[title]
★★★★
John Proctor is the Villain is a period drama about 2018. By that I don’t specifically mean that the Broadway smash nails the exact experience of going to a US high school in the late ’10s: frankly, the American education system is so alien that there are points where Kimberly Belflower’s play might as well have been set on a Mars colony space academy for all the resemblance it bears to the average Brit comp.
But what Belflower does do brilliantly is nail the intersection between the relatively brief apex of the #MeToo movement and a generation of smart, naive school girls who would have been the right age to absorb its rhetoric at the precise moment they’re discovering what it was a reaction to. Plus, it has a banging soundtrack, with Lorde’s 2017 hit ‘Green Light’ embedded deep in its bones, and discussed in reverent tones by its young characters in a way that feels poignant and illuminating: school girls don’t geek out over ‘Green Light’ anymore, and they probably don’t discuss #MeToo either.
If this sounds like it has the potential to come across as a bit like a po-faced lecture then that couldn’t be further from the case. Danya Taymor’s production – which transfers recast from a smash Broadway run – is an absolute blast, the many serious issues raised all of a piece with its breathless ebullience and Belflower’s endlessly witty text. As much as anything else, it’s a wholehearted celebration of teen girl dorkiness and a rebuttal to the idea their lives should be viewed through a sexual lens, even in sympathy.
The setting is a school in small-town Georgia, specifically the classroom of Carter Smith (Donal Finn), a charming, even inspirational teacher with liberal views, godly ways, a permanent smile and a general sense of what’s appropriate (despite a familiarity with his pupils that will seem insane to British people). The class we’re following is a group of eleventh graders, which I think basically means ‘lower sixth’. There are only seven of them (I assume there are supposed to be more but the whole class is omitted for obvious practical reasons). And while the two boys depicted – Lee (Charlie Borg) and Mason (Reece Braddock) – do both have important minor roles, this isn’t their story.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible does indeed prove to be a crucible
It’s the story of the girls. There’s Beth (Holly Howden Gilchrist), the delightfully overenthusiastic class nerd; sensitive rich girl Ivy (Clare Hughes); goth-curious pastor’s daughter Raelynn (Miya James) and newcomer Nell (Lauryn Ajufo) who everyone assumes is cool because she’s from Atlanta. And then there’s Shelby (Sadie Soverall), who as the play begins is nowhere to be seen: she dropped out for three months after stealing then ditching Raelynn’s hapless boyfriend Lee.
Encouraged by the flowering of #MeToo, the close group of friends want to set up a feminist society at the school; America being America there is considerable institutional nervousness about this. But a compromise is made: Carter will sponsor a feminist study group that will also admit boys, and they will use it to discuss the play that they’re studying in class.
And Arthur Miller’s The Crucible does indeed prove to be a crucible. Belflower’s drama is about schoolgirls, not about whether Miller’s brooding hero John Proctor is actually a bad guy because of his callous treatment of his wife Elizabeth and former lover Abigail Williams. But it does touch on it, and it’s a heated classroom debate over this that sets in motion seismic events after Soverall’s grungy, glowering Shelby returns as mysteriously as she left.
Of course you could set a giddily feminist high school play outside of 2018. Belflower was taking a snapshot of recent history when she wrote it. But at heart it’s a celebration of teenage girls and a time in their lives when the mind and intellect changes as much as the body.
In a fine, young Bill Clinton-ish performance, Finn gradually shows us a darker side to Carter, a man who is inevitably not the platonic ideal of a teacher he presents himself as. He is, in his way, the John Proctor of this play. But if there is legitimate debate over the morality of Miller’s hero, he’s definitely the protagonist of The Crucible. Carter is not the protagonist of Belflower’s play, and it feels gently radical that he becomes sidelined as it wears on, his feelings and motives pointedly unexplored.
The young cast is excellent. It’s a bit surreal that Soverall has similar looks and virtually the same name as the show’s Broadway star Sadie Sink, but she is great as Shelby, smouldering and livewire but with a sweetly unreconstructed nerd edge. And of the rest, Gilchrist is the standout - Beth’s pick-me class swot could be irritating, but she’s so in love with learning and life that she’s impossible to resist.
A few judicious chart bangers and some fancy light and projection tricks give a bit of pop to the naturalist classroom staging. But it’s the sheer elan Taymor exacts from her cast that’s the real special effect here.
Some bits maybe did get lost in translation: I often felt uncertain as to what extent this was rooted in the approximate reality of the American school system and to what extent Belflower was goofing off (while making a serious point). Would an equally good version of John Proctor is the Villain set in the British schooling system resonate with me more? Probably! But the hype is real and it’s still a wonderful play that deserves a life long after its sold out Royal Court run.
Royal Court Theatre, Downstairs, until Apr 25.