Booth Theatre

Broadway review by Raven Snook It is 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, and an 11th-grade honors English class in small-town Georgia is studying The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s classic drama about the Salem witch trials. Their popular and engaging teacher is Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert), who sparks many a teenage crush. Goofy, empathetic, devout and married with a baby on the way, he's supportive of the girls in his class; in fact, when they decide to start a feminist club, it's Mr. Smith—not their inexperienced and fainthearted female guidance counselor, Miss Gallagher (Molly Griggs)—who champions the idea. He’s an ally, a friend and a sounding board: in other words, a good guy.   But who gets to be called a good guy—and, conversely, who gets called a bad girl? That’s the subject of John Proctor Is the Villain, Kimberly Belflower’s explosive response to sexism on and beyond the stage. The play’s fuse is lit by Shelby (Sadie Sink), a student who returns to school after leaving it abruptly months earlier in a cloud of gossip and rumor. As the alleged sexual misconduct of multiple men in their rural community comes to light, Shelby encourages her peers to challenge the conventional view of The Crucible’s protagonist, John Proctor, as a hero. In Miller’s allegory of McCarthyism, Proctor stands for integrity and honor: "How may I live without my name?” he asks when refusing to give the false confession that could save his life. “I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"...

The dream duo of stage queen Laurie Metcalf and director Joe Mantello gave us Three Tall Women and Hillary and Clinton, but their most recent collaboration—a 2020 revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—was derailed by the Covid epidemic. And that epidemic happens to be the subject of their new Broadway project: an intimate drama by Samuel D. Hunter, whose plays are exquisitely crafted and detailed depictions of life in rural Idaho that explore recurring themes (physical and financial limitations, queer identity, crises of family and faith) with seemingly endless variety and sympathy. As in the show's world premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf last year, Metcalf and co-star Micah Stock play estranged relatives who must reunited to handle estate questions as Covid-19 begins to spread. John Drea and Meighan Gerachis complete the small cast.