Ready your crucifixes: some witches are coming to the Slope. Starting tomorrow, Mar. 4, the Brave New World Repertory Theatre—they of The Tempest on the Coney boardwalk and To Kill a Mockingbird on the porches of Ditmas Park—is launching another site-transforming production. This time, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. And the two-week run will be as atmospheric as it gets, held in Park Slope’s Old Stone House, a replica of the 1699 original from just a few years after the real witch trials ended.
With bonfires, witch-hunts and jealousy, The Crucible (a jibe at McCarthyism) reads like a Puritan soap opera. And director Claire Beckman is pulling out the stops to bring the audience into the story. The production will be candlelit, shutters-closed and spaced throughout the two-story house (and backyard, with an actual bonfire).
As Beckman told the Daily News, “I wanted the audience and the actors to see the darkness lurking in the shadows, because that was a very dark time.”
Saturday shows are already selling out, but there are still “seats” left for other nights. And the $18 tickets are cheaper than a bus to Salem, Mass.