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The Crucible
Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre
Wilkes-Barre, PA
17-18, 23-24 January 2015
Directed by David Parmelee
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton metropolitan area of northeastern Pennsylvania boasts an active interest in live theater, with more than a dozen thriving community theaters offering an array of performance options: dinner theater, classic and contemporary plays, and children's shows. Among the most distinguished is the Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre. The company began its first season in 1923 and has produced hundreds of productions for over two million people, making it the third oldest continuously running community theater in the United States. Since 1957, the Little Theatre of WilkesBarre has occupied the N. Main Street Playhouse, a former movie theater renovated for theatrical stage use that retains many details of the original structure, including classy wooden and glass doors and a grand lobby.
The Little Theatre's January 2015 production of The Crucible was one of the first stagings of a Miller work in this centennial year, and director David Parmelee clearly sought to remake the play. He described this production as "not your father's Crucible," and aimed to invite the audience to look at Miller's classic with fresh eyes. Parmelee consequently stretched some limits in setting and costuming. The major change was to set the play, not in Salem Village in 1692, but among a community of "believers" somewhere on the American frontier in the early nineteenth century. The costuming consequently reflected the historical updating. I was initially apprehensive about this radical change, because in American history the witchcraft hysteria is connected inherently to Salem. Because Parmelee stuck to Miller's script, I thought the location and costume changes might seem minor. However, the power of the performances revealed...