“A deeply illuminating dramatisation of the unending battle between reason and madness. “The Crucible suddenly seems like a play whose time has come again… with its portrayal of religious extremism and its impact on the state.” Daily Telegraph A rare opportunity to see an ensemble of twenty superb actors bring to life this feverishly exciting moral thriller that pits personal responsibility against public good.

Originally conceived as a response to the McCarthy anti-communist trials of the 1950’s the play now reads as a stark warning about the dangers of irrational belief. A chain of events is set in place in which the innocent are implicated by the hysteria and fear that permeate their whole community. Abigail tells Parris that Betty began screaming when she heard him sing his psalm.

When the young girls of a closed religious sect are discovered experimenting with devil-worship in the woods they try to save themselves by denouncing neighbours as witches and satanists. Parris rushes in, followed by the Putnams and Mercy Lewis. Without a doubt one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, takes on an unnerving air of topicality in our terrorist age.

Mercy lewis the crucible download