This premier play at the Studio Theater in DC is a tale of an honors English class in a one-stoplight town in Georgia grappling with the Me Too movement and countercharges of witch hunts in the Spring of 2018. If the premise and the critique it explores of the Crucible sounds dry to you, don’t worry; the play, written by Kimberly Belflower, delivers ample comedy and well-characterized high school drama. Teacher Carter Smith (Dave Register) is excited to transition from sex ed to a unit on Arthur Miller’s critique of McCarthyism and Red Panic by way of the Salem Witch Trials and - once the premise is established - both represents the standard read of the play while engagingly drawing out the students. Try-hard Beth Powell (Miranda Rizzolo) and Atlanta transfer student Nell Shaw (Deidre Staples) have done their homework and are in parallel founding a Feminism Club along with friends, which is met with some skepticism by guidance counselor Bailey Gallagher (Lida Maria Benson) for being potentially divisive. The club quickly gives preacher’s daughter Raellynn Nix (Jordan Slattery) a chance to shine, as Jordan’s slightly spacey line delivery is a source of many laughs and recalled for me Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, while still holding up as things got more series.
The lighter tone of the early play quickly encounters complication, romantic heartbreak and betrayal, the return of missing student Shelby Holcomb (Juliana Sass), and the inevitable arrival of accusations of sexual assault and exploitation at this small Georgian town. Under David Muse’s direction the whole 9 person cast (rounded out by Rsea Mishina, Shawn Denegre-Vaught, and Zachary Keller) delivers the comedic, intellectual, and dramatic beats. To be frank, I’m a bit too out of it pop-culture-wise to track all of the Taylor Swift jokes and analysis of Lorde’s Green Light, but I think it gets the teenaged voice right and got enough to follow along and crack up at a discussion of Twilight in the context of sex ed. The strength of the play is the character work, the interactions of the students and their teacher, the patter and even dance, ideas grounded in real people.
Speaking of he ending in vague terms, I think Belflower’s script does succeed at her stated intention of challenging the default interpretation of the Crucible, namely that John Proctor as written is not just a flawed hero, but also abusive to servants and crossed a line worse than adultery by having an affair with a 16-year-old in his employ. The celebration of teenaged girl culture is not just fun but celebrates solidarity, a valuable counterweight to “woman beware woman'” stories. However, I felt that some of the more interesting provocations and questions did not have quite enough room to play out. The rousing finale was well-acted and executed but didactic in a way that left me wanting to be more challenged. Even so, thanks to strong characters well portrayed, I was glad to have seen the play.
Spoilers after the cut.
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