Schade! Dann kannst Du Dir ja gar kein Bild von der Inszenierung machen.
Aber es wird sicher noch viel zu sehen und zu lesen geben.

:lol:

Ich hatte es insgeheim (allem Zweckpessimismus zum Trotz) gehofft.

Aber diese bedingungslose Kapitulation der Londoner Theatergroßkopferten (die wahrlich Ahnung von der Materie haben und nicht zur Gattung der Schmeichler gehören!) vor dieser grandiosen Inszenierung und seiner überwältigenden Interpretation der Hauptrolle - - - - - -

- - - das haut mich gerade schier aus den Schuhen.

The Crucible, Old Vic, review: 'Unmissable'
star number 1star number 2star number 3star number 4star number 5

There isn't a weak link in this 24-strong ensemble
Paul Taylor


Yael Farber's mesmerising production of Arthur Miller's great play unfolds with the sick dread of a horrible dream from which you are powerless to awake. The South African director made a huge impact internationally with her Mies Julie in which she transplanted Strindberg's classic and its master-slave dynamic to the present day in her native country.

Here, she keeps matters firmly rooted in the Salem of 1692 whose witch trials provided Miller with a way of confronting the McCarthyite Red scare of the 1950s. It's a tribute to the play that its world, so deftly evoked, both resists updating and renders it completely unnecessary, such is the timeless relevance of its portrait of a community driven by paranoia into accepting lies as truth and demanding false accusations as the price of survival. I will never forget the sobs that I heard from a Broadway audience at a production staged shortly after George Bush had instituted the Patriot Act.

Farber's revival brings the nightmare madness home to us with an extraordinary physical intensity, a masterly feel for the different emotional rhythms in Miller's scenes and a tension that is brilliantly sustained over the show's three-and-a-half hours running time.

The audience sits on all four sides of Soutra Gilmour's spare set, giving the proceedings an unremitting intimacy of focus and creating the impression that the protagonists are in a crucible that is reducing them to their essence. The dark atmosphere of foreboding is augmented by Richard Hammarton's sound score with its ominous rumbles and distant clankings.

We are given a practical demonstration of the ease with people succumb to suspicion right at the outset, Farber leaving us to wonder whether it is soup or demonic incense that's smoking in the dish that the slave Tituba is carrying as she makes repeated circuits of the stage.

The teenage girls are truly terrifying in their seizures of self-imposed, hair-thrashing, convulsive hysteria and finger-pointing accusation, intimidated into these paroxysms by Samantha Colley's bullying Abigail, the servant who had an affair with John Proctor and, now spurned, is out for vengeance.

Richard Armitage brings a powerfully imposing presence and a ferociously passionate contrarian spirit to this farmer who is haunted with guilt about his marital infidelity but who summons the courage to resist the temptation to save his own life by naming names. You certainly feel that he could “fall like an ocean” on the court of the witch-finder-in-chief Judge Darnforth (a flamboyantly sinister Jack Ellis), if only his integrity were not entangled with self-reproach.

Anna Madeley invests his wife (whom he has accused of being too cold – “an everlasting funeral marches round your heart”) with a very moving, pained dignity. One of the most gutting aspects of the play is the way that this couple find their love each other again only in the climate of paranoia that dooms them and their final meeting here is almost unbearable to watch in its quiet depth of feeling.

There isn't a weak link in Farber's 24-strong ensemble and there are some wonderful cameos, with Ann Firbank brings a lump to the throat as the elderly Rebecca Nurse, feeble in body but staunchly proof against the prevailing insanity.

Unmissable.

To September 13; 0844 871 7628

Richard Armitage brings a powerfully imposing presence and a ferociously passionate contrarian spirit to this farmer who is haunted with guilt about his marital infidelity but who summons the courage to resist the temptation to save his own life by naming names. You certainly feel that he could “fall like an ocean” on the court of the witch-finder-in-chief Judge Darnforth (a flamboyantly sinister Jack Ellis), if only his integrity were not entangled with self-reproach.


There isn't a weak link in Farber's 24-strong ensemble and there are some wonderful cameos, with Ann Firbank brings a lump to the throat as the elderly Rebecca Nurse, feeble in body but staunchly proof against the prevailing insanity.

Unmissable.

Uff. Ich bin gerade erst nach Hause gekommen. Aber es sieht so aus als könnte man Richard und Ms Farber und dem Cast zum Grand Slam Gewinn gratulieren. Das ich das noch erleben darf. Jetzt sieht der Daily Mail Kritiker ziemlich dumm aus.

Contact Ali with news at admin@richardarmitagenet.com

4th July
Press reviews for The Crucible have been flooding in today, after last night's press night and the verdict is unanimously oustanding. The only slightly critical newspaper is not worth discussing since it is known for its inaccuracies
Here is a summary with notable quotes about the play and Richard's performance.

The Times, The Crucible at the Old Vic, SE1. 5/5 stars. This article is behind a paywall, so thank you to @rashisama1 for posting the full article on tumblr.
"I’ve seen Arthur Miller’s great play many times before, but it has never mesmerised and moved me quite like Yaël Farber’s revival manages to do here...Armitage leads with passion as Proctor: it’s big acting, but Farber gives him the context for it. His scenes with his wife (Anna Madeley) have a repressed passion whose eventual release is overwhelming."


Financial Times, The Crucible, Old Vic, London - Review. 4/5 stars.
"Richard Armitage’s Proctor is a gruff, bearlike individual, tormented by his slip from grace and movingly matched by Anna Madeley as his wife, frozen in hurt. Their personal journey towards mutual forgiveness pulls against the gathering darkness elsewhere and proves very moving here."
The Telegraph, The Crucible, Old Vic, review: 'The intensity of a thriller'. 5/5 stars.
"In her thrilling production at the Old Vic, which lasts three and a half hours but never loosens its dramatic grip, the South African director Yaël Farber doesn’t labour the point but trusts the audience to make its own connections with our own troubled times...Richard Armitage, best known for TV dramas and The Hobbit movies, proves an exhilarating stage actor, with blazing eyes and a righteous fury about him, as well as manifest decency. His deep guilt about his brief affair with Abigail, who has become his nemesis, is powerfully caught. And his final reconciliation with his wife, beautifully played by Anna Madeley, who admits her own part in their troubles, proves extraordinarily intimate and moving."

The Guardian, The Crucible review - full of raw, visceral power. 5/5 stars.
"the South African Yaël Farber, director of an acclaimed Mies Julie, has come up with an extraordinary production that preserves the integrity of Miller's language while investing the action with a raw, visceral power I've never witnessed...Richard Armitage, though sounding a bit vocally strained, admirably conveys Proctor's mix of muscularity and guilt and Anna Madeley is excellent as his quietly accusatory wife."

Official London Theatre, The Crucible.
"Proctor is an imposing, prowling, growling figure with more rough edges than an Elizabethan neck-piece maker. Paradoxically brimming with pride and power while haunted by shame and remorse, he is constantly balancing on a tipping point, ready to explode with fury or collapse under the pressure of his principles...Armitage proves a colossal presence at the heart of a chillingly atmospheric revival of Miller’s classic."

TheArtsDesk.com, The Crucible, Old Vic. 5/5 stars.
"Armitage makes a fine job of John Proctor – a roaring, contrarian beast of a man who shouts because he cannot be heard, but it’s Madeley who moves."

Digital Spy, Richard Armitage is stunning in terrifying adaptation of The Crucible: Review. 4/5 stars.
"Physically, John is an imposing presence, but he is gradually chipped away at and broken down. Armitage makes him appear constantly exhausted by the accusations thrown at him and the people around him, even before he gets dragged into the trials. Eventually his body is weakened too, and when John makes a reappearance in The Crucible's dying moments, the change is striking. It's a triumph in make-up, costume and performance on Armitage's part that the sight of him makes you feel pained...His last stand is incredibly rousing, and cements just how good Armitage is at appearing inwardly bold when hunched or brittle when tall."

London Evening Standard, The Crucible, Old Vic - theatre review: 'At first Richard Armitage smoulders, later he blazes'. 5/5 stars.
"This revival of Arthur Miller’s great play, by South African director Yaël Farber, is astonishing. The production has a bold simplicity yet grips like the most complex thriller...Armitage at first smoulders, all dark looks and muscular seriousness. Later he blazes, raging against the paranoid insanity that engulfs him — and also against his own fallibility. Meanwhile Madeley brings a tense restraint to Elizabeth, capturing her wounded sense of virtue. Their intimate moments wrench the heart."
The Evening Standard has also published an interview with Richard today. I have a scan of the paper copy of this which I will add here shortly, but here is the online version: Theatre is still my first love, says Richard Armitage.
"John Proctor was a role he had 'coveted' since studying at Lamda, and working with director Yaël Farber at the Old Vic was 'exciting'. 'Every night I get that rush of nervous excitement. I can’t wait to speak that incredible text,' he said."

it really is. Best piece of theatre I’ve ever seen