The Best of 2006
Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Ensemble, Best Director and The Best Show of 2006
Here's my Theatre Kudos for 2006. See if you agree with my choices for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Ensemble and Best Director - all candidates for The Shiver Factor.
Best Actor
Benedict Campbell - in Arthur Miller's The Crucible directed by Tadeusz Bradecki for the Shaw Festival.
It’s 1692, during the 17th century Salem Witch Trials. Young Quaker girls are performing forbidden rituals dancing naked in the woods and ringleader Abergail Williams, is a woman scorned. She and farmer John Proctor were once lovers and she will stop at nothing to have him back, including inventing strategically outrageous accusations.
Hushed whispers are exchanged … and this scandalous “her-say” quickly leads to the town's unfounded paranoia and hysteria - the Devil’s in Salem and Everyone’s a Witch – Guilty by Association , Guilty by Gossip.
Out of the mouths of Abergail and these bad woodland babes… comes hell on earth for Salem's men of the cloth and fearmongering for Salem’s Puritan folk, particularly Goody Elizabeth Proctor (Kelli Fox). John Proctor, refusing any part of this manufactured frenzy, confronts the town’s Deputy General Danforth (Jim Mezon) when Elizabeth, like many innocent others, is accused of witchcraft and so begins the fight of his life.
Let the hangings begin!
Benedict Campbell, flanked by a fine supporting cast, was outstanding as a man who refuses to conform to this madness at any cost.
In one of his finest performances to date, Campbell crafted a quiet strength laced with dark passion in his haunting portrayal of morally conflicted farmer John Proctor.
To quote Arthur Miller Campbell did “grab the audience by the throat and not let them go” when Proctor knowingly forfeits his life, denies his freedom, and his signed confession.
“Because I lie and I sign myself to lies. Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang. How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name.”
Written as an analogy to 1950’s McCarthyism when writers were blacklisted, ( including Miller himself ) for being alleged Communists, The Crucible still hits the audience jugular exuding chilling, undeniable relevance. In these troubled political, religious and moral times, everybody knows, the more one utters lies, the more they become truth.
