Act's `Crucible' Gives Classic A Timeless Look And Feel -- Company Opens 1999 Season With Miller's Allegorical Drama

------------------------------- Theater review

"The Crucible," by Arthur Miller. Directed by Gordon Edelstein. Tuesday-Sunday through May 30 at A Contemporary Theatre, 700 Union St., Seattle. $10-$40. 206-292-7676. -------------------------------

Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" is a modern classic that often engenders more respect than ardor.

The version that opens A Contemporary Theatre's 1999 season may not change your mind entirely about this top-heavy, somewhat rhetorical moral drama. But with so many forceful actors and a concept that strips away the usual Puritan trappings, Gordon Edelstein's staging of "The Crucible" pumps enough fresh blood into this tale of Salem witch trials to give it a keen, very welcome sense of immediacy.

That's apparent from the powerful opening moments, when a cacophony of foot-pounding and banshee-whooping (choreographed by Llory Wilson, to John Gromada's rumbling sound design) emanates from a glowing cage high above the Allen Theatre's circular stage.

This evocation of a forbidden rite is startling, vivid, a great way to enter a play about a society obsessed with repression and control.

Of course, when "The Crucible" debuted on Broadway in 1953, it was instantly recognized as a metaphor for contemporary witch hunts - the anti-Communist investigations led by such ferocious red-baiters as Sen. Joseph McCarthy. At the time, Miller and many of his colleagues (including director Elia Kazan) faced hard choices over whether to cooperate by naming names or risk censure and imprisonment.

To explore the hypocrisy, cowardice and valor of those dark times, Miller didn't have to invent an allegory. He found a detailed one in the record of the 1692 Salem witch trials, which yielded the main incidents and characters for "The Crucible."

An actual servant girl named Abigail Williams (played at ACT by Hedy Burress) did convince her uncle, the unpopular Rev. Parris (John Procaccino), that Salem was thick with devil's emissaries.

Town misfits such as the homeless Sarah Good (Ada McAllister) and the black slave Tituba (Robyne Walker), were branded as witches and thrown in jail. So were solid citizens, including wise Rebecca Nurse (Zoaunne LeRoy) and respected Elizabeth Proctor (Laura Ann Worthen), wife of independent-minded farmer, John Proctor (Stephen Rowe).

Miller lays out the petty jealousies and festering greed behind the finger-pointing. And he keenly contrasts the mounting doubts of theological interrogator Rev. Hale (Kevin Donovan), with the peevishness of Rev. Parris and brutal entrapment techniques of the smug "hanging" judge, Danforth (Dan Kremer).

What personalizes the story, however, is the brief, adulterous affair Miller invented between John Proctor and Abigail, and its after-shocks of remorse, forgiveness and revenge. Ultimately it boils down, as do other Miller dramas, to an emblematic moral quandary. Under threat of execution, will John betray his friends? Swap his integrity for survival? Or refuse to compromise his good name and be a better man for it - or just a dead one?

Rowe's final soul-searching moments as Proctor are truly wrenching. But often this sturdy actor seems tentative, mannered, as if he and his role hadn't meshed yet.

But there are fully formed performances from many other parties, including such stand-outs as Donovan, Kremer, Worthen, LeRoy and Procaccino, along with Sheryle Wells (as the conflicted accuser, Mary) and Clayton Corzatte (as crusty Giles).

Edelstein's staging is dynamic without being too busy. And his offbeat decision to outfit the cast in costumer Martin Pakledinaz's plain suits, standard farm wear and simple dresses, rather than in identifiably Puritan garb, gives the play more room to maneuver. Douglas Stein's stark set also has an open-ended feel.

Consequently, these "Puritans" don't belong strictly to the 17th century. They could be part of any tight-knit religious or political community, where lethal tensions flare between the orthodox and the less pious, the accusers and the scapegoated. The Mideast, the Balkans, Washington, D.C. . . . take your pick. There's no shortage.