin’s self-described witchwork in her takedown on the medical establishment, Blackfishing the IUD, as well as my personally leading a one-on-one virtual lesson in The Crucible.

Of course, that was Tuesday.

This week has been very challenging, as I have been getting to bed after midnight pretty much every night, due to rehearsals for Test Fight taking place downtown. Remember when rehearsals were all online? Yeah, I’m grateful for the return to meatspace but it is a slog for this slightly older matron (that’s a reference, come see the performances next weekend.)

But I went to bed with a headache Wednesday night and woke Thursday with a full blown migraine which pretty much wrecked my day. Once I could think straight I was able to do some reading but, you know, that old Puritan Work Ethic, I felt like a monster calling off from classes.

I have to write a new play. I may have had a breakthrough, just today. I need to complete fifteen pages in the next forty-eight hours, but at least I finally have an agenda. Writing exercises have been fruitful but ultimately not leading to anything greater. I created a rubric for myself that I will be playing with. Wish me luck, okay?

School Residency Program: Twenty Years On

This fall marks twenty years since I began my work with the Great Lakes Theater School Residency Program. This work has become my life, and as with any endeavor you engage in for an extended period of time might ask yourself, why do I continue? Do I continue to execute my responsibilities to the best of my ability? Would the program benefit from a new instructor? Do I still enjoy this work, is my accumulated knowledge and understanding of value? Or am I merely repeating myself? 

Murder Arc with Alicia Kahn (2003)

Every September, we rise early to attend rehearsal. Long days of instruction and review, culminating in a week of classes, all eight actor teachers together at one school, a tryout in which the actor-teachers get to succeed or fail gloriously with the support of their peers and supervisors before they are sent out as partnerships of two to schools across the region.

This month can be very exhausting for me, especially as I have aged, from my early thirties to my early forties. The actor-teachers I have worked with have gone from people not much younger than myself to Millennials and now, Gen Z. Some of these folks are not even five years older than my eldest living child.

The same lesson plans, the same scene work, the same discussion questions. The actors bring something new, to be sure. But it is a well-established machine, this program. It works. And it doesn’t change.

Until March 2020, when this program, like everything else, was put in stasis. Schools were closed. Education went online. We had to let our actor-teachers go, and go they did, to graduate schools and other work, sometimes relocating as necessary.

This time last year our team was in the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, creating performance videos for schools to provide to Cleveland city schools, and any other schools who thought they would be useful. A skeleton crew of staff conducted online residencies for schools who just couldn’t do without the program.

With the creation and production of successful vaccines, which resulted in a significant drop in infection and death, this past spring we began to discuss the possibility of returning to in-person instruction. Even then, there were a host of considerations, not only in creation of safety protocols in the classroom, but how we could even rehearse new teams of actor-teachers in a responsible and safe manner.

Avery & Noelle in rehearsal (2021)

Wipes were purchased in bulk to keep the rehearsal rooms disinfected, we knew we would be rehearsing with masks. Windows were open as often as possible, fans kept the air circulating. Four actors contracted, instead of eight. We would only be working in high schools, as children have not yet been vaccinated.

Even so, there was no guarantee the teenage students we would be working with were vaccinated, because freedom. We instituted our own protocols. If you want the program, students must be masked. All props handled by students must be wiped down after every class.

And how would that go? Without actors' mouths covered, how would scene work be received? We weren’t even providing costumes for the students. Would that be a bummer?

Two teams conducted classes in Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and The Crucible at Berea-Midpark High School. It has been two years since we have done so, and like some kind of unusual anniversary gift we were presented with their brand new school building, which comes complete with a vast auditorium space where we were able to conduct our work with a great deal of space. Students who were not masked were provided one (GLT has purchased a metric ton of masks for this purpose) no one complained about having to wear one, perhaps because they were grateful to be receiving special instruction.

And it all went very well. Our folks were able to perform their scenes wearing masks, and having adjusted to them in so many arenas of contemporary life they did not seem strange at all. In rehearsal one of our performers took a sip from a chalice (which was empty) during a scene, absentmindedly “drinking” through their mask. I suggested we accept that our characters not ignore the reality of their wearing a mask, that a mask should be lowered to drink and that was agreed upon.

Our final day I recommended the final day for Macbeth be conducted outside. It was a beautiful fall afternoon, the temperature in the mid-sixties. From time to time we conduct class outside but usually not until spring, as new actor-teachers are processing a great deal of material, and outside instruction can be taxing on the voice.

Berea-Midpark High School

But as a society we have been doing so much more outdoors, dining and performing and celebrating. It’s just safer. If nice weather continues, I wanted them to feel comfortable suggesting a class or two outdoors — because it meant they could remove their masks. For a brief moment, our people could be seen. And it was a glorious battle.

There were moments this week, when I was about to cry. If I thought too hard about it, I would have. Remembering what it was like to see my own children, attending school from home. The deadening effect it had on them. They were more stoic than I. 

I fear how this generation will be affected by this experience. Reality is a joke to them, a vicious moron can become president, our forests are burning, every rainstorm brings catastrophe, and when struck with a global pandemic, legions of citizens would rather deny, harrass and argue than band together and literally take their medicine.

But for now, we are back, working with students, one our feet, performing scenes, playing games, and having lively, engaged discussions. It was a horrific and unnecessary kick in the pants, but I am grateful to have been reminded of exactly why this is the path I have chosen.

Play a Day: John Proctor is the Villain

Kimberly Belflower

To round out the week, I am enjoying a script that I have been looking forward to for months, yet purposefully avoided.

For Friday, I read John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower and listed at New Play Exchange.

Last weekend my new play The Witches was to have received a workshop production at Cleveland Public Theatre. As I was trying to create a modern take on the historic events of the Salem Witch Panic of 1692, I was worried that I might be influenced by this piece which has been getting a lot of attention.

I need not have worried. If anything, Belflower's play script has inspired me to return to my own text and push it further. Because her play is startlingly biting and beautiful and just what we need right now. I hope it gets produced all over the place.

And it is in reading such pieces that I feel challenged to create more and better work.

I love the title, that's first. And I was stunned and delighted that the holding company for Arthur Miller's written works granted permission for text from The Crucible to be quoted in this play. We could compare and contrast how those gatekeeping works by dead white men such as Samuel Beckett or Edward Albee have (mis)managed their estates, in this case I was gratified to know the keepers of Miller's work appreciate that criticism does not mean erasure.

Taylor Atwara, Anna Nicolosi 
Academy for the Performing Arts, 2023
Photo: Daren Stahl

John Proctor Is the Villain is a high school drama which excellently describes the familiar manner in which woman is still pitted against woman in American society, a society still haunted by its Puritanical roots, for the continued domination by men. The cracks are beginning to show, though the light shining through them remains dim. It's a hopeful story, but also realistic. There's so much work left to be done.

This script is tense, taut, humorous, dramatic, powerful, poetic, and devastating, and high schools everywhere should be producing this.

In the past two days, I have read plays about transgressive relationships between teacher and student, this one and Meet Me In The Bathroom. One of the iconic taboos, as it is not only a violation of our communal understanding that it is criminal for adults to engage in sexual activity with children, but also represents a violation in the bond of trust between student and mentor.

It is a power play; one uses their position of power to satisfy their own desires, with little or no regard for the damage that might cause the disempowered.

Broadway Premiere
Starring Sadie Sink
The Booth Theatre (2025)

As a child, or pre-adolescent, I was exposed to the Kubrick film version of Lolita, and also the popular song which name checks the author of the novel from which it was adapted, "Don't Stand So Close to Me." At that time, in these cases, such titillating fare made an impression on me because I thought of myself as the child, receiving forbidden knowledge, and not as the adult, and I was caught up in the romantic danger of it, instead of paying attention to the very apparent abuse.

This was further complicated as I entered high school and as a freshman was complicit in turning a blind eye to an actual teacher-student relationship. "Tell my parents I'm with you," is a lie teenagers have been pressed into telling on their friend's behalf since before the invention of the telephone.

Whether it be Nabokov or Sting, we used to learn about these stories from the predators point of view, one who positions himself (usually himself) as the hero. Increasingly, as with these two scripts, we see it from the student's. And that is a powerful thing.

Who should I read tomorrow?

The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels In America (book)

Theater artist Isaac Butler and journalist Dan Kois have contributed an historically important book with The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels In America.

A comprehensive oral history, this exciting and easy-to-enjoy record traces the creative path of Angels In America by Tony Kushner, arguably the greatest play of the late twentieth century; from the script’s prehistory in the revolution for gay rights and the origins of the AIDS crisis, through the heady development process on both coasts of America and in England, its resounding though by no means guaranteed acclaim and lauds (and a surprisingly successful adaptation to film) and significant re-mounts, up to and including its recent revival on Broadway.

It even includes a chapter on the ill-fated 1996 Charlotte Repertory Theatre production, which was almost closed due to threats that the cast would be arrested for indecent exposure. The controversy began when the theater critic for the Charlotte Observer took the opportunity of a rare front page byline to announce to the community that this production would feature homosexual acts performed live on stage and full-frontal male nudity.

That those are two different scenes, and the fact that the character Prior Walter removing his clothes was for a medical examination, exposing to the audience his weakened state and many visible skin cancers, was not in the Observer's lede. The alarm was sounded, and it took a Superior Court Judge to allow the play to proceed without fear of legal action.

The controversy continued, a slate of arch conservatives were elected to the Board of Commissioners, and arts funding was -- briefly -- eliminated in the county of Mecklenburg. Shortly after the Charlotte Repertory Theatre would cease operations.

Pro-Angels protest.
(Charlotte Observer, 1996)

A few short years later that theater critic, Tony Brown, who so titillated the readership of Charlotte, would move to Cleveland and begin an eleven-year tenure as chief theater critic for the Plain Dealer. He was either not asked, or declined invitation to be interviewed for this book.

One of the more startling images from Mike Nichols’ HBO miniseries adaptation is a scene between the doomed couple Harper and Joe, on the rooftop of their apartment in Brooklyn. The Twin Towers are clearly visible across the river. A trick of editing, this record of the play, created in 2003, was one of the early reminders that Angels is a period piece. I mean, it always was; it was and will always be 1985. But what we have gained and what we have lost in the years since, and as the years continue, will continue to mount and shape our perception of Kushner’s work.

And therein lies a question; does this play continue to be relevant? Almost every year a play receives a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for not only great writing but also social relevance. Many go onto long histories of production, but do they maintain their relevance, do they speak to a modern audience? Plays so familiar that their titles can be reduced to one word -- Streetcar, Salesman, Picnic -- they may be emotionally compelling, but are they urgent?

Jason Isaacs & Daniel Craig
as Louis Ironson and Joe Pitt
(National Theatre, 1992)

When the HBO series debuted it, too, won numerous awards. It was well-done. But the dire warnings of the text were not as sharp. HIV/AIDS -- in America at least, for those who could afford it -- was under control. Eight years of Bill Clinton gave the illusion that the Reagan revolution of the 1980s and the Gingrich-led uprising of 1994 were just part of the natural cycle of politics, and that the Supreme Court the character Martin Heller predicted, one that by the 1990s would be “block-solid Republican appointees” had not come to pass and would never do so.

And yet. Here we are.

The question of whether a piece of writing transcends its own time, that its meaning can be interpreted to reflect the crises present in those whose paths are different from those represented in the original narrative, that is the test which determines whether a play is truly classic.

Arthur Miller directed Salesman in Beijing in the early 1980s, just as China was only beginning to enact minor Capitalist reforms. In doing so he found a wide, new audience for a decades old work which affected his audiences as though it were written for them.

Two years ago the Play House produced his Crucible with a multi-racial cast, and I had the opportunity to get into a polite debate about whether doing so changed the intended message of the play. He argued the play is about religious persecution, not racial persecution. I argued it was intended to be about the Red Scare, and about persecution in general, and the kind of heartbreak and death that attends the creation and subsequent destruction of perceived enemies.

"Part Two: Perestroika"
(Ensemble Theatre, 2018)

The first production of Angels in Cleveland was at Dobama Theatre in 1998, a brisk, delirious event, with tiny sets flying in and out with breakneck speed and an indelible lead performance by Scott Plate as Prior Walter. It was a time when the word “Millennium” was très en vogue, the expectation of great or cataclysmic events just on the horizon. We were living in End Times that never ended.

As we limp further into the murky depths of the twenty-first century, Angels In America, with its deeply flawed but searching characters and lyrical wonderfulness, which provided rich humanity to a cohort of humans previously denied their rights or even their right to exist, has already shown itself to be open to vital reinterpretation. The great work begins. It is always beginning.

Source: 5 Things To Know About Charlotte's 1996 'Angels In America' Controversy by Tim Funk, Charlotte Observer (5/16/2017) 

Play a Day: The Witches' Tower

James Bartelle

For Sunday I read The Witches' Tower by James Bartelle, and available at New Play Exchange.

The past several year, the family has stopped into Salem, Massachusetts on our way up the coast the Maine. Our friend Kim lives there, and though we have often stopped by for a couple hours, last year we stayed for a couple days and had the opportunity to take out time to explore the city.

While there are a great many beautiful and interest things to take in and enjoy about Salem, the real fun is with the witches. Arthur Miller's The Crucible brought the Salem Witch Panic of 1692 to vibrant life, and arguably shaped the discussion we continue to have about those events and that time.

He was comparing that witch hunt to the "Red Manic" panic of his time. However, his analogy can suffer when you point out the simple fact, as he did in an article in The Guardian in the year 2000, that "there were communists and there never were witches." He goes on to argue, however, that his point was not the existence of a perceived threat but what the actual threat was, what was "the content of their menace?"

New Orleans playwright James Bartelle spins an original, compact and compelling tale of persecuted witches in a classic, lyric style. We are left to imagine whether the accused are truly servants of a malevolent power, or if their only crime is that of being women, punished for actions inherent in the human condition, actions for which no man in their time, or ours, would receive comparable treatment.

To have lost a mother in the course of childbirth? Would a male doctor be imprisoned for this? To have had an extramarital relationship? You could be President of the United States.

Bartelle has a way with repetition which is poetic, the condemned women's ruminations either actual spells, or an expression of madness imposed through institutionalized oppression. A powerful period piece reflecting our modern moment.

Hamilton (musical)

Civics lesson from a slaver

Ken Howard died last month. A proud union actor and leader, he is remembered by most from the 1970s dramatic TV program The White Shadow. To many of us, he has always been the face we picture when we think of Thomas Jefferson.

I turned eight in 1976, the American Bicentennial. We visited Williamsburg, our class portraits included Betsy Ross’s flag, and I personally have a strong and intimate association with seeing the film adaptation of the musical 1776 on broadcast television.

The musical was originally produced on Broadway in 1969, when the U.S. was deep into Vietnam, the film version in 1972. For years, before cable anyway, it was rebroadcast around the Independence Day holiday. My family had the cast album, which we loved playing.

This story, depicting the signers of the Declaration of Independence as witty, flawed, somewhat crabby, but above all hopeful public servants was a helpful antidote to the general malaise of actually being American at that time.

It was much later that I learned, much to my disillusionment, that musical’s book compels the character of Jefferson to tell one whopper of a lie, in an obvious effort to leave the tall, awkward, Blythe Danner-loving redhead untarnished.

When debating the inclusion of language which would have publicly condemned the practice of enslavement, a South Carolina congressman reminds Thomas Jefferson of Virginia that he is also a slaver.

Jefferson states quietly, “I have already resolved to release my slaves.”

Actions speak louder. In reality Thomas Jefferson never released any slaves, with the exception of those he fathered, whom he conveniently allowed to “escape.” In fact, there was a practice at that time for slavers to put into their wills to grant freedom to those they held in slavery upon the slaver’s death. George Washington, for example, did this. Thomas Jefferson did not, passing possession of two hundred or so souls onto his heirs.

The worst sins of the historical characters in the musical 1776 is that they are a bit laconic and playfully lascivious.

Enter Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cultural juggernaut that is Hamilton. Inspired by biography and history, Miranda has single-handedly retrieved the least-known or least-understood of the “founding fathers” from obscurity by creating a vast and complex narrative which begs repeated listening. Most of us cannot hope to attend the production at the Richard Rogers Theatre, and have spent the past several months listening to the soundtrack, which weaves rap, hip-hop and R&B into traditional but staggeringly effective modern showtunes.

Part of the appeal of Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton is how unapologetic the character is. In fact, he is the diametric opposite of apologetic, he refuses to apologize for anything.

What is a legacy?

Recently I purchased the cast recording to In The Heights. Without question it is a very well-written show, fun to listen to, and inspiring. It is important that Latinx voices are being heard, on Broadway, that musical styles never before presented were in the mix, the faces, the accents, the names. It deserved to and received the Tony Award for Best Musical that it received.

Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for In The Heights, with a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes. Miranda also wrote the music, lyrics and book for Hamilton.

Hamilton is a monster.

My children listen to it, all the time, it is on before school and whenever we get into the car. My thirteen year-old child listens to it when they are doing their homework, every single day. My ten year-old son is working very hard to memorize every single word — especially the cabinet meetings. The boy loves the cabinet meetings.

Several of our elder child's friends are on board, and my wife sees her students sharing earbuds to listen between classes. I walk into the office of one of my work colleagues to drop off paperwork, she's listening to Hamilton. I keep seeing friends and colleagues surprise me on Instagram with their selfies at the Richard Rogers.

What is the difference between these two Miranda shows, or in fact between Hamilton and virtually any other Broadway show that has created a kind of widespread, “crossover” appeal that hasn’t been seen since perhaps the original production of Hair?

I think it's all the history.

Doctoral theses will be written, have been, are being as we speak, to be sure. My question is this; what is it about history which at once lends drama instant gravitas, but also compels great writers to reach deeper, go farther — and provides us the freedom to move along wherever it will take us?

The best example I can think of is The Crucible. Not a critically well-received drama when it was first produced, though it did win awards. But with that one play Miller reached far outside of himself to find the humanity in an arcane historical event and created the piece which I believe will stand the test of time, greater than All My Sons, greater than Death of a Salesman.

In one thousand years, Salesman may seem as obscure as The Women of Trāchis. But we will still be performing The Crucible, and it will play as fresh as it did in 1953, or as it remains today. Who is John Proctor? Who is Alexander Hamilton?

Well, he’s me, isn’t he? And who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

… Not Yet

There was a recent bit of unpleasantness regarding the open call audition for the national touring production of Hamilton. They were looking for “Non-White Actors” and said so, causing scores of melanin-deprived individuals to get the vapors. “Colorblind” casting is one thing, but to show blatant preference against a single race? This feeling of being treated unfairly just because of my skin?

White people cannot comprehend the idea of not being allowed to have something they want. Even something they do not want.

The fallout was that, in spite of several prominent examples of AEA productions which called specifically for “white actors” the call for actors for the tour was changed to a more inclusive, “performers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.” In that way they are free to do what casting directors have done for centuries, and simply disregard any performer they feel does not suit the production.

At long last, white American actors will know what it feels like to "Audition While Black."

The non-white make-up of the original cast of Hamilton is, of course, part of what makes it unique. Miranda has said as much, that this is America today, representing America as it began.

It is that opportunity for creative representation which makes theater unique. The boy and I watched the movie Gettysburg last month, and while it strives for historical accuracy, the beards are a little difficult to take. Historical film wants to be accurate. The stage is all about the suspension of disbelief.

Recently I recounted an incident in which I debated with stranger about a production of The Crucible at the Cleveland Play House which featured a mixed-race cast. Watching an African-American actor perform John Proctor apparently disturbed this man a great deal, which I simply do not get. He saw a black man, I saw John Proctor.

Theater has always been a representation of reality and not an exact replica the thing itself. Anyone can play anything, if they play it well enough. Is appreciating this a generational thing? My children love the actors, singers and rappers who perform Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Hercules Mulligan (EVERYONE loves Hercules Mulligan) each of them portrayed in Hamilton by non-white performers. My children are not stupid, and they are not confused by these performances, they are aware that actual men they represent were racially European-Americans. They just love the music, the words, the voices, the personalities.

The performance of their characters by those who are not white may have confused or confounded or even offended the men they represent. But would an eighteenth century man be any less surprised or scandalized or even offended by the music and lyrics of Sherman “1776” Stone? I do not believe so.

History has its eyes on you.

Much has been written about the historical accuracy of Hamilton, Miranda is pretty up front about that. Yesterday there was a piece in the Times about the accuracy of the politics of the piece, and how it positions Hamilton as a visionary hero and Jefferson as a villain.

Who cares. Really. This is a play. You are worried the kids are going to get their opinions on history from a Broadway musical? Sister, please, turn on the so-called news and listen to the outright lies being offered by real people. This is art and should be judged as art.

The fact is, the artistry is brilliant. The words, as blogger Tim Sniffen put it; "The words caressed my brain and flowed over my face like hot, relevant syrup." (Read the whole thing, rarely have I read professional jealousy so lovingly and hilariously expressed.) It is not a cop-out to remind everyone that art has a responsibility to reveal the TRUTH, and not to let facts get in the way.

What is exciting to me, personally, is that this is the first time my little family – wife, daughter and son – have discovered and been overwhelmingly excited by the same cultural object all at the same time. It is as new to me as it is to them, none of us are better educated than anyone else on this. I know my history, but my kids are closer to the pop culture and they are teaching me the memes the fandom, the inside jokes, the appearances on Jimmy Fallon, and everything else that comes with it in Twenty-Sixteen.

And after all, may I remind you; “I have already resolved to release my slaves"? Srsly? Don't talk to me about facts.

The Orphanage

We purchased the original cast recording in early February, less than two weeks before my father died. I remember this because he and my mother had visited one day during a snowstorm and we had a long afternoon talking. That’s what my father and I did, we talked. I was telling him about this exciting musical I was listening to, and how much I thought he would like it, because it is about American history, only I wasn’t sure he would like it because he couldn’t understand rap music. It’s not that he didn’t like rap music, it’s that he couldn’t understand the words going by so fast, and he found that frustrating.

The following Friday morning, I had just gotten out of the shower and received a call that he had suffered a massive heart attack, and that it looked bad and that I should get to the hospital as soon as possible. I learned later that it was far too late, but I dressed as fast as I could and drove across town and found myself suddenly, quietly blurt out, “stay alive …” and almost immediately wishing I hadn’t.

The days and weeks that followed we listened to the cast album, and I mean a lot. There have been and there continue to be a lot of drives between Cleveland Heights and Lakewood, and each time the kids ask if we can listen to Hamilton. I mean, my butt hasn't even hit the driver's seat and my kid says, "Hamilton."

So, to this guy, the sense of emotional emergency, and its aftermath, are all tied up in that period. Like my association between 1776 and the Bicentennial, I will always remember the events surrounding my father's death and discovering these songs.

And it is because of my father that I cannot make it through the closing song (Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story) without breaking into tears. After two hours of listening to his enemies — and even he, himself - describe Hamilton as an orphan, and also bastard and whoreson, the poignancy of his wife Eliza’s greatest gift, the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York (today Graham Windham) resonates deeply.

Because, you see, my father was also given up by his birth mother. My father was an orphan. And I can’t help it. In this song, I see him. I see him every time.

"Incendiaries" at Cleveland Public Theatre

Google Maps

This holiday season, WVIZ ideastream broadcast a program called The Way We Shopped. Because I had time on my hands and had a nostalgic impulse, I decided to watch it. I have an interest in Cleveland history, don’t you know, and as I watch my children grow I am reminded of those moments I experienced when I was their ages.

Cosmic Comics in the Colonial Arcade. Visiting Mr. Jingeling at Halle's, when he was portrayed by Earl Keyes. Staying up late to watch Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman because you knew you were in the middle of a blizzard and there was going to be no school the next day and that guy was going to read that day’s edition of the comic strip version of Howard the Duck out loud from the Plain Dealer when the show was over.

However, something struck me as I watched The Way We Shopped, and that was that it was not recently made. The way each of these individuals described their experiences downtown, dressing up to go with their parents to experience the capitalistic glories of Euclid Avenue … these people were not the right age to have been children in the 1940s and 50s.

Most striking was the account of H.W. Beattie and Sons. People of a certain age can recall the window displays at Beattie’s, which included mosaics of loose gems. According this program (which was actually produced in 2000) this legendary store is still in business at 1117 Euclid Avenue, one of the enduring legacies of old downtown.

Of course, it’s not. I walk past that empty storefront every time I walk from my office towards Public Square, be it to shop at the new Heinen’s or meet a friend for lunch on East Fourth. In fact, not only is Beattie’s closed, but the engraved stone facade which bears it’s name - prominently featured in the TV program - has begun to deteriorate.

It was at that moment, this past December, that I finally realized something very important. That city is gone. Not as in the Pretenders song. My city isn’t gone, because that was never my city, or if it part of it had been, it has been gone so long it is as though it never was. Cleveland may be on the rise, but what it is now has little or nothing to do with what it was then.

Ageing Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation lament the loss of the May Company, Halle’s and Higbee’s. But why? They were department stores. Who shops like that anymore? Who has the time or the money? I can’t be bothered to miss a fucking store. I believe I am done with this kind of nostalgia.

Last night I was standing in the lobby of the Gordon Square Theatre, having a (free) beer following a Cleveland Public Theatre performance, engaging in small-to-big talk with two guys in their late 20s I had just met. One was raised in Lyndhurst but now lives in Ohio City, the other from Connecticut but had recently moved to town and lives just up Detroit from the theater. I am of course from Bay Village, but have lived my entire adult life in Cleveland Heights.

The space in which we were standing was, some twenty years ago, an appliance warehouse. Cleveland Public Theatre was still only renting the single black box space which is now named the James Levin Theatre. The Gordon Square District was called the Detroit Shoreway and I recall there being not much there there. It was a neighborhood, a depressed Cleveland neighborhood with a two-lane highway running through it. You can debate whether gentrification has been a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is that there were two theater spaces playing to near-capacity in that complex last night, and the bars and restaurants were filled with people.

And the movie theater. And the pinball emporium. And the bookstore, the ice cream parlor, and all of the additional bars and restaurants.

Incendiaries (Photo: Steve Wagner)

The play we were talking about was Incendiaries, created by Pandora Robertson and produced in collaboration between CPT and Ohio City Theatre Project. That was my kind of show, an emotional, hour-long, research-based, ensemble performance piece about a significant moment in Cleveland history.

The subject is Hough. Call it a riot, call it a disturbance, call it an uprising. Fifty years ago this summer the Hough neighborhood burned. In this blog I have written about 1936, 1954 and even for a brief moment 1976, neatly leap-frogging over the 1960s, that decade which culminated in the largely symbolic fire on the Cuyahoga.

What I knew about Hough was from the outside. Even Mark Winegarder in his historical fiction Crooked River Burning failed to adequately tell the story. Most of that book successfully tells the story of the Cleveland's decline from 1948 to 1969 from the inside, his fictional protagonists in the same room for important events and crossing paths with historical figures with great detail and realism.

When it comes to matters of race, however, the story takes a big step back, holding some of the most consequential events in Cleveland history at arms length. The Hough disturbance is told dispassionately, as an essay for a newspaper, perhaps. From the outside. Carl Stokes has a chapter which has no bearing on the main plot of the novel. It’s a subplot which any editor would have suggested be cut, except its absence would of course be historically conspicuous.

Incendiaries is chaotic, and it took me some time to catch up with the dialog it flew so fast. When it did I was entirely engaged and distressed. So many overlapping narratives, but clearly defined, never repetitious. Fascinating characters. It made me want to get back into the library and look up the articles listed in the program.

Also, too: I have been making plans to return to some of my unrealized historical work. There will be time for that. None of it has the fierce urgency of now, not like this piece. During the fifteen minute post-show discussion several, including some young men from Hough, who heard these stories from their parents and grandparents, were very open in their comments, their happiness that this story was being told in this kind of forum. They also lamented that little has changed.

Because they're right. While Halle's may be gone, systematic racism is not.

The Crucible (Photo: Roger Mastroianni)

The audience was majority white, because anywhere I go the audience usually will be. But only a slight majority. Because this is an American fact: we like to see ourselves on stage. This is why non-traditional casting of Shakespeare irritates some people. This is why I had an interesting exchange with a guy in a lobby downtown about the recent Cleveland Play House production of The Crucible, in which he took issue with the fact that John Proctor was played by a black man.

“I have looked it up,” he said, “and the historical John Proctor did not look like that.”

“The historical John Proctor,” I said, “was 70 years old in 1692, and Abigail Williams was 11, would you prefer to see that production of The Crucible? Because that's creepy.”

“The whole second act was about a black man arguing with a white man,” he said. “I am sure that is not what Arthur Miller intended.”

I cannot recall Arthur Miller ever writing any roles for people of color (except Tituba, of course) so I couldn’t argue that specific point. But this guy insisted the play was about religious persecution, and I said it was about persecution in general, and we agreed to disagree.

However, it is not enough to cast productions based on the content of a performer’s talent, rather than the color of their skin, though I entirely support doing that. Everyone wants and needs to hear their own stories told from the stage. Black stories matter.

As we see today, white people feel threatened by the increasing advancement of narrative from non-white peoples. And non-white, non-male peoples. We see it in backlash to the #OscarsSoWhite movement, I see it in Facebook groups for playwrights. White dudes hate being criticized for being white dudes.

Me, I am not troubled by this controversy. I will keep writing what I write and if it's good enough, I'll find a home for it. I am not threatened by a deeper talent pool. Meantime, I am engaged in absorbing as much of the conversation as possible, because that is where the future is and I for one would prefer to be part of it.

The Crucible: Archive Materials

Diane Bell as Mary Warren, Kirk Willis as John Proctor
Cleveland Play House archives (CWRU)

In honor of the Cleveland Play House 100^th Season, the Playwrights Unit has been asked to write short plays about the company’s history. As CPH’s 2015 production of The Crucible will be in performance when these sketches will be presented, I offered to cover the regional premiere of that play, which was produced at the Play House in 1954.

We were given access to company archives, which are kept at Case Western Reserve University, and their staff and the apprentices at CPH have been extremely helpful in locating and distributing specific items.

I have previously covered The Crucible in this blog, having read contemporary reviews of the CPH ’54 production, as well as Miller’s own inspiration for having written it. But there was much I had never seen, including photographic images of the actors, their costumes, and the scenic design.

Produced at the Euclid-77^th Street Space, it was presented on a wide, open thrust stage, with little wing space. The set is a spare frame construction. The period costumes, inspired by the garb of 17^th century Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay colony, do much of the work in placing this production in time and space.

The reviews for the CPH production were uniformly positive; when they were critical, it was generally in comparing this new play to Miller’s landmark Death of a Salesman.  A preview piece written by William F. McDermott for the Plain Dealer provided background which informed potential audiences this new work (it opened on Broadway in 1953) had elicited a wide range of opinion.

The Crucible at the Euclid-77th Street Theatre
Cleveland Play House archives (CWRU)

True, The Crucible had won the Tony Award for Best New Play. However, the producers did not decide to create a touring production. McDermott reported that the West German paper Der Tag found the work, “too narrow minded in clinging to historical fact,” and that in Miller’s characters he had created, “no one person which stirs our conscience.”

When the Munich-based paper Abend suggested this play is a “reliable image of what happens in the United States,” it even produced a defensive response from the playwright who countered, “In Salem they only hung [sic] sixteen persons, in Europe they had burned thousands.”

One of the great delights of looking into an archive like this are the pieces of personal correspondence which someone, at some time, decided it would be worth to save. There were some internal memos, and also personal messages of special interest or gratitude.

A thank you card from a Mrs. S. who lived on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights saw The Crucible with her husband in 1954 and offered a pair of observations which, taken together, will be familiar to anyone who has managed any theater company, anywhere:

“Neither of us can remember a more wonderful production.”

-- and also –

“I was annoyed to see so many empty seats.”

See also: some thoughts on "The Crucible" at Cleveland Play House (2015)

Cleveland Public Theatre presents THE WITCHES as part of Test Flight, a showcase of new works, March 3, 4 & 5, 2022.

Source:
The Plain Dealer, October 3, 1954
Cleveland Play House Archives, Case Western Reserve University

Salesman In Beijing (book)

In 1983, only a few short years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, the playwright Arthur Miller was invited to direct a production of Salesman in Beijing. He produced a book of his director's diary, which I picked up recently as a gift for a colleague.

Between getting it from eBay and wrapping it for presentation, I read the first chapter and promptly found another copy online for myself.

This was an odd thing to do for one significant reason -- I am tired of reading Arthur Miller talk about the works of Arthur Miller. As an undergrad I took a semester-long seminar with Al Kaufman on Miller, where I first dug deep into the works of this most-praiseworthy of American playwrights and was disappointed not only to discover that all of his plays feel pretty much the same (Crucible as one stand out exception) but that he spent an awful lot of time writing about what his writing means.

Didn't you say it in the play? Then why do you need to keep explaining it in The New Yorker?

However, this book is really about directing, and not about writing. His obstacles appear enormous, the most obvious that he has accepted the role of directing a play through a translator -- he speaks no Mandarin, his actors do not speak English. In addition, Salesman depicts a world which he does not believe his company (actors and designers) will be able to comprehend, that of Capitalist America.

But also too and on top of that the fact that the world of Salesman never existed in the first place. People do not actually talk like people talk in Arthur Miller plays. No one.

To his continuing credit, rehearsal day after rehearsal day, Miller reaches to explain his characters' incomprehensible motivations by asking open-ended questions about basic human nature. When one of his actors questions why a character like Charley is kind to Willy, who to them appears, at first, a consummate loser and somewhat deranged, Miller asks if the actor knows anyone they do not respect, but still likes. Of course they do, everyone does. At that time in China, however, such realistic human nature was not something they would choose to perform on a stage. It was not the stories they chose to tell, and so acting it was a challenge to be overcome, and Miller's script is full of those.

In his personal reflections, Miller learns as much about how his actors contribute to his work as his work contributes to their larger understanding of a world which had been closed to them for four decades.

He does have this grandfatherly racist way of describing the eyes of certain members of his company. As a writer, one who records what he sees, using, you know, words, I might have hoped that a man who fancies himself such a deep appreciator of human character could find some other way to look into the face of his Asian actors without saying that their eyes -----.* They don't actually do that, any more than anyone else's. His ignorance disappoints and knocks you back a bit. "Someone please ask grampa to stop talking."

By the end of the book (which concludes just as you would expect, after all the pitfalls and setbacks, opening night is perfect) I remain less convinced that Salesman is a transcendent work which addresses the universal longings and love of all humanity, and more convinced than ever that it is the medium -- live theater performance -- that can bring all peoples together to reveal our beautiful commonality.

*Update 10/5/2025: And here, in 2013, I had actually written the word. Some one ask grampa to stop talking, indeed.

Salem, MA

Driving home from our vacation in Maine, the family stopped in to see my wife’s colleague Kim in Salem, MA. They had met at Goddard College, and Kim even moved to Cleveland for all of 2012 to work as my wife’s associate before getting a plum job as a creative writing instructor much closer to her hometown of Boston.

We have been to Salem before but once, long before the kids were born, back in 1996. That was a brief excursion, arriving in the mid-afternoon and only just hitting a few tourist attractions before evening. Like most people, we were there for the witches, but didn’t really explore the town very much before bedding down after dinner and leaving early.

Today we had even less time available, as we wanted to make Utica by dinner, but this time had a guide. I knew there was some serious witch-inspired honky tonk to be seen, but I had no idea how much. Fun’s fun, but it is clear that Salem may be the second-worst American city to enjoy Halloween.

Sometimes I work a little too hard to provide context to my children … I am only trying to help. My own parents would take me historical places without really explaining their significance or what I was doing there. Places like like Canterbury Cathedral, Versailles, or my grandparents’ house.

Paranorman was a good jumping off point -- my daughter liked that move a lot, it just scared the boy, but when I told them Salem is basically the inspiration for the witch-attraction-based economy town in that movie, it made both the movie and where we were make a lot more sense.

This is not actually a picture of our house.

Kim explained the basics of the witch trial over lunch at Gulu-Gulu, and then we walked down the main promenade, taking in an amazing bookstore (see photo above) and Wyknott’s (Harry Potter-licensed) Wands. The girl was in Hogwarts heaven. If the man were not out of the Hermione model, she would have one in her truss right now.

Our last stop was at the Salem Witch Trial Memorial. Some other year, when the kids are older and have a bit more perspective we may take in the “witch dungeons” and wax museums. For me it was enough to rediscover one of the few spaces of quiet and respect in the midst of all the historical reenactors, and Nosferatu buskers.

Seventeen years ago we approached at twilight. Here in broad daylight it was still silent, there were few tothers around, but they did not speak. The boy and I went around, and he read all of the names, to himself. It is a troubling space, accusatory in its design. Others sat on the stones, two or three, but they all sat to one end, not in the middle, certainly not on the names.

And when you stand, on the path, these present figures in these emtpy seats, they look to you. You may not forget.

It were a fearsome man.

The "Chains" Exercise

The lesson plans of the Great Lakes Theater School Residency Programs are a closely guarded secret. But I can tell you we do put students in chains and parade them around their school.
In 1999 they were piloting the lesson plan for The Crucible at Lorain Central Catholic H.S. and Residency Supervisor Daniel Hahn thought it was missing something, that the students were failing to emotionally connect with the kind of humiliation and shame engendered in the scene where Elizabeth Proctor is forcibly taken from her home in chains.

Daniel said, "Why not put chains on the students?" Education Director Kenn McLaughlin was appalled at that idea, and said so. And he added, "Let me know how it works out when you try it."

It's not an exercise we take lightly. The Crucible is a troubling piece of work, it's not merely about the fear of witches or dark forces, or Theocracy or Communism. It's about totalitarianism in all its forms, the loss of the basic freedoms upon which this country was founded. The devastation of relationships, reputation, simple human dignity.

Yesterday we performed the exercise with our actor-teachers, who are now completing their rehearsal process and will begin teaching in schools on Monday. Some were surprised by their reaction to it, which ranged from giddiness and embarrassment to outright boredom and irritation. That's okay. It's not supposed to be fun.

Facilitating the exercise, I do not yell. I do not make them perform acts to humiliate. I do not say please or thank you. I do not make it personal. We simply lead them from place to place, make them stand and wait, keep silent ... in the case of the actor-teachers they were led through a Starbucks. We don't do that to the students, they never leave the school.

How can you restore a reputation? What labels can never be erased? What is your definition of justice? What do you think?

Salem Witch Trials Memorial

UPDATE 9/12/2012: It was recently brought to my attention that Residency Supervisor Daniel Hahn and actor-teacher Jeffery Allen were in the hallway together with a number of students, waiting for Jeff's partner to finish coaching a scene from "Crucible" with the rest of the class, that one of them got the idea to chain up the students waiting in the hallway and march them around the school. 

Who originally came up with the idea is a little cloudy. However, it was Jeff who originally facilitated the "Chains" exercise. I stand mute before history.

UPDATE: 9/1/2019: The "Chains" exercise has been eliminated from the lesson plan.

Warfel on "The Crucible"

Season's Uncurtaining of Play House's Euclid-77th St. Theater offers Arthur Miller's compelling drama, "The Crucible." First night impressions by (Cleveland Press) Artist Jim Herron.
Play House Does a Great Job With Miller's Stirring "Crucible"
By Jack Warfel
Cleveland Press, Wednesday, October 7, 1954

With expected forwardness, the Play House opens a new season in its Euclid-77th St. Theater with a play vastly articulate and compellingly assertive.

Uncurtained for a premiere last evening the work, by Arthur Miller, author of the prize-winning drama "Death of a Salesman," is titled "The Crucible."

Winner of the Antoinette Perry Award for best play of the year, Miller's newer effort has already been produced in Germany and France with success of varying degrees, following its New York introduction, before reaching Cleveland.

Contemporary futility, sham and vanity, balanced by persevering dignity and truth are pitched back into the year 1692 with a Salem, Mass. setting, for the evaluation by the author.

Salem's field-fire spread of witchcraft suspicions, trials and hangings cast long shadows into our present generations in sundry guises, easily identified in Miller's preachment.

Savage Portrait

In a sense the play is frightening by implications, certainly electrifying as theatrical fare.

Here is a savage portrait of gossip-mongering and character defamation among persons, communities and nations; also a bitter denunciation of groups with such extreme righteousness that they attempt to extinguish all but their own light in the world.

In the author's own explanation for this work, "Characters of Salem appealed to me because they were conscious of an ideology and knew what they stood for ... they understood what was happening to them and they knew why they struggled ... they did not die helplessly ... they did not whimper."

Conflict Essential

Miller believes that since 1920 American drama has been a steady year-by-year documentation of man's defeat,a trend in which the author places no trust.

"Conflict," he asserts, "is the essence of life and until man realizes this he will knock himself out trying to wipe it from the world."

There are sterling performances in "The Crucible," staged by Frederic McConnell. Ella Apple, one of the more gifted actresses from Karamu Theater's talent lode, acts Tituba, a Christian accused of witchcraft and snuffed out as an easy victim.

Her performance, as usual, is splendidly eloquent.

Kirk Willis Fine

Kirk Willis and Eve Roberts as husband and wife, brooding over his indiscretion with a servant girl who subsequently accuses the wife of witchcraft for doom's-sake, are altogether right.

The cast is uniformly skilled and includes major performances by Max Ellis, Frank Stevens, Helen Watkins, Robert Allman, Rolf Engelhardt (who gives his role a Shakespearean flourish), and William Paterson, the latter a calculating deputy governor.

Settings by William McCreary are studies in Economy, tremendously effective.

Spaeth on "The Crucible"

Also not from The Crucible

SHOW TIME

“Crucible” Looses With (sic) Hunt In Euclid-77th Play House
By Arthur Spaeth
Cleveland News, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1954

In "The Crucible", being given stirring, disturbing life in the Euclid-77th Play House these nights, Playwright Arthur Miller has turned the pages of American history to strike a parallel with our times in the infamous witch trials of Salem, circa 1692.

It is not new to see Justice dramatized for us as a woman with bandaged eyes, being prodded and pressured into blind confusion by self-seeking men twisting truth and disregarding the rights of free men.

Cleveland’s Karamu theater is now showing us such a world in the sixth century before Christ when a wise Socrates must die because witch-hunting Athenian politicos elect him their expedient victim. There is brutally clear parallel with our hour in Maxwell Anderson’s “Barefoot In Athens.”

Hysterical Salem

And the parallel is implicit and as ominous in Miller’s angry poetic parable. The good and pious people of Salem trade sanity and reason for mass hysteria to accuse and hang helpless citizens as witches because of the tantrums of some silly Puritan girls.

I have said that such pictures of our imperfect world have been dramatized again and again. That is reportorial and not editorial. I meant no implication that there have been too many such plays or that our dramatists have gone overboard in rallying the theater to speak out against social cancer.

Alas, the contrary is too true. There can’t be too many such dramas. On hasty inventory, the writers in our theater today who have the courage to try to more than just entertain us can be counted on the fingers. Come to think of it, the fingers of one hand.

Lies & Gallows

Don’t get me wrong about Mr. Miller’s drama. It is no soapbox oration. The playwright does not cup his hand to your ear and demand you catch a modern echo. There is no ranting insistence that there, but for the Puritan garb, musical speech and 262 years, go you.

No, he trusts audience perceptivity and conscience as he looks into the lives of hard-working farmer John Proctor, Good Wife Elizabeth Proctor and their respected friends that are twisted to horror by the prattle of some silly girls.

At first the lies of the harpies seem too absurd but soon their splattering taint have become truth and the Proctors and others are tried and convicted of witchcraft in the Salem Meeting House. When doubt of its justice disturbs the court, John Proctor is offered the chance to save his neck by confessing to the lie of guilt. His refusal brings the roll of the drums beside the gallows.

No 'Death of a Salesman'

This is for the most part powerful and effective drama. But it is by no means on the lofty level with Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” There is a vagrant feeling that the author tried to compress too much shrill action and to crowd too many characters into his scenes. He achieves the hysteria of the witch hunt to the detriment of his forte for character insight.

You do not understand John Proctor and Goodie Proctor as you did Willy Loman and the wife who ate her heart out for her man. The other characters are largely the author’s chorus stepping out of the ensemble only long enough for each to contribute his single phrase to the collective insanity of the witch hunt. But for all this, “The Crucible” demands and gets your will to believe and be moved.

In this the author has zealous and artful collaboration in Frederic McConnell's staging and the excellent company with which he has peopled the Euclid-77th Salem.

Kirk Willis and Eve Roberts as John and Elizabeth Proctor ring wonder into those quiet scenes when they are alone on the stage. Rolf Englehardt’s with-hunting cleric who discovers too late the monster he has helped loose is pretty special, too. And that goes for William Paterson’s righteous deputy governor-inquisitor. Helen Watkins and Robert Allman as victims of the inquisition inject high spirit into their roles and Max Ellis’ malicious parson and Frank Stevens’ evil parishioner do the author and play no harm. And there’s Jane Squibb’s impure Puritan whose lies loose hell in Salem town. There is competence everywhere in the large cast.

And speaking of acting, that impressionistic setting by William McCreary, a framework of stained beams, is artfully primitive early American in pretending to be four varied locales in Salem of 1692.

So much for witch hunting in the Euclid-77th Play House, save an urgent, SEE IT!

Euclid-77th Street Theatre

During the 1930s and 40s, Cleveland Play House Artistic Director Frederic McConnell had a problem to tackle, namely that his theater had grown too big for the Brooks and Drury theatres -- he needed a third stage.

After a few opportunities fell through, CPH finally acquired a former Christian Science space on Euclid Avenue at East 77th Street, a building which remains today, appearing something like a domed mosque though it has never been one.

McConnell and his architects created something unique and rare in Cleveland theater history - a thrust stage!

"I never saw a theater in which the sight lines were clearer. The stage is semi-circular, and the audience is bestowed around three sides of the stage. It is altogether different from the ordinary picture-frame theater. It brings audiences into closer contact with the players and will form a wonderful background for certain types of plays, such as those of Shakespeare." - William F. McDermott

The Euclid-77th Street Theatre did, in fact, feature the works of William Shakespeare when it opened on October 15, 1949 with a production of Romeo and Juliet and for a time the Bard was an annual fixture in the CPH season, in this 560-seat auditorium.

It was on this wide, open stage that CPH presented the Cleveland premiere of The Crucible in 1954.

The Play House abandoned this location in 1983 when it invested in Philip Johnson's $14-million dollar money pit, which left the organization with three adjacent prosceniums, each chronologically less charming than the one that came before.

Sources:
Showtime in Cleveland (John Vacha)
Cleveland Memory Project

McDermott on "The Crucible"

Not a photo from The Crucible

Witch Hunting Is Topic Subject of Powerful Drama at Play House
By William F. McDermott
The Plain Dealer, Wednesday, October 7, 1954

The Play House last evening opened its Euclid-77th Street theater with Arthur Miller’s drama, "The Crucible". It is a strong, arresting, powerful plot and the Play House people rise to the opportunity it presents and overcome the difficulties it offers.

Some critics in New York and Europe have said that the play too impersonal and lacking in sharpness of struggle between individuals. I do not agree. It is a story about mass hysteria and necessarily its characters must be numerous and its action diffuse. But within the pattern of his design Mr. Miller has composed a sound and moving play.

The characters are sometimes scantily sketched, but there can be no denial that the principals among them are thoroughly well drawn and that the entire movement of the play is genuinely and excitingly dramatic.

It is difficult to believe that such things as Mr. Miller depicts actually happened in America, but, shocking as they are, they did happen. You can not escape the imitation of the author that something of the same sort is still happening in the world. He does not press the point, but you can sense the underlying suggestion.

Witch Hunts

"Crucible" is a dramatization of the witch hunts of Salem in 1692. This terror lasted for only a few years but produced cruelties and shames which have left lasting scars. These savageries were inflicted in the name of government and God.

Mr. Miller shows his skill as a dramatist in evoking the spell of fear and superstition which overcame a community and led it to commit shocking wrongs. He makes these wrongs more terrible and more real by showing their effect through the medium of ordinary and recognizable human beings. His canvas is broad, but his details are clear.

Innocent women were brought to trial and hanged for witchcraft on flimsy charges created by the imagination of children, or the vengefulness of enemies, all amid pious speeches and the solemn dignity of self-assured and dogmatic judges. This is Mr. Miller’s material and he makes the most effective use of it.

The cast is large and admirably directed by Frederic McConnell, who could not have found the task an easy one. It is one of the most forceful, best-disciplined performances of a difficult play that I have seen at the Play House for a long time.

Well Acted

Kirk Willis is excellent as young John Proctor who has the courage to stand up against the overwhelming forces of fear and superstition ranged against him. In this role, he conveys quiet strength, unquenchable integrity, a sense of justice and a willingness to sacrifice his life for what he believes to be honesty and goodness.

As his wife, Elizabeth, Eve Arden gives a sensitive portrayal of an outwardly cold woman who possesses an inner warmth of feeling and is more than normally forgiving. These two characters are fully developed by the dramatist and completely articulated by the players.

There are many other notable performances. June Squibb, as Abigail, is in key with the role at all times. Ella Apple has some fine moments as Tituba. Robert Allman, as Giles, hovers like a wraith around the fringes of the evening, and is altogether successful. Helen Watkins plays Rebecca Nurse with a moving reality and a touch of pathos.

Rolf Engelhardt is brisk and sure in the important role of the Rev. John Hale, and Max Ellis gives force and a forbidding genuineness to another minister of the gospel, the Rev. Samuel Parris. Some of the younger and less experienced people in the cast carry off their tasks with the skill and understanding of veterans. All honors are due to everybody concerned in the performance, including William McCreary who designed the simple and appropriate settings.

The play is not a pleasant one. But the time and place with which it deals were not pleasant. I found it an exciting and provocative drama.