Anyone looking for contemporary parallels in Arthur Miller's play based on the 1692 Salem witch trials will invariably find them. The fundamentalism, repression and prejudice that Miller used as a metaphor for anti-communist trials in 1950s America have endured, and taken new forms. In his riveting production for the redesigned Lyric, Conall Morrison does not labour any Northern Irish resonances. He lets the drama speak for itself in a period setting; the Ulster accents among the 22-strong ensemble bring sufficient reminders of riven communities close to home.
Sabine Dargent's spare, timber-framed set extends seamlessly into the stained wooden interior of the new auditorium, bringing an added immediacy to a staging that proves determined not to be reverential towards a classic text. These inhabitants of 17th-century Massachusetts have grime under their nails and grubby secrets to hide. Speeches and debates that can sound preachy in other productions are here spat out by suspicious village elders, buttoned-up men who are provoked and unsettled by the sexual power of the young women they insist on referring to as children.
As John Proctor, Patrick O'Kane's commanding appearance is enhanced by his matted, shoulder-length hair, emphasising the earthiness of a farmer who is too busy working the land to attend the church of a clergyman he despises. In later prison scenes, his half-naked body is smeared and stained, the chains around his wrists bruising his skin. O'Kane's portrayal is remarkably intense and nuanced: in the sexual energy of his encounter with Abigail, the teenage servant he seduces and later denounces as a whore; the anguish of his attempt to falsely confess to witchcraft to save his life; the tenderness of his valedictory scene with his wife, Elizabeth.
In fact, the central performances of O'Kane, Aoife Duffin and Catherine Cusack as husband, jealous lover and wife are so finely tuned emotionally that the set pieces of the courtroom scenes seem cruder by comparison. These are strikingly choreographed, though, with Judge Danforth spinning on the spot as he tries to quell the hysteria.
Like Miller's play itself, this production is most eloquent when it shows the human passions behind the moral arguments.
