High Praise for The Crucible
Last week a company of pupils and a team of staff put on the annual School Play, which this year, was Arthur Miller’s classic, The Crucible, which recounts the hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s.
Many hours of rehearsal have gone into this mesmerising production, and the set design, costumes and make up, as well as the music and recording of the play have all required a very serious amount of effort and commitment by all involved. The challenges – in this time of pandemic – were not insignificant, but the result of this perseverance has been a brilliant piece of theatre, and the reviews that have been received speak for themselves. You can read the reviews below, and if you haven’t yet watched the full film of the play, it is still available to watch here.
The programme to the production is available by clicking on the icon below.
Bravo! The best production I have seen and by some margin. Great casting, great storytelling, beautifully simple… absolutely extraordinary. It was thrilling.
I just wanted to congratulate the entire team on an exceptional production of The Crucible tonight. What a professional, accomplished rendition of a dark and complex piece of theatre. A society living in fear of an epidemic of hysteria, an oppressive and intrusive regime that encourages people to snitch on their neighbours if they transgress against petty regulations. You must be very proud of cast and crew.
We thoroughly enjoyed your production of The Crucible, watched from the comfort of our sofa this evening. A tour de force, and your link with the present situation in our country, summarised in your programme notes, was most interesting. Excellent acting all round and good links between acts. Very well done on a brilliant production.
The Crucible is a tense and unfiltered cautionary tale. When I played John Proctor in 2005, it was then, alas, as appropriate an allegory for the times as it is today. I was fortunate to have performed with a formidable cast, including Emilia Clarke as Abigail, and Pippa Bennett-Warner as Elizabeth. This cast are sure to go onto equally terrific things in whatever field they choose. As much as these were large shoes to fill, respectively, Abi Drennan was cold, assertive and unflinching, while Jenifer Ellis brought all the reserved, anguished nuance needed from start to finish. All courtroom characters, Danforth, Hale etc, took the darkly comic absurdities off the page perfectly. As for Will Cruddas as Proctor, well, it is a titanic role that he tackled with aplomb. A bold, assertive, commanding performance that never milked it, in a way I fear I might have done. I think they all, as well as director David Aldred, should be extremely proud.
For a full gallery of pictures taken during the performance, please click here.