The role of John Proctor, the protagonist in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play “The Crucible,” based on the Salem witch trials, is “iconic,” said Worcester actor Alexa Cadete.
The part has been played on Broadway by Worcester native Arthur Kennedy in the play’s first staging in 1953 and in 2002 by Liam Neeson. Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed the character opposite Winona Ryder in the 1996 movie adaptation.
Proctor is “an incredibly complex character,” Cadete said. “But it’s one of those roles that will make you better. Entering the third week (of rehearsals), it has made me better.”
Cadette is portraying Proctor in The Hanover Theatre Repertory’s all-female cast production of “The Crucible” at the BrickBox Theater at the Jean McDonough Performing Arts Center, with performances Sept. 19 to Oct. 6. The play will have preview performances Sept. 19, 20 and 21, and officially opens Sept. 22. Livy Scanlon, the repertory’s artistic director, directs.
The play opens the repertory’s 2024-2025 season, which will include the fourth annual “Edgar Allan Poe Double Header” Oct. 31, Nov. 1 and 2 at the BrickBox Theatre. Created and performed by Scanlon, the show is an adaptation of two short stories by Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” The third show in the season will be a developmental staged reading (title and dates to be announced) opening in winter 2025. Closing out the season will be a production of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” at the BrickBox Theater April 10 to 27.
‘It is thrilling’
“The Crucible” features a cast of almost 20 women, playing both the male and female characters.
“It’s an all-female cast. A very different experience maybe for the audience. But it is thrilling,” Cadete said during an interview when rehearsals were continuing.
The opportunity the production offers to play Proctor “is a gift,” she said. “It’s a demanding part, but one I’m honored to play. I think he is an incredible character. The play is really about him confronting his own integrity and sacrificing himself for the greater good.”
Miller’s 1953 Tony Award-winning play is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693 that follow an escalating madness.
“The Crucible” has been seen as a searing indictment of the McCarthyism of the late 1940s and ’50s, particularly the blacklisting of 10 “Communist sympathizers” in the Hollywood community. Miller skewers the hypocrisy of those claiming the high moral ground while illustrating the pain that demagoguery and mob rule can wreak on innocent people.
Proctor is a headstrong but honest farmer. In Miller’s play, his tragic flaw is an affair with young Abigail Williams, a former household servant. It is Abigail who is key to setting events in motion in Salem, claiming to have intimate knowledge of townsfolk consorting with the devil. As the sanctimonious male authorities investigate, Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, is among those arrested as a witch. Others accused include Tituba, originally from Barbados, enslaved by Salem’s controversial minister, the Rev. Samuel Parris.
Proctor confesses to adultery in an attempt to expose Abigail’s motives and save Elizabeth. However, he is subsequently arrested and agrees to falsely confess to engaging in witchcraft as it will save his life. But he knows in his heart that is the wrong thing to do and ultimately refuses. The gallows awaits. In all, 14 women and five men were hanged, with one man, Giles Corey, “pressed” to death beneath planks laden with heavy boulders.
Gender, race, justice, power
The Hanover Theatre Repertory production transports the audience to Salem jail, where prisoners “act out” the story of their town’s descent into madness, Cadete said.
Scanlon has said that she’s long been “obsessed with with the play.” In 2023, the repertory company presented “experimental staged reading” performances of “The Crucible” at the BrickBox Theater with an all-female cast, followed by questions and answers with the audience. Scanlon noted that although the play was written in response to McCarthyism, “right now, however, the play’s themes of racism and sexism strike me as more relevant.”
Cadete was not part of the 2023 experimental staged reading, but she said the fully staged production builds on it.
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With an all-female cast acting out the story, “one of the things the audience might reconsider is justice, power. It makes you think about the power dynamics,” Cadete said.
“The women in the show are so phenomenal. But whether I’m on stage or taking it in, I kind of forget that it’s an all-female cast. There’s something about the connection. I don’t think of John Proctor as a man, I think of him as a character. It’s all these characters,” Cadete said.
“The writing of the show is brilliant. You couldn’t ask for a better story to tell. He (Miller) is a genius in the way he writes about these characters and sets them up.”
A character in context
As a play, “The Crucible” is “all gas and no brakes,” Cadete said. “The stakes are high for everyone. The story is constantly moving forward.”
Cadete has seen the story from a couple of perspectives recently. Last year, she served as an understudy to the roles of Abigail and Mercy (another accuser with Abigail) in the Trinity Repertory Company of Providence production of “The Good John Proctor,” a new play by Talene Monahon, described as a “prequel” to “The Crucible.” Although Proctor’s name is in the title, he doesn’t appear in the play, which is about Abigail and her fellow accusers.
“It is so interesting to be exploring him in this context,” she said of now playing Proctor in “The Crucible” at the BrickBox Theater.
Cadete was seen at the BrickBox Theater earlier this year in The Hanover Theatre Repertory’s production of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” that was directed by Brendon Fox. Scanlon played Viola, who disguises herself as a man after being shipwrecked and separated from her brother. Cadete played Maria, a witty gentlewoman servant who has a friendly relationship with the hilarious Sir Toby Belch.
Now, seeing Scanlon as a director as well as a former fellow cast member, “she’s fantastic. She’s collaborative and supportive and open to anything,” Cadete said. “She cares deeply about the craft and has a great attention to detail. And it’s just fun. It’s a fun (rehearsal) room. It’s a room that’s safe, collaborative.”
A familiar place
Another show in Worcester in which Cadete was Studio Theatre Worcester’s 2021 production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable.”
Cadete played Sister Aloysius, the principal at a school who accuses a priest of inappropriate sexual conduct.
“Another iconic character, another great writer,” she said. “I’ve been very lucky to work on the things I’ve worked on the last few years.”
The original production of “Doubt” shut down at the last minute in March 2020 with the onset of the pandemic. The play was presented a year and a half later in September 2021.
Studio Theatre Worcester is “a small professional theater company, but they waited,” Cadete said. A review in Worcester Magazine said of Todd Vickstrom as the priest and Cadete that “thanks to the superb approach each actor takes to their respective characters … (they) are successful at illuminating the highly toxic atmosphere created by ‘Doubt.’ “
‘A great place for an actor’
Originally from Boston, Cadete later lived in Florida and graduated from Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. Other acting credits include performing with the Lyric Stage Company of Boston and the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company.
She is a relative newcomer to living in Worcester. “I love it. It’s actually a great place for an actor, equidistant to things,” she said.
“Being a Boston girl, I’ll be the first to say I might have been a bit ‘Let’s see,’ but I was surprised at how developed it is,” she said of the arts scene here. “It’s growing. And, oh my gosh, so much good food here, too.”
‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller
When: Preview performances 6: 30 p.m. Sept. 19 and 20, and 2 p.m. Sept. 21. Opening performance, 2 p.m. Sept. 22. Performances 6:30 p.m. Sept. 26, 7 p.m. Sept. 27 and 28, 2 p.m. Sept. 29; 6:30 p.m. Oct. 3, 7 p.m. Oct. 4 and 5, and 2 p.m. Oct. 6.
Where: BrickBox Theatre, Jean McDonough Performing Arts Center, 20 Franklin St., Worcester
How much: Tiered tickets from $12-$200. hanovertheatret.org.