A ‘Crucible’ for Terror in the Wilderness

The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is a haunting environment for “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s examination of the Salem witch trials.

The location of the alfresco theater, in a woodsy glen in rural Topanga Canyon, effectively suggests a community on the verge of wilderness, as Salem was in 1692. And this expands beyond the literal into the figurative sense of a colonial society that had entered a moral wilderness, where personal vendettas, religious hysteria and an unyielding theocracy destroyed lives and ruptured the very notion of community.

A more specific resonance is also present. Both the play and the theater originated at least partially as reactions to the political witch hunts of the McCarthy era. In the early ‘50s, around the time Miller wrote “The Crucible,” blacklisted actor Will Geer began using his Topanga property as a place where his fellow political refugees could perform. This grew, 20 years later, into the Theatricum Botanicum.

Director Ellen Geer, Will’s daughter, resisted the temptation to show us the young women of Salem dancing in the woods--the event that served as a preamble to the action of the play. Perhaps “The Crucible” is long enough without such additions. Still, we see women singing hymns in the real woods. The overhead moonlight and the glimpses of insects flying between us and the stage help evoke a sense of the frontier.

The distances in this expansive outdoor space may have contributed to the bellowing tone of Jim LeFave’s performance as the farmer John Proctor. This guy is a hothead from the get-go--a far cry from the frequent interpretation of Proctor as a rock of cool, common sense. The volume of LeFave’s voice and the sarcasm evident within his occasional smiles initially grate, but eventually his performance evolves into something quite moving.

The human shortcomings of this Proctor are so apparent that it’s easy to see how he might conclude that his death for a higher principle is more important than a continuation of what he sees as his soiled life.

Melora Marshall is very moving as Proctor’s wife. Philip Littell, the performance artist and writer, plays Gov. Danforth as an icy bureaucrat, in stark contrast to LeFave’s fire. Milan Dragicevich makes the Rev. Hale’s arc believable. Pat Crawford Brown’s Rebecca Nurse is remarkably warm and indomitable under her outward signs of strain. Terry Evans is amusingly irascible as Giles Corey.

And then there are the young women: Abby Craden’s glaring Abigail, Willow Geer-Alsop’s severely stressed Mary Warren, Danielle O’Terry’s spooked Betty Parris. Earnestine Phillips is a hearty presence as the servant from Barbados whose incantations set the chain of overreaction into motion.

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* “The Crucible,” Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd. Saturdays, 4 p.m., through Aug. 29; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. through Sept. 20. $12-$17. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes.