Review by Stuart Miller…

Since straight plays lack the flash and dazzle of musicals, theater producers and audiences alike have long loved seeing a combination of screen stars and familiar titles. But these days, the spotlight is blazing especially bright, accompanied by soaring ticket prices:  Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal (“Othello”), George Clooney (“Goodnight and Good Luck”), Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Kieran Culkin (“Glengarry Glen Ross”), Paul Mescal (“Streetcar Named Desire”), Sarah Snook (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”), and Andrew Scott (“Vanya”). 

But most of those productions feel first and foremost like commercial or award-hunting ventures and at best they sporadically electrify the imagination. So hopefully audiences will take a chance on a new play, with a far less famous star, Sadie Sink, who actually meshes into an ensemble in the spunky and sparky “John Proctor is the Villain.” The high voltage play from Kim Belflower feels fresh and fully alive in the way those others do not, creating memorable characters, brimming with snappy dialogue and forcing us to re-examine both the way we think about theatrical classics and the way we protect men who all too often get away with bad, even criminal behavior. 

The play, set at the height of #meToo in 2018, mostly takes place during Mr. Smith’s honors English class and during meetings for a fledgling feminism club, founded by the ambitious Beth (Fina Strazza), who brims with Leslie Knope levels of enthusiasm for learning, love of binders and eagerness to follow the rules.

Smith (Gabriel Ebert) is the perfect teacher– he asks probing questions and pushes his students but also knows the lyrics to Lorde’s “Green Light” and gives his phone number to Beth so she can text him for book recommendations and “emergencies.” 

But trouble is brewing in this small Southern town, where a local man, the dad of Beth’s best friend Ivy (Maggie Kuntz), gets exposed for sexual misdeeds and a classmate, Shelby (Sink) has been absent for months. The mystery behind her vanishing  prompts concern and gossip, especially since right before she vanished she slept with Lee (Hagan Oliveras), the lunkhead boyfriend of Shelby’s best friend, Raelynn (Amalia Yoo). There’s also a new girl, Nell (Morgan Scott), who just moved from Atlanta and who is perceptive and unafraid to speak uneasy truths or ask difficult questions (like why Beth is texting with her married teacher). 

Rounding out the cast are the newbie guidance counselor, Miss Gallagher (Molly Griggs), who, like Mr. Smith, passed through these same high school halls, and Mason (Nihar Duvvuri), who is more open to learning and changing then his friend Lee. (The boys are underwritten and come close to caricature but in a play that forces a re-examination of how theater has always centered male characters at the expense of girls and women, it’s easy to argue that turnabout is fair play here.)

While the show has one overly speechy scene near the end Belflower’s genius is her ability to take a keen insight into “The Crucible” (that John Proctor is not the hero he has long been made out to be) and use that as an allegory for girls and women in modern America in a play that earns its anger but is also genuinely funny and moving throughout. 

Belflower perfectly captures the way teens talk and emote, especially smart teenage girls who are just starting to see the world as it really is. But she’s aided here by a excellent cast. Sink captures the pain and tumult raging through Shelby’s body and soul while Strazza brings manic energy but also wit too Beth and Yoo can be wrenching in portraying Raelynn’s bifurcated life (her father’s the local Baptist preacher but she’s a modern teen). But Scott is the discovery here, bringing a sharp edge to every line reading, either with perfect comic punch or with indignation and a questioning of authority. 

The play is especially fascinating in conversation with the recently closed “Liberation,” which looked back to a feminist group in the 1970s in part to try and understand the progress society has and has not made since then as far as women’s rights and empowerment and the way men do or don’t handle that. But even if you missed that production, “John Proctor” with its mix of humor, pathos and anger, stands as a visceral commentary on the world we live in, a society that allows men to continue to bully, coerce and use girls and women and to get away with it, whether they live next door or in the White House. 

“John Proctor is the Villain” is at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th Street. It runs one hour and forty-five minutes without intermission.

Photos by Julieta Cervantes