The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142437336 ISBN 13: 9780142437339

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2003

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.

From the Inside Flap:

Richard Dreyfuss and Stacy Keach star in this full-cast performance of Arthur Miller's classic The Crucible, a central work in the canon of American drama.

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, Massachusetts, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town. In a searing portrait of a community engulfed by panic - with ruthless prosecutors, and neighbors eager to testify against neighbor - The Crucible famously mirrors the anti-Communist hysteria that held the United States in its grip in the 1950's. A Tony Award Winner for Best Play.

An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:

Richard Dreyfuss as Reverend John Hale

Stacy Keach as John Proctor

Ed Begley Jr. as Thomas Putnam

Michael York as Reverend Parris

Hector Elizondo as Giles Corey

Irene Aranga as Mercy Lewis

Rene Auberjonois as Deputy Governor Danforth

Georgia Brown as Rebecca Nurse

Jack Coleman as Marshal Herrick

Bud Cort as Ezekiel Cheever

Judyann Elder as Tituba

Fionnula Flanagan as Elizabeth Proctor

Ann Hearne as Susanna Walcott

Carol Kane as Mary Warren

Anna Sophie Loewenberg as Betty Parris

Marian Mercer as Mrs. Ann Putnam

Franklyn Seales as Judge Hathorne

Madolyn Smith as Abigail Williams

Joe Spano as Francis Nurse

Directed by Martin Jenkins.

About the Author:

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1963), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) and The American Clock (1980). He also wrote two novels, Focus (1945), and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. His later work included a memoir, Timebends (1987); the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1994), and Mr. Peter's Connections (1999); Echoes Down the Corridor: Collected Essays, 1944–2000; and On Politics and the Art of Acting (2001). He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Miller was the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2001 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003.

Christopher Bigsby is a professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He edited the Penguin Classics editions of Miller's The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and All My Sons.