John Proctor Is the Villain
While Belflower’s play is clever and insightful, it is also contrived and manipulative attempting to shoehorn almost every feminist hot button topic into one story overlaying "The Crucible": date rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment on the job, toxic masculinity, patriarch dominance. It makes all of the male characters look like idiots and all of the women victims which is not exactly a reflection of real life. It also overloads the deck while at the same time copping out in the end. While New York teens are probably much more liberated than those in rural Georgia, the language of the play is incredibly devoid of swear or curse words which usually pepper the speech of adolescents. Finally, it borrows from Ivo van Hove’s 2016 staging of "The Crucible" in which a modern classroom also turns into a telling of Miller’s play. [more]
