Bewitched?

Press, 5 April 1989, Page 24

Bewitched?

The plot of “The Crucible” reminds Stewart Robertson of the film “Fatal Attraction.” “In both cases a married man gets involved with another woman. When he finishes the affair, the rejected woman’s love for him turns into a mission for revenge. The ‘other woman’ tries to kill his wife, and the other events she sparks off are horrifying. ‘The Crucible’ is set in Massachusetts in 1692 and ‘Fatal Attraction’ is set in modern America, but human nature seems to have changed very little in three hundred years. “The play has spinechilling and heart-stop-ping moments of the same intensity as the film.” Robertson is directing “The Crucible” for Riccarton Players. Performances will begin at 7.30 p.m. from April 12 — 16 and 19 — 22, in the Mill Theatre, Wise Street, off Lincoln Road. In 1692 an outbreak of witch-craft hysteria in Salqjp, Massachusetts,

filled the jails with harmless people and ended with the hanging of 20 of them. At the witch trials in Salem a group of girls gave evidence of witchcraft by screaming, fainting and turning cold in the presence of an accused “witch.” Abigail Williams was the leader of the group of girls. She had been dismissed from the service of Elizabeth and John Proctor after Elizabeth discovered that her husband had been sleeping with Abigail. Abigail’s love focc-John

became obsessional. With her quick mind and influence over her friends Abigail turned the suspicion of witchcraft in the town into a means to try and kill Elizabeth Proctor so that Abigail can marry John. During the trials many other innocent people are accused of witchcraft, convicted by their own “confessions” and condemned to hang. “The Crucible” is based on the historical records of the witch trials in Salem. The playwright, Arthur Miller, said “The fate of each character is exactly that of his or her historical model, and there is no-one in the drama who did not play a similar — and in some cases exactly the same — role in history:” When Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” in 1952 the fear of communism was as prevalent in the United States as the fear of witchcraft was in the 1600 s. He used the play to comment on the organised mass hysteria of the McCarthy era.