The Crucible

With all the variety of Moscow billboards you seldom have a chance to visit a performance that is really deep and committed to the modern situation and at the same time remains the truly artistic utterance of their creators. The performance of this kind may be the recent premiere of The Moscow New Drama theatre “Salem’s Witches” after the play by Arthur Miller “The Crucible” staged by the artistic director of the theatre Vyacheslav Dolgachev.

Is it really possible for the audience to sit deliberately for two acts watching this exhausting trial and not being able to take their eyes off? It is not for nothing that the director defined the genre of the performance as “an ordeal”, or “the crucible” in the literal translation.

In the final of the ordeal, when the conventional boundary made from wooden chairs goes toward the edge of the stage and pushes the horrible results of the trial to the audience, the only question is: do we have enough strength to bear it?