The Crucible
I have a strong suspicion that the most important piece of theater this year was one I missed: Richard Nelson’s three-part “The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family,” at the Public Theater. His previous masterpiece, the “Apple Family Plays,” written in near real-time, was a richly novelistic examination of a liberal family in Rhinebeck, New York, on four signal dates of the Obama years. The new series focused on a nearby family that felt inexorably downwardly mobile, like the country wasn’t working for them anymore, and that’s the reality that drove a not-quite-majority of the country to take a flier on Donald Trump. I would have liked to see Nelson’s humane, sympathetic insights. Instead, I’m left with the thing I did see that most affected me: Ivo van Hove’s especially bleak revival of “The Crucible.” If I’d like Nelson to help me understand how we got to where we are, Arthur Miller’s classic reminds us of what can happen when righteously vindictive people take hold of the machinery of government. It was chilling in the spring; recalling it now is even scarier.
Jesse Oxfeld has written about theater for New York Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!