John Proctor is the Villain
Playwright Kimberly Belflower’s briskly paced John Proctor is the Villain, superbly directed by Danya Taymor, examines Arthur Miller’s The Crucible through a feminine lens. With fine ensemble work and standout performances by Sadie Sink, Morgan Scott and Fina Strazza, the play stunningly reveals how oppressive behavior insinuates and apparently normalizes acceptance in its victims. Yet eventually, like a pressure cooker unable to release steam, suppressed rage and fury may erupt and devour the oppressor.
Such occurs in Belflower’s provocative Broadway debut John Proctor is the Villain. Put this satiric, biting comedy on your “to see” playlist before it closes at the Booth Theatre, 6 July, 2025, in a limited engagement.
Parallel plot points intricately woven
Belflower’s work opens in Carter Smith’s (Gabriel Ebert) English classroom, in a high school in rural Georgia’s Appalachian region in 2018, after the #MeToo movement spread its wings and the media publicized Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predation. Unusually, the administration tasks Smith with instructing his juniors about sex education by reading boring passages of the syllabus in unison for 10 minutes a day.
The play clues us in to the small school district’s conservative administration with its apparent fear of dealing with sexual topics openly. We also discover the community’s religiosity, with many of the students and teachers going to the same church. Though Belflower cleverly sneaks in these details throughout the play, she particularly references these parallels with the small-town religious 1690s setting of The Crucible.
After encouragement by exceptional student Beth (Fina Strazza), Smith jettisons the syllabus reading and jumps into the how and why of Miller’s The Crucible. Smith discusses the current allusion to “witch hunts,” first adopted in the McCarthy era to root out dreaded communists “lurking everywhere.” The scene segues to the teenage girls who attempt to start a feminist club which still must be approved by the conservative administration. During the course of their chat with each other, sans boys and Mr. Carter, we learn the girls “have done stuff.” Apparently, they have picked up their sexual education through pop culture and singers like Lorde, Lizzo, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and other beloved music icons.
Female characters as a tribal clan
The play’s strongest emphasis is on the five female teens. Of course, the allusion to the accused “witches” of Miller’s play manifests. As we note the exploration of the girls’ dynamic interrelationships, we delight in how they help one another parse out their lives. Primarily, they do this by integrating their pop music fandom and by projecting their repressed, sexual impulses onto Mr. Carter. For example, Ivy (Maggie Kuntz) waxes eloquent about how the teacher looked in his sweat pants the previous year. Here, the terrific performances and Taymor’s acute, precise direction of unique, individual characters shine with humor, empathy and authenticity.
Before their feminism club becomes official, the girls have humorous and ironic discussions about their sexual desires and experiences, which reveal their regional identities and comparative sexual reticence. Morgan Scott’s Nell, the new girl from urban Atlanta, has more experience than the others. The preacher’s daughter Raelynn (Amalia Yoo), after a long relationship with boyfriend Lee (Hagan Oliveras), begun in fourth grade and sealed by a purity ring, is betrayed by Lee. Her best friend Shelby (Sadie Sink) had sex with Lee, then mysteriously disappeared to Atlanta.
Later we learn about Ivy’s devastation on discovering sexual misconduct allegations against her father. His alleged inappropriate behavior, challenged by his former secretary, upsets empathetic best friend and brilliant student Beth, who admits to having little sexual experience.
Shelby returns, paralleling the character of Abigail in The Crucible
At a moment least expected, Shelby returns to the high school to finish out the year, her classes arranged by Bailey Gallagher (Molly Griggs), the new guidance counselor and former student at the school. Gallagher also helps Carter sponsor the feminism club, which inspires the girls to acknowledge untoward male or female behavior they didn’t recognize before. Though it should be along a continuum of sexual forwardness, the girls should begin to realize that a person who appreciates and compliments their intelligence and talents, and makes them feel seen, can also exploit and harm them.
As a major catalyst who continually stirs up the status quo, the wild Shelby reminds them that Ivy’s dad used to give them weird back-rubs at Ivy’s pajama parties. She also suggests that he most likely molested other women who will come forward. A rumor then goes around that Shelby may have been one of the ones Ivy’s dad inappropriately touched. Meanwhile, the other girls wipe Shelby’s comments from their minds, incapable of dealing with the truth.
A new, surprising member of the club
As the Feminism Club becomes official, they gain a new member, Mason Adams (Nihar Duvvuri), whom Mr. Smith encourages to join for extra credit and to persuade the administration the club is not extremist. Meanwhile Raelynn had identified Lee’s “rape-kiss” as #MeToo behavior, but Lee attempts to join the club, following his friend Mason. After he joins the club and approaches her for a “conversation,” Raelynn continues to remind him of his inappropriate actions. Clearly, her redirection as a result of the club’s influence strengthened her. At the same time, discussions with the others softened her wounds and allowed her to forgive Shelby, which Mr. Smith encouraged by making them partners for the final project on Miller’s play.
As they find comfort in unity, and Mason forms a bond with Nell, the girls begin to reconcile their identities and gain a newfound power of expression. This also comes to the fore as Mr. Smith discusses The Crucible and with the students’ help searches for explanations for Abigail and her friends’ behaviors.
Turning points and clues to relationships
A series of turning points set us up for an extraordinary conclusion. One is a scene where Mr. Smith shows his “coolness” in a private discussion with Beth about Lorde’s “Green Light.” Shelby enters looking for Beth, and Beth praises Mr. Smith’s interpretation alluding to The Great Gatsby which they all have read. The two smart girls and their teacher “get off” on the discussion, and Shelby wraps up the bonding session with a Walt Whitman quote, after she says that Beth isn’t the only one that reads. “I contain frickin’ multitudes,” misquotes Shelby as the others smile.
But we don’t realize the depth of what we have seen until the next scenes and the conclusion add up the puzzle pieces. Like a master builder cementing brick upon brick, Belflower shows the threads of suggestion and insinuation that bind individuals in solidarity and create friendships and closeness, whether appropriate or not. Some might call such behavior grooming.
Shelby channels Abigail
Mr. Smith, fresh from Beth’s praises, uplifts the character of John Proctor as a hero who stands upon his name and reputation. Smith finds it noble that Proctor chooses death rather than to confess being a witch and live, an abominable lie he would have to live with as a coward. Shelby challenges Mr. Smith’s opinion of Proctor’s heroism, shining a light on the patriarchy and abuse of women in 1690s Salem.
The parallels of The Crucible with the classroom situation continue. As Shelby becomes more impassioned, and Mr. Smith attempts to close her down for disruption, she reveals something that brings the pieces of the puzzle together. The hush over the audience mirrored the shock in the classroom onstage as the students, especially as Beth turns to stone in horror.
Belflower’s trajectory of uncertainty unfolds in the next scenes with surprise after surprise. In the hands of Taymor and the actors the action elevates to a combination of Greek tragedy and comedy. Questions of what statements should be given credence and what statements shouldn’t parallel those in The Crucible. The play keeps us in suspense and shock, unable to see each train wreck around the corner. A tyrannical, unjust system that has existed for too long and needs challenging upends. But how do we interpret the girls’ behavior?
John Proctor is the Villain is a mammoth play, properly raising more questions than answering them. The conclusion, and other scenes as lit by Natasha Katz’s lighting design, sizzle audibly. At the conclusion the softly done strobe effect strikes memorably, as if the past and the present are forcefully joining together to ignite and unite the girls’ passions. From the scenic design, largely in Mr. Smith’s classroom, to other design elements, especially the costume design by Sarah Laux, Taymor’s vision and the creatives’ execution of it is superb. Their efforts create a remarkable production many will want to see a second time for the music (sound design and original composition by Palmer Hefferan), the mesmerizing performances and the searing culmination in an inexplicable, powerhouse conclusion.
John Proctor is the Villain runs 1 hour 45 minutes with no intermission at the Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City. Don’t miss it.
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