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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 21, 2022 21:31:06 GMT
If you have such a problem with this person why would you even want to see/support his work. We studied all Miller's major plays at school (English and drama teachers must have been obsessed) and I was cast as John Proctor in a school production, so I still take an interest in seeing versions of these plays. Most of Miller's plays have had fresh productions in London and Manchester recently and I thought it was odd that the one that seemed most relevant in the era of internet pile-ons and cancel culture was not staged, so I rewatched the Hytner film version, and seeing it again as an adult, knowing more about both Miller and the history of the witch craze and Salem, and watching it so soon after #MeToo, the misogyny in the piece was more striking. I'm not saying Miller isn't a great writer, but he was a human with flaws and prejudices and the attitudes of 70 years ago, which are not those of today (my Mum still has them - you should hear her on Me Too and 'poor Prince Andrew'). As I said before his personal life is of no interest to me, it is the play and it's subject matter that interests me. Miller was far from a perfect man, though it must be said I struggle to think of a single skinny, quite unpleasant looking man with glasses that I know that would have passed up the opportunity of having an affair with Marilyn Monroe (yes I realize that is a misogynistic statement...but...facts) and he did marry her later on, it wasn't just an affair. His motivations behind writing the play were more to do with McCarthyism than hating on women and I don't think someone who writes such amazing plays that are as full of empathy for his characters as he does could possibly be a 'bad' person, no matter what mistakes he made in his personal life. He believed based on certain events from the court documents that they actually had had a sexual relationship of some kind, though it was not revealed at the time. The changes in their ages is pretty self explanatory to me, no audience was going to find a sexual relationship between a 60 year old and a 9 year old palatable. Considering the storyline, you could hardly change the children's characters to boys as a bunch of teenage Warlocks frolicking naked in the woods was hardly going to work. The only way the play could possibly work is if the main protagonist was female, plus it also makes the story far more potent because not only is it a child doing it, but a female. This all falls into the paranoia of the McCarthy era where anyone could've been the one pointing the finger trying to save themselves and little to do with his personal life. I think he is far too intelligent emotionally and as a writer to do such things. As the facts of the play stand, Abigail sent 40 innocent people to jail and 20 innocent women to the gallows based on a manipulative, vindictive lie and John Proctor had a very short affair with a 16 year old girl (when the age of consent was 12) while his wife was pregnant. He confessed to his wife immediately and then later to the courts and died for his sins, while Abigail walked away Scott-free. You can decide for yourself whose 'crimes' were the worst, but I know which sword I'm falling on here and it has nothing to do with their gender. Adding modern day politics and slurs on the writers character into the equation is not going to change the facts of the piece or what it stands for. I don't think I have to agree with all aspects of the MeToo movement to be considered a supporter of women rights. I also have many thoughts on the Prince Andrew situation that go far beyond simply 'hang the pedo'. Both are extremely complex situations that need to be be discussed in an adult and intelligent manner and honestly I still don't believe that has happened yet beyond the usual 'because I said so' Twitter politics. Though I highly doubt I'd fall anywhere near 100% on your Moms side
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Post by crowblack on Oct 21, 2022 22:06:36 GMT
Miller made the relationship between Abigail Williams and Proctor up. I think subject of the witch craze (and other questions around other theories like ergot poisoning) are interesting enough in themselves without the need to sex it up (Norman Cohn's series of histories are fascinating and constantly relevant). There are plenty of discussions around the misogyny which some of us find in this play, including some on twitter and in some reviews of this NT production. I'm going to see it when it is NT lived, having booked to see it live back in May but having to cancel.
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 21, 2022 22:36:00 GMT
Miller made the relationship between Abigail Williams and Proctor up. I think subject of the witch craze (and other questions around other theories like ergot poisoning) are interesting enough in themselves without the need to sex it up (Norman Cohn's series of histories are fascinating and constantly relevant). There are plenty of discussions around the misogyny which some of us find in this play, including some on twitter and in some reviews of this NT production. I'm going to see it when it is NT lived, having booked to see it live back in May but having to cancel. He didn't 'make it up'. There was a section in the court documents about an interaction between Proctor's wife and the child that led him to believe she'd had some kind of sexual relationship with the husband. 'There was one entry in Upham in which the thousands of pieces I had come across were jogged into place. It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. “During the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam”—the two were “afflicted” teen-age accusers, and Abigail was Parris’s niece—“both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigail’s hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew near to said Procter, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Procter’s hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out her fingers, her fingers, her fingers burned. . . .” In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail’s mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed most likely to appease Elizabeth. There was bad blood between the two women now. That Abigail started, in effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil.' Regardless it doesn't really matter, he needed a starting point for his play and that was what he decided on, it's his play and he can write what he wants to. Twitter and whoever else wants to can say what you like, it doesn't mean its true. If I wanted to sure I could find that in there and without even looking very hard, but I don't believe that is the intention of the play or it's creation, it is a by product of looking at something from a completely different era.
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Post by properjob on Oct 21, 2022 23:37:45 GMT
I saw a great play about the issues being discussed in this thread in Washington DC called "John Proctor is the villian". It is set in a class of teenagers, mainly girls studying The Crucible looking at the play through thier contemporary eyes. Unfortunately I can't find the script for sale anywhere.
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 22, 2022 1:42:07 GMT
I saw a great play about the issues being discussed in this thread in Washington DC called "John Proctor is the villian". It is set in a class of teenagers, mainly girls studying The Crucible looking at the play through thier contemporary eyes. Unfortunately I can't find the script for sale anywhere. I would be very interested in seeing this lol
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 22, 2022 3:20:57 GMT
Miller made the relationship between Abigail Williams and Proctor up. I think subject of the witch craze (and other questions around other theories like ergot poisoning) are interesting enough in themselves without the need to sex it up (Norman Cohn's series of histories are fascinating and constantly relevant). There are plenty of discussions around the misogyny which some of us find in this play, including some on twitter and in some reviews of this NT production. I'm going to see it when it is NT lived, having booked to see it live back in May but having to cancel. Ok I have just watched the first 40 minutes of the film on Disney+ (which I have not seen in probably 15 years) and if this is your most recent experience of the material I can see where you're coming from now. There is a lot of violence against women in the film that is not in any of the live productions I have seen and it is far more visceral in its EXTREMELY condensed form. All of this stuff is done with dialogue in the play as apposed to physical acts in the film, so by comparison the film does actually seem quite misogynistic. Still not seeing it in the story itself however and Abigail's actions in a more condensed form make her appear every bit as repugnant in the film as she is in the play. At the 40 minute mark and after adding an additional scene showing the initial dancing incident (interestingly the girls all cast love spells on the husbands of the wives they all later accuse of witchcraft) the trials are just beginning. That means there it is probably a little over an hour of dialogue cut already, which does not help when something like the 10 minute kitchen scene is cut to down to 10 snipy lines with none of the nuance and affection of the original scene. Tiredness and my inability to stomach Wynona Ryders truly atrocious performance any longer has forced me to give up for the evening, so I shall resume it again in the morning with fresh eyes.
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Post by edi on Oct 22, 2022 7:01:52 GMT
I came away not believing Abigail as the main anti-hero but I don't think it's fully the production's "fault".
- I have my modern idea of what is wrong and what is right - I took interest in the real story and the official line is that that Abigail did not know the Proctors. Abigail is a small child in the real Salem. - the play or real Abigail did not kill 40 people. The townspeople argued between themselves and accused each other. A child might have started it but adults did the rest.
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Post by edi on Oct 22, 2022 7:10:03 GMT
But a quick Internet search revealed I am pretty much alone with my opinion
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Post by crowblack on Oct 22, 2022 11:19:13 GMT
There's an interesting essay online about revisiting it in the era of Me Too. Btw I would thoroughly recommend Norman Cohn's history series beginning 'The Pursuit of the Millennium'. The second, 'Europe's Inner Demons' deals more specifically with the witch craze, the third, 'Warrant for Genocide', with anti-semitism. Cohn was prompted to write on this field by his experience working in Intelligence in wartime, and stationed in postwar Vienna and interrogating Nazis and meeting refugees from Stalinism. The books are fascinating and very depressing in equal measure when you see these patterns in human behaviour over and over.
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 22, 2022 13:50:36 GMT
I came away not believing Abigail as the main anti-hero but I don't think it's fully the production's "fault". - I have my modern idea of what is wrong and what is right - I took interest in the real story and the official line is that that Abigail did not know the Proctors. Abigail is a small child in the real Salem. - the play or real Abigail did not kill 40 people. The townspeople argued between themselves and accused each other. A child might have started it but adults did the rest. That is the insidious nature of a psychopath, they plant a seed in someone's mind and then the victim does the rest. Psychopath are born with a malfunctioning brain, so the fact she is a child of whatever age is moot. Abigail lies to everyone and knows exactly what she is doing and what effect it will have on others. The fact she didn't hang them with her own hands doesn't matter, her lies hung them. It is conspiracy to commit murder. The worrying thing about people here taking Abigail's side because she is a helpless child tells me that if they were there, they too would've more than likely joined in the hangings of innocent people...this troubles me greatly...
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Oct 22, 2022 17:02:49 GMT
Surely the whole point is that the people “taking Abigail’s side” don’t share your opinion that she’s a psychopath?
It’s just an opinion after all. We all have our own opinions and perspectives on plays and on characters.
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 22, 2022 18:35:15 GMT
Surely the whole point is that the people “taking Abigail’s side” don’t share your opinion that she’s a psychopath? It’s just an opinion after all. We all have our own opinions and perspectives on plays and on characters. It's not my opinion, it is what the characters is and how she was written. There is no opinion on someone being a psychopath, they are either a psychopath or they are not. This is a fact, you can't have opinions on facts, they are just facts. Or have facts been cancelled now too and we should all just consider Hannibal Lector was someone who was really, really hungry? Now you can feel sorry for the psychopath if you like, but you know...actually I don't know because I would never do it. That the vast majority of the the population has no idea what a psychopath actually is (ironically they think they are all like Hannibal Lector) how they operate or what they are capable of is the problem here and the play is trying to rectify that. This is the whole point of giving her such an unlikeable 'opponent'. We dislike Proctor because he cheated on his wife and slept with a child and we dislike the wife for taking him back and kicking Abigail out of the house. Neither of these characters is likable, so our empathy for this child kicks in immediately and we stop paying attention to what she actually does throughout the play because our judgement has been purposely clouded. We are then given a 'hero' to help us decipher this, Mary Wallace, who knows exactly what is going on and tells everyone the truth but crumbles because no one around her will listen and apparently no one in the audience is listening to her either. The whole point of the play is that if you fall for the con woman you are complicit in the con and it's aftermath. IE If you voted for Hitler or Donald Trump or Brexit, you are complicit in what happens next because you fell for the con. In this case if you fall for Abigail's con and were there at the time, you would've been complicit in the hanging of these women.
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Post by samuelwhiskers on Oct 22, 2022 19:14:58 GMT
Surely the whole point is that the people “taking Abigail’s side” don’t share your opinion that she’s a psychopath? It’s just an opinion after all. We all have our own opinions and perspectives on plays and on characters. It's not my opinion, it is what the characters is and how she was written. There is no opinion on someone being a psychopath, they are either a psychopath or they are not. This is a fact, you can't have opinions on facts, they are just facts. Or have facts been cancelled now too and we should all just consider Hannibal Lector was someone who was really, really hungry? Now you can feel sorry for the psychopath if you like, but you know...actually I don't know because I would never do it. That the vast majority of the the population has no idea what a psychopath actually is (ironically they think they are all like Hannibal Lector) how they operate or what they are capable of is the problem here and the play is trying to rectify that. This is the whole point of giving her such an unlikeable 'opponent'. We dislike Proctor because he cheated on his wife and slept with a child and we dislike the wife for taking him back and kicking Abigail out of the house. Neither of these characters is likable, so our empathy for this child kicks in immediately and we stop paying attention to what she actually does throughout the play because our judgement has been purposely clouded. We are then given a 'hero' to help us decipher this, Mary Wallace, who knows exactly what is going on and tells everyone the truth but crumbles because no one around her will listen and apparently no one in the audience is listening to her either. The whole point of the play is that if you fall for the con woman you are complicit in the con and it's aftermath. IE If you voted for Hitler or Donald Trump or Brexit, you are complicit in what happens next because you fell for the con. In this case if you fall for Abigail's con and were there at the time, you would've been complicit in the hanging of these women. It is literally just an opinion. Opinions that are not the same are yours are just as valid as yours. It’s not physically possible to say whether a fictional character is a psychopath or not since they’re not, you know, real. It’s all just a matter of how an individual audience member chooses to interpret a fictional character, which is itself dependent on the choices the particular director and actor make (one production’s Abigail might be a psychopath, a different production might create an Abigail that is completely different.) I really don’t think we need to compare opinions on a fictional character, with supporting Hitler.
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 22, 2022 22:43:32 GMT
It's not my opinion, it is what the characters is and how she was written. There is no opinion on someone being a psychopath, they are either a psychopath or they are not. This is a fact, you can't have opinions on facts, they are just facts. Or have facts been cancelled now too and we should all just consider Hannibal Lector was someone who was really, really hungry? Now you can feel sorry for the psychopath if you like, but you know...actually I don't know because I would never do it. That the vast majority of the the population has no idea what a psychopath actually is (ironically they think they are all like Hannibal Lector) how they operate or what they are capable of is the problem here and the play is trying to rectify that. This is the whole point of giving her such an unlikeable 'opponent'. We dislike Proctor because he cheated on his wife and slept with a child and we dislike the wife for taking him back and kicking Abigail out of the house. Neither of these characters is likable, so our empathy for this child kicks in immediately and we stop paying attention to what she actually does throughout the play because our judgement has been purposely clouded. We are then given a 'hero' to help us decipher this, Mary Wallace, who knows exactly what is going on and tells everyone the truth but crumbles because no one around her will listen and apparently no one in the audience is listening to her either. The whole point of the play is that if you fall for the con woman you are complicit in the con and it's aftermath. IE If you voted for Hitler or Donald Trump or Brexit, you are complicit in what happens next because you fell for the con. In this case if you fall for Abigail's con and were there at the time, you would've been complicit in the hanging of these women. It is literally just an opinion. Opinions that are not the same are yours are just as valid as yours. It’s not physically possible to say whether a fictional character is a psychopath or not since they’re not, you know, real. It’s all just a matter of how an individual audience member chooses to interpret a fictional character, which is itself dependent on the choices the particular director and actor make (one production’s Abigail might be a psychopath, a different production might create an Abigail that is completely different.) I really don’t think we need to compare opinions on a fictional character, with supporting Hitler. I have seen 6 production of this play and the film and Abigail is portrayed as a psychopath in all of them, including this production. Of course people can take away what they like from any piece of art, but when something has a very distinct message and people are missing that message am I not allowed to steer them in the right direction? I stand by the Hitler comparison (as well as the other examples) as he used the exact same methods of manipulation to get into power and commit his atrocities as Abigail deploys in the play to get what she wants. Lets hear from the author and his inspiration behind writing the play... 'Fear doesn’t travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory’s truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next. I remember how in 1964, only twenty years after the war, Harold Clurman, the director of “Incident at Vichy,” showed the cast a film of a Hitler speech, hoping to give them a sense of the Nazi period in which my play took place. They watched as Hitler, facing a vast stadium full of adoring people, went up on his toes in ecstasy, hands clasped under his chin, a sublimely self-gratified grin on his face, his body swivelling rather cutely, and they giggled at his overacting. Likewise, films of Senator Joseph McCarthy are rather unsettling—if you remember the fear he once spread. Buzzing his truculent sidewalk brawler’s snarl through the hairs in his nose, squinting through his cat’s eyes and sneering like a villain, he comes across now as nearly comical, a self-aware performer keeping a straight face as he does his juicy threat-shtick. “The Crucible” was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression-era trauma—the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly. In any play, however trivial, there has to be a still point of moral reference against which to gauge the action. The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties: the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him; the overnight conversions of former leftists into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes are universal. When Gentiles in Hitler’s Germany, for example, saw their Jewish neighbors being trucked off, or farmers in Soviet Ukraine saw the Kulaks vanishing before their eyes, the common reaction, even among those unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however, there was often a despairing pity mixed with “Well, they must have done something.” Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable And so the evidence has to be internally denied.'
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Post by Mr Crummles on Oct 23, 2022 9:31:41 GMT
It is literally just an opinion. Opinions that are not the same are yours are just as valid as yours. It’s not physically possible to say whether a fictional character is a psychopath or not since they’re not, you know, real. It’s all just a matter of how an individual audience member chooses to interpret a fictional character, which is itself dependent on the choices the particular director and actor make (one production’s Abigail might be a psychopath, a different production might create an Abigail that is completely different.) I really don’t think we need to compare opinions on a fictional character, with supporting Hitler. I have seen 6 production of this play and the film and Abigail is portrayed as a psychopath in all of them, including this production. Of course people can take away what they like from any piece of art, but when something has a very distinct message and people are missing that message am I not allowed to steer them in the right direction? I stand by the Hitler comparison (as well as the other examples) as he used the exact same methods of manipulation to get into power and commit his atrocities as Abigail deploys in the play to get what she wants. Lets hear from the author and his inspiration behind writing the play... 'Fear doesn’t travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory’s truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next. I remember how in 1964, only twenty years after the war, Harold Clurman, the director of “Incident at Vichy,” showed the cast a film of a Hitler speech, hoping to give them a sense of the Nazi period in which my play took place. They watched as Hitler, facing a vast stadium full of adoring people, went up on his toes in ecstasy, hands clasped under his chin, a sublimely self-gratified grin on his face, his body swivelling rather cutely, and they giggled at his overacting. Likewise, films of Senator Joseph McCarthy are rather unsettling—if you remember the fear he once spread. Buzzing his truculent sidewalk brawler’s snarl through the hairs in his nose, squinting through his cat’s eyes and sneering like a villain, he comes across now as nearly comical, a self-aware performer keeping a straight face as he does his juicy threat-shtick. “The Crucible” was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression-era trauma—the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly. In any play, however trivial, there has to be a still point of moral reference against which to gauge the action. The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties: the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him; the overnight conversions of former leftists into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes are universal. When Gentiles in Hitler’s Germany, for example, saw their Jewish neighbors being trucked off, or farmers in Soviet Ukraine saw the Kulaks vanishing before their eyes, the common reaction, even among those unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however, there was often a despairing pity mixed with “Well, they must have done something.” Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable And so the evidence has to be internally denied.' This is a very interesting discussion. I think most people balk at Intoanewlife's description of Abigail as a psychopath because they probably have in mind the more stereotypical characteristics of a male psychopath. I was a bit confused myself, to be honest, and then decided to google it. This is what I found in www.choosingtherapy.com/female-psychopaths/:
1. They Develop Relationships With Their Victims 2. They Use Indirect Forms of Aggression 3. They Play the Victim Card 4. They Can’t Hold in Their Anger for Long 5. They Use Deceptive Tactics to Get What They Want 6. They Want Acceptance, but Sabotage Relationships 7. They Leverage Secrets & Personal Information 8. They Get Other People to Do Their Dirty Work 9. They Are Emotionally Unstable 10. They Are Good at Pretending
From what I remember of the play, Abigail does tick most, if not all, of these points.
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Post by nottobe on Oct 23, 2022 9:50:54 GMT
I saw this last night and I have to say I found it very dull and did not connect to it at all. This is the third Miller I have seen and my least favourite, but I have never really loved his work.
For me this production is the sort of thing a non theatre fan would think theatre is and hence be turned off. Lots of people standing around talking and moving thier hands alot as the speak. I really wanted to love it but especially in act 2 found my mind wondering a lot.
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Post by edi on Oct 23, 2022 10:22:29 GMT
I have seen 6 production of this play and the film and Abigail is portrayed as a psychopath in all of them, including this production. Of course people can take away what they like from any piece of art, but when something has a very distinct message and people are missing that message am I not allowed to steer them in the right direction? I stand by the Hitler comparison (as well as the other examples) as he used the exact same methods of manipulation to get into power and commit his atrocities as Abigail deploys in the play to get what she wants. Lets hear from the author and his inspiration behind writing the play... 'Fear doesn’t travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory’s truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next. I remember how in 1964, only twenty years after the war, Harold Clurman, the director of “Incident at Vichy,” showed the cast a film of a Hitler speech, hoping to give them a sense of the Nazi period in which my play took place. They watched as Hitler, facing a vast stadium full of adoring people, went up on his toes in ecstasy, hands clasped under his chin, a sublimely self-gratified grin on his face, his body swivelling rather cutely, and they giggled at his overacting. Likewise, films of Senator Joseph McCarthy are rather unsettling—if you remember the fear he once spread. Buzzing his truculent sidewalk brawler’s snarl through the hairs in his nose, squinting through his cat’s eyes and sneering like a villain, he comes across now as nearly comical, a self-aware performer keeping a straight face as he does his juicy threat-shtick. “The Crucible” was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression-era trauma—the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly. In any play, however trivial, there has to be a still point of moral reference against which to gauge the action. The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties: the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him; the overnight conversions of former leftists into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes are universal. When Gentiles in Hitler’s Germany, for example, saw their Jewish neighbors being trucked off, or farmers in Soviet Ukraine saw the Kulaks vanishing before their eyes, the common reaction, even among those unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however, there was often a despairing pity mixed with “Well, they must have done something.” Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable And so the evidence has to be internally denied.' This is a very interesting discussion. I think most people balk at Intoanewlife's description of Abigail as a psychopath because they probably have in mind the more stereotypical characteristics of a male psychopath. I was a bit confused myself, to be honest, and then decided to google it. This is what I found in www.choosingtherapy.com/female-psychopaths/:
1. They Develop Relationships With Their Victims 2. They Use Indirect Forms of Aggression 3. They Play the Victim Card 4. They Can’t Hold in Their Anger for Long 5. They Use Deceptive Tactics to Get What They Want 6. They Want Acceptance, but Sabotage Relationships 7. They Leverage Secrets & Personal Information 8. They Get Other People to Do Their Dirty Work 9. They Are Emotionally Unstable 10. They Are Good at Pretending
From what I remember of the play, Abigail does tick most, if not all, of these points. Yes it's a very interesting discussion indeed, and I think the reason I did not think of Abigail as a psychopath because I saw her role as a catalyst, the town had lots of brewing issues between the adults and Abigail just triggered the subsequent witch allegations. Simply, I saw it from a completely different view point, I wasn't putting the blame on a single "psychopath " person, male or female. For example the person who became a victim for reading books... This kind of nonsense was perpetuated by adults, many of them were apparently much better educated than the children, and they should have known better. But they were also driven by revenge and greed and prejudice. The beauty of art and theatre is that none of these are "facts" and we can interpret it differently, based on our life experience, expectations, etc. I heavily relied on the real Salem events to formulate my opinion.
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Post by couldileaveyou on Oct 23, 2022 10:39:39 GMT
I think both things can be true. Arthur Miller clearly doesn't have sympathy for Abigail and I don't think he was planning for us to feel any. In the play she definitely is a villain - or maybe even THE villain - but a 2022 audience can also acknowledge that she's been "seduced" and abandoned by a much older man, suffered public disgrace for it, she had no ally or mother-figure she could confide with, no autonomy, and no rights. Her "confessions" during the trials are the only moments in her life in which she experiences power and people listen to her. If they hanged Abigail at the end I wouldn't feel sorry for her, but just like we feel more sympathy for Clytemnestra now than Aeschylus' intended audience ever did, we can probably also look at her as more than just pure evil
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Post by intoanewlife on Oct 23, 2022 22:44:37 GMT
I think both things can be true. Arthur Miller clearly doesn't have sympathy for Abigail and I don't think he was planning for us to feel any. In the play she definitely is a villain - or maybe even THE villain - but a 2022 audience can also acknowledge that she's been "seduced" and abandoned by a much older man, suffered public disgrace for it, she had no ally or mother-figure she could confide with, no autonomy, and no rights. Her "confessions" during the trials are the only moments in her life in which she experiences power and people listen to her. If they hanged Abigail at the end I wouldn't feel sorry for her, but just like we feel more sympathy for Clytemnestra now than Aeschylus' intended audience ever did, we can probably also look at her as more than just pure evil Both could be true...but...that is not what happens in the play. SHE seduced a married man with 2 children and another on the way. She admits this in scene 2 and then tries and fails to seduce him again right before our very eyes. She saw an opportunity while his wife was pregnant and unable to fulfill certain 'needs', (which he'd have probably quite happily gone without and was used to until it was offered to him) and decides to take advantage of that situation and steal her husband. The seduction of this man was her intent. You could also say it is the intent of the young girls casting love spells on the adult males in the village...but I digress, as these are innocent children we are talking about here...soooo.... When Abigail fails and is put out (and what woman wouldn't have done that) she enlists the help of someone who could probably be described as a witch (certainly in those times) to cast a death curse on a woman with whom she has an axe to grind. The death of this woman is now her intent. The irony of course being that the only people in the town practicing witchcraft were the ones accusing everyone else of doing so...but once again these are innocent children here...soooo... Lets take a second here to discuss this man too. He is not a well educated misogynist stockbroker from Shoreditch with 6 kids to 4 different women shagging himself senseless and abusing women left right and centre. He is John Proctor, not Boris Johnson or Donald Trump. He is a simple (probably VEEEEEERY simply) puritanical farmer in the 1600's and he suffers great guilt for what he did and is quite frankly far nicer to her than most would've been initially. The age of consent at the time was 12, so regardless of what you think their age gap and the fact they didn't exactly have children rights back then, he didn't actually do anything wrong to this girl, he did something wrong to his wife. Lets also be real here, although modern thinking is that someone who is 16 years old is still a child, C'mon. 16 year olds are not that sweet and innocent and I know this because I've been 16 years old. I also have 6 nieces and nephews who have been 16 loooong after I was and every single one of them was 16 going on 30. Most 16 year olds make bad decisions on an almost hourly basis, but most don't decide to destroy the world because they did so, no matter what time period they live in. Now, it is true this girl has not had a great start in life that cannot be denied. But a non disordered person wouldn't have gone into the situation with intent. They wouldn't keep trying to seduce a married man, they would accept his decision and move on. They would take the wives feelings into consideration, not try and have her killed. At every twist and turn thrown at her, she takes the route of dishonesty and the destruction of anyone who crosses her path. She also did not suffer public disgrace. No one in the town knew about the affair apart from the children and the only reason they knew was because she told them so she could manipulate them. It also probably had a fair bit to do with why the children were casting spells on adult men, instead of boys their age, because they'd been manipulated into thinking it was normal after hearing about Abigail's affair. The Proctors did not tell anyone for very obvious reasons, so once again her first natural instinct to manipulate got herself into that situation. A non disordered girl would've felt the same shame John Proctor did, accepted they'd made a terrible mistake, moved on and never told a living soul. As for her not having anyone. She did have a family (though not a very nice one) and a roof over head, so pretty much the same basics as everyone else of the time. If she didn't cause such mayhem, she wouldn't have needed support and she'd have only lied and manipulated whoever was supporting her anyway. Tituba (an adult) and all the children were already brainwashed by her and totally under her control, so she had them all at her disposal...literally. All of this is by the by, because any simple change to the original scenario of these 3 individuals does not alter the central theme of the play. If John DIDN'T fall for Abigail's advances, we would still have had the same outcome. He'd have told his wife and she would've been removed from the house. She could've never even met him, became fixated on him and STILL done the same thing. This girl wanted this man and she would've always done what she ended up doing. Her actions will always be the same because of her personality disorder. If we focus on all of this stuff however, we are missing the central point of the play, which is how one 'person' (disordered or not) with a cross to bear (or no cross to bear) can gain great power through manipulation and destroy an entire population by weaponising their own fears and prejudices and turning them against them. And if we've played a part of that destruction, we have to share responsibility. I think this is more a case of people focusing too much on their own personal feelings about the moral ambiguity of the situation that triggers this 'event' and that is clearly clouding their judgement of the event itself. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it is an entirely natural reaction, but it is an incorrect interpretation of the material and that is all I am trying to point out here. You are still completely free to feel however you like about the play, I am just trying to a have a discussion on a discussion board because I find it very interesting that this is happening about this particularly play. There is an excellent Netflix doc from a few years back called Casting JonBenet which actual covers this subject extremely well and how it affects out justice systems, I highly recommend people having a look at it.
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Post by Being Alive on Oct 29, 2022 23:05:02 GMT
Somehow never seen the play before (although I have definitely read it), despite it being heralded as one of the best plays of the 20th century...you would sadly not know this based on the current production in the Olivier.
The main issue is this is a show designed for the Lyttleton, that has inexplicably been put on the Olivier. The pay off is the final scene, which I grant looks gorgeous, but the 2 and a half hours leading up to that are so at odds with the space that it drove me nuts. Oh, and I should have learnt by now that a rain curtain at the Nash means the production won't be very good...
Didn't think much of any of the actors really - everyone, with barely any exception, doing terrible accents. Erin Doherty screaming her way through a role that there is definitely some nuance in - she's super talented but this was not it. Brendan Cowell (?) was a good Proctor but the whole production just feels at odds with itself. Thought a lot of the rest of the cast were wildly Miscast (especially reverend Hale) but did like the girl from Our Generation as Mary Warren.
For all its faults, it did fly by at the nearly 3 hour running time. But it's in the wrong auditorium. That said, full Olivier auditorium, which is a lovely sight.
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Post by ThereWillBeSun on Nov 2, 2022 10:12:00 GMT
Saw this on Monday - I thought the set was very Nash but a bit of a gimmick. The sound felt quite faint as well. The accents I was a bit unsure of; it was like a hybrid American/English - but reminded me of Newfoundland a bit?! Whether that was their intention or not... I was sat next to someone whose ancestors were convicted in the actual Salem Witch Trials; and her great great great x great aunt was a character in the play. Cool insight. Despite my critiques - I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a show at the National (HEX and Wuthering Heights were awful) The Normal Heart was possibly the last time I did walk away feeling it was something worth seeing. For me, I'm so happy I finally watched The Crucible. Packed house too - but it was Halloween so not surprising.
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Post by stevemar on Nov 8, 2022 17:48:10 GMT
I enjoyed this recently but felt that Brendan Cowell was very underpowered. Unfortunately I had the Old Vic version with Richard Armitage’s electric performance and in the round where the atmosphere of frenzy built up. I can see how this was rather static at the National. Still, once you got into it, the tension really built.
Re: the discussion above, whilst she is young, I did see Abigail as manipulative and acting maliciously, though of course she can only take some responsibility as the frenzy of blame built up.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jan 26, 2023 20:50:26 GMT
Any thoughts on the cinema presentation?
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 26, 2023 20:57:41 GMT
Any thoughts on the cinema presentation? Unless they have cameras filming on the stage I imagine it'll be mostly people stood with their backs to the camera...
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Post by Rory on Feb 21, 2023 7:18:36 GMT
Transferring to the Gielgud, according to the BBC.
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Post by zahidf on Feb 21, 2023 8:38:04 GMT
7th June until 2nd September in the west end
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Post by londonpostie on Feb 21, 2023 9:41:15 GMT
From set exam text to peak tourist season, and good luck to them.
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Post by NorthernAlien on Feb 21, 2023 12:54:01 GMT
When something like this transfers, is it usually the same cast?
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Post by alicechallice on Feb 21, 2023 14:30:55 GMT
When something like this transfers, is it usually the same cast? Not necessarily, depends how many of the cast may have got other jobs in the interim. I expect they will have tried to secure most of the principals at least, for the transfer. But one can only wait so long in the current climate.
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Post by maggiem on Feb 21, 2023 16:13:24 GMT
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