According to theatrical lore, no play can be considered an out-and-out masterpiece unless it’s initially rejected. The most famous example is Look Back in Anger, which received a critical mauling in the dailies and was only saved from closure by Kenneth Tynan’s rave in the Observer. The second most famous is The Birthday Party, which had actually closed by the time Harold Hobson’s favourable review appeared in the Sunday Times. (According to legend, one matinée was attended by just six people.) The Crucible, too, passes this test: its initial Broadway run in 1953 was not a success and no critic was willing to stake his reputation on the play’s merit.
One of the objections to it at the time was that, in making an analogy between the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Salem witch trials, Arthur Miller was effectively saying that there were no communist agents in America — and even those who disapproved of Joseph McCarthy’s methods thought that was going too far. Indeed, when Arthur Miller died last year, several conservative commentators pointed out that Julius Rosenberg, to name just one, was guilty as charged — a fact confirmed by the opening up of the Soviet Union’s intelligence archives. ‘Miller was the most useful of the useful idiots,’ wrote Mark Steyn.
Watching the RSC’s revival of The Crucible, which is among the two or three best things I’ve seen this year, it soon becomes apparent that this criticism is beside the point. It may have been partly inspired by Miller’s opposition to McCarthyism, but the play’s liberalism transcends the historical circumstances in which it was written. Miller is less concerned about the actions of the officials who sit in judgment on those suspected of witchcraft and more interested in the souls of the accused.
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