'John Proctor Is the Villain' Broadway review — an American classic in the making
Read our review of John Proctor Is the Villain on Broadway, a new play written by Kimberly Belflower, directed by Danya Taymor, and starring Sadie Sink.
After multiple pre-Broadway runs nationwide, Kimberly Belflower's buzzy John Proctor is the Villain triumphantly lands at the Booth Theatre with a pop playlist and a primal scream.
John Proctor is the Villain centers on five high school girls figuring themselves out, a process framed by their discussions of Arthur Miller's The Crucible in their literature class. Raelynn (Amalia Yoo) is doing so in the wake of a messy breakup; Nell (Morgan Scott), as she finds her place as the new girl from urban Atlanta. Ivy (Maggie Kuntz), meanwhile, is grappling with sexual misconduct allegations leveled against her dad, which have a particular knock-on effect on her insecure, bookish BFF Beth (Fina Strazza) and Shelby (Stranger Things's Sadie Sink), who's dropped headfirst into this unstable moment after a mysterious leave of absence from school.
These are girls who talk freely about sex and form a feminist club at their rural school — albeit with differing degrees of enthusiasm — amid the rising momentum of the #MeToo movement worldwide, but having #MeToo in their backyard is something else entirely. Some of John Proctor's plot twists in this regard are predictable from the second scene (and, if we’re being honest, from the title), but what we don't foresee is how the girls will respond to these revelations — because they don't know either. In real time, they're trying to reconcile their religious beliefs and existing perceptions of each other with the newfound knowledge that a person who makes them feel seen and smart and loved can also harm them. Belflower, director Danya Taymor, and the uniformly strong ensemble explore that complicated coming-of-age process with care, avoiding passing judgment on where each girl ultimately arrives.
I could be jaded about John Proctor is the Villain and nitpick how some major developments get revealed abruptly for plot's sake, how the male characters are broadly drawn archetypes known all too well in both fiction and reality: the charming predator, the obvious creep, the well-meaning dolt. But John Proctor seems to know that. It also knows it's a reclamation of age-old stories by intelligent, thoughtful young women whose views of themselves and others are nonetheless a work in progress.
In that regard John Proctor excels, all the way through to an electric final classroom scene that morphs into a surreal, cathartic outpouring of repressed emotion. It's a play I would have loved — maybe needed — to see when I was the girls’ age, which was only two years earlier than the play is set. Not, thankfully, because I shared their exact experiences, save for obsessing over classic literature and Lorde’s “Green Light,” both of which still apply in my 20s. I was simply a teenage girl who didn't yet know how to articulate everything in my overactive brain, especially amid a cacaphony of teachers, preachers, parents, and friends firing off their own dogmas from all sides.
More important here than any particular interpretation of The Crucible and its real-world parallels is the takeaway that no matter what you're told to believe, there's power — that can be wielded for good or harm or a mix of both — in deciding for yourself.
John Proctor Is the Villain summary
John Proctor Is the Villain is set in 2018, as a smattering of sex scandals rock a rural Georgia town. Suddenly, the #MeToo movement hits closer to home than anyone expected, particularly for five high school girls. These events coincide with their unit on Arthur Miller's The Crucible in their junior honors lit class, in which their teacher (Gabriel Ebert) heralds John Proctor as one of literary history's greatest heroes amid the young women levying accusations of — and practicing — witchcraft around him. Some of the students aren't so sure.
Miller wrote The Crucible in reponse to the Red Scare of the 1950s, using the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory for the anti-communist "witch hunt" within the American government. Belflower's play builds on this tradition by using Miller's 1953 play to explore modern issues surrounding #MeToo.
What to expect at John Proctor Is the Villain
It's clear that John Proctor is tailor-made for young women, and my audience had plenty, though you don't have to be one to appreciate it. The pre-show playlist delivers banger after pop banger from artists like Florence + the Machine, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Lorde, the latter three of whom feature in the show. (Lorde holds particular weight; the play starts and ends with her music.) None of the song selections are mere musical fluff — they deal with the messy intersections between happiness and sadness and love and violence and revenge. The tunes, like John Proctor's characters, "contain frickin' multitudes."
John Proctor Is the Villain includes frank discussions of sexual assault and moments of flashing lights and sudden screaming. The latter is suggested by the show's program art, and, in the way some musicals have sing-along performances, I want to attend a scream, sing, and dance-along performance of this play.
What audiences are saying about John Proctor Is the Villain
John Proctor Is the Villain has a 94% approval rating on Show-Score out of 485 reviews. Though some users delivered mixed responses to the script and performances, theatregoers were largely praiseworthy toward these elements along with Taymor's direction and the show's balance of humor and gravity.
- "The best depiction of what it's like to be a woman in America that I've seen. I want everyone in the world to see this play." - Show-Score user Claire V
- "This is definitely geared more for younger audiences. I did enjoy myself for the most part, but I had issues. Halfway through, I couldn't help think of it as a high school essay on The Crucible turned into a play." - Show-Score user IGoToTheater
- "While the marquee says starting Sadie Sink (and she is absolutely phenomenal) this show is an incredible ensemble play. Every character is smart, funny, and complicated. Best show I've seen in awhile. I highly recommend." - Show-Score user Katie
- "A delight to watch. Well-paced, and an interesting way to examine a classic text through a new lens. The acting, direction, and staging are all great! Delightful overall. It is a bit "surface level" at points in the writing, but the cast elevate all the small moments to make it really lovely and quite the release of emotion." - Show-Score user IdeasGuy54
Read more audience reviews of John Proctor Is the Villain on Show-Score.
Who should see John Proctor Is the Villain
- If you like Lorde, you'll love John Proctor Is the Villain. Enough said.
- Fans of TV shows like Yellowjackets and The Sex Lives of College Girls, films like Bottoms, and plays like Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Mac Beth, and All Nighter are likely to enjoy Belflower's exploration of the inner lives of young women.
- Even if you didn't read The Crucible in high school, this play might inspire you to do so. Fans of the play are likely to find Belflower's reexamination intriguing — all her arguments stem from Miller's text and other modern scholarship on the play (but are comprehensible by all audiences).
- Fans of Sadie Sink's performance as Max Mayfield in Stranger Things will enjoy her performance as the complicated Shelby, and you're likely to become newly minted fans of the all-around talented cast.
Learn more about John Proctor Is the Villain on Broadway
Smart and sensitive, funny and harrowing, thoughtful and explosive in its exploration of the inner lives of teenage girls, John Proctor Is the Villain is an American classic in the making like The Crucible before it.
Photo credit: John Proctor Is the Villain on Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)
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