Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch hunts is a formidable undertaking for any theatre company, but Alastair 
Kirby’s gripping production uncovered all of the petty jealousies, the passions and the soul-searching which led a small frontier town down the path to self-destruction and made for a memorable evening’s theatre for a packed audience.
This is a play with many demanding roles and the young actors, playing men and women of a wide range of ages from teenagers to seventy year olds, kept the emotional intensity high for the full two and a half hours.
The design of the production, by Alastair Kirby and Luke Waller, added to the existing structures in the Taunton School Arts Centre to create a spare, flexible set based on scaffolds, staircases and galleries which when combined with some imaginative lighting and flaming torches could be used equally effectively for a farmhouse, a courtroom and a prison.
The costumes, supplied by Jane Harris, set the play in a neutral time period, modern in design but retaining the black and white of Puritan Massachusetts and reflecting the morality of the people who lived there.
The staging in Act Three, where the men and women of Salem are being accused in court of witchcraft, was 
particularly impressive in using the different levels of the set to make the audience almost feel part of the trial and of the claustrophobic little town where everybody is turning on everybody else.
There was some very impressive individual performances including a magnificent star turn from Ollie Lucas as John Proctor, the flawed but honest farmer who tries to stand up for basic human values when everything around him is collapsing.
The Crucible, which attempts to show a whole community, has a large number of major roles and Ollie was ably supported by Clementine Odgers playing his fragile, vulnerable wife Elizabeth; by Tegan Osborne-Brown as the manipulative, vindictive Abigail Williams, niece of the self-seeking Reverend Parris (Ricky Parsons); and by Sam Dunn as the inflexible and self-important Judge Danforth.
Special mention must also be made of two outstanding performances by Rosie Johnson as the Proctors’ weak-minded servant Mary, bewildered as she tries to please everyone and no-one, and by James Mear as the Reverend Hale, who led the audience through his character’s change of heart as he realises that the truth is not as simple as he originally thought.
Playing older roles is a challenge for any actor and especially for school pupils, but this production had such professional production values that it was easy to forget how great these age differences sometimes were.
It can also be difficult to play characters who are fundamentally unpleasant or self-centred without making them into pantomime villains, and as Miller’s Salem is a hotbed of intrigue and backstabbing there are several of these, but the cast deftly avoided this and created fully believable portrayals of people like the neurotic, insecure Ann Putnam (a fine cameo performance by Sophie Waller).
This production showed that Taunton School drama can turn its hand to all kinds of production, following the musical success of last year’s Phantom of the Opera with a heavyweight classic of twentieth century drama.
Alastair Kirby, Luke Waller and the cast produced one of the most satisfying evenings of serious drama seen in the school and their portrayal of the disintegration of the Salem community, based on the flimsiest of evidence and the slightest of half-rumours, gave a chilling message to all of us who were privileged to be in the audience.