Dance REVIEW: Scottish Ballet: The Crucible - ★★★★

Mix Up Theatre (Stewart)
May 21
2 min read

Updated: May 22

Scottish Ballet is set to bewitch us once again with the return of their award-winning production of The Crucible, after thrilling audiences in London and the USA.

The intense, visceral choreography in this edge-of-your-seat production unleashes the emotional force of Arthur Miller’s famous play about the 17th-century Salem witch trials. Tender, devastating duets are followed by intoxicating solos and wild, feverish ensemble numbers as the tight-knit village community unravels into chaos.

Choreographed by Helen Pickett, with stylish costumes, gothic lighting and a striking, modernist set designed by David Finn and Emma Kingsbury, the production is accompanied by the Scottish Ballet Orchestra, performing Peter Salem’s haunting, immersive, electro-acoustic score.

With themes as resonant today as ever, Scottish Ballet’s The Crucible has been described as a ‘ballet for our times’ and is a masterclass in storytelling through dance.

Where?

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - Part of Scotland Tour

WEBSITE

Stewart - ★★★★

"Scottish Ballet is one of my favourite theatre companies and The Crucible is one of my favourite plays. So, this was match made in heaven surely, a guaranteed 5-star performance.

But I had gripes - and surprisingly I think is more with the source material and where the focus of the production delved into with this adaptation.

There is no doubt the entire production is stunning to look at, set design, costumes, choreography and the incredible dance ensemble all supported by an eerie, edgy score all beautifully sharp and detailed aspects that bring a gravitas to proceedings. The girls dancing in the woods scene is terrifying and beautiful in equal measures and the character of Mary Warren is given a strength that is sometimes overlooked.

However, and here comes the rub, The Crucible depicts a horrifying pocket of time in which women's voices and rhyme, and reason was lost amongst power hungry hysteria of men in power who were terrified around the idea of real witches controlling society.

Really the villains of this time were the men who tortured and imprisoned these women into confessions.

This production really places Abigail - as the main character, a teenage girl who has an affair with a married man and subsequently mishandles her jealousy with accusations of witchcraft and manipulates her friends to do the same. She is depicted as the femme fatale, the villainess who destroys and bullies her way through this society riding the waves of hysteria to cause destruction.

So, a man, writes a play about the Salem witch trials and places the main villain of the piece as a young teenage girl. Do you see where I'm getting with this?

It's not necessarily the correct view to take, Miller's play as several subtexts, characters and themes that make the play one of the most fascinating pieces of literature of all time and so a lot of the play is sidelined and understandably so for a ballet. However, an adaptation that picks apart a writer's work for a new look, would have benefitted I feel for a consideration into how a modern audience perceives this historical timeline that is being depicted.

Abigail is not a witch, or a monster. She's just a girl."