Theatre in Review: John Proctor is the Villain (Booth Theatre)

	Morgan Scott, Nihar Duvvuri. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

In her charming Playbill biography, Kimberly Belflower describes herself as "a playwright and educator originally from a small town in Appalachian Georgia," adding that John Proctor is the Villain is "her first Broadway show and she's probably crying about it right now." That she is lucky is beyond doubt; how many writers with no track record in New York land on Broadway with a Tony-winning director and leading man plus the young star of a hit video series? (The short answer: Never.) But the producers made a smart move: This is exactly the kind of funny, pointed, contemporary comic drama that Broadway can use more of.

Belflower zeros in on a Georgia high school in 2018. It's in an Appalachian town far, far from everything. "My dad says we're getting another stoplight!" one student chirps; well, that will make two. Most of the characters are juniors, enrolled in an honors English class; next up on the curriculum is The Crucible. If Arthur Miller's play is an evergreen choice for high school classes, it's like a match to a piece of tinder in this conservative enclave, currently being roiled by a couple of high-profile sex-harassment cases. Similarly, a proposed feminism club is subject to tense faculty oversight. "It's just that some people feel like this will alienate the boys," says Miss Gallagher, the club's putative supervisor. When asked who "some people" are, she replies, I'm not at liberty to say."

But the club is a tool these kids need badly: The MeToo movement has come to town, and Ivy, part of the honors-English crowd, is struggling with accusations against her father, a local businessman, by his former secretary. Meanwhile, the class has been divided by an in-house scandal: Nice, popular Raelynn has caught her longtime boyfriend, Lee, cheating with her best friend Shelby, who promptly disappears for three months. (Her absence is unofficial and unexplained, leading to mad speculation.) Lee tries forcibly to get Raelynn back in a scene that bristles with an unconscious menace. And when Shelby returns in time for the unit on The Crucible, she drops a bombshell that rocks everyone to the core.

Female playwrights have been coming en masse after The Crucible in recent seasons, strongly criticizing Miller's treatment of the Salem witch trials. (Other examples include Sarah Ruhl's Rebecca Nurse of Salem and Talene Monahon's The Good John Proctor.) The Crucible, they note, is not historically accurate: John Proctor, the play's protagonist, was not a young husband caught in an adulterous affair but a man of sixty; Abigail Williams, his accuser, was eleven or twelve, not the revenge-seeking teen temptress of Miller's imagination. To many modern eyes, Miller exalts John (Mr. Smith, the English teacher, calls him "one of the great heroes of the American theatre") while demonizing Abigail for expressing her sexuality.

It's a fair point, if not the whole story, and Belflower uses it to her advantage, focusing on a gaggle of bright young girls trying to work out their identities and self-worth against a background of suspicion and grievance. The members of the feminism club take it as an article of faith that women alleging abuse should be believed -- a proposition that becomes a lot tougher when the credibly accused are men they love and admire. At the same time, Shelby, dismissed as a slut, suddenly appears in a starkly different light once she gets explicit about her problems. The readings and discussions about The Crucible become a way for them to express all sorts of difficult, unresolved feelings, leading to a moment of pure, ecstatic rebellion.

Like Natalie Margolin, author of Off Broadway's All Nighter, Belflower has an uncanny ear for how these kids talk. Discussing Mr. Smith, their dishiest teacher, Nell, the new girl in town, asks meaningfully, "Were you watching when he dropped the chalk last week? When he bent over to get it?" Ivy, irritated with the school's minimal education in certain matters, wonders, "I mean, doesn't it make sense for sex ed to actually come, like, before people know about sex?" Raelynn baffles the others by suggesting Twilight as the club's first reading assignment. Responding to comments that a vampire romance is lacking in the feminism department, she notes that her father pre-screens her reading material and, "in Twilight they save themselves for marriage." If their education in sexual matters is lacking, it's of a piece with many other subjects. Nell, who is Black, remarks, "I saw a production of The Crucible where a white girl played Tituba, so that was a choice."

Danya Taymor's direction capitalizes on Belflower's sympathetic vision, deftly orchestrating the characters' dawning realization that a) not everything they've been told is true, and b) they are more powerful than they realize. Sadie Sink (best-known as the death-haunted Max Mayfield on Netflix's Stranger Things) appropriately gives Shelby a sharp edge and highly brittle manner; he's been through the wringer yet is still standing and it's fascinating to see her move from outcast to beacon of hope among her peers. As Mr. Smith, the object of the girls' admiration and lust, Gabriel Ebert applies the most emollient of Southern manners to any crisis, leaving one to wonder how much he can be trusted. The contrast between these two strongly articulated personalities provides John Proctor... with its solid dramatic framework.

Also notable are Nihar Duvvuri (a solid Balthazar in Romeo + Juliet earlier this season) as Mason, the laziest possible honors student ("So we're reading the whole play?" he moans, appalled that The Crucible has a second act); Maggie Kuntz as Ivy, unhappily contemplating her fate as collateral damage in her family's sex scandal; Hagan Oliveras as Lee, who can't stop mansplaining to Raelynn; Morgan Scott as Nell, the class truth-teller; and Amalia Yoo as Raelynn, who is beginning to feel that breaking up with Lee was the best thing that ever happened to her. Special mention goes to Fina Strazza as Beth, alternately controlling and on the edge of hysteria, and Molly Griggs as Miss Gallagher, new to the faculty but hiding some steel inside those Laura Ashley dresses.

The scenic design, by the collective AMP featuring Teresa L. Williams, is a marvel of detail right up to the inspirational posters on the wall. A large bank of windows at stage right allows lighting designer Natasha Katz to craft various attractive time-of-day looks. (Later, when the play takes a slightly surreal turn, she rolls out saturated colors and blinder cues to good effect.) Hannah Wasileski's projection design makes the set positively tremble during the scene changes. Sarah Laux's costumes manage to create an individually crafted look for each student within a narrow stylistic range. Palmer Hefferan's sound design includes a preshow playlist that includes "I Really Like You," by Carly Rae Jepsen, and "Bad Liar," by Selena Gomez, along with some EDM-adjacent original music and the sort of effects (including bells) that define school life.

Despite the characters' often fraught backstories -- and a class presentation that leads to a radical reinterpretation of The Crucible -- John Proctor is the Villain never loses a breezy, plainspoken quality that makes it easy to like; the denouement rightfully has the audience cheering. As you should be taught in school, knowledge is power; for these young women, the time to exercise that power is now. Belflower's play makes its points through comedy and perceptive commentary; it brings to Broadway a much-needed jolt of fresh thinking. --David Barbour