Theatre Review: In Arthur Miller’s ‘Crucible,’ First They Came for the Witches

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ben Brantley

From left, Elizabeth Teeter, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut, Saoirse Ronan (foreground) and Erin Wilhelmi in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” at the Walter Kerr Theater. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

NEW YORK---The Devil has returned to Broadway, with the power to make the strong tremble. It is time to be afraid, very afraid, of a play that seemed perhaps merely worthy when you studied it in high school English class. The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast — led by Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo, Saoirse Ronan and Ciaran Hinds — have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which opened on Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels like the freshest, scariest play in town. [link]