Fear, unfortunately, is always a current topic - especially when so many political, religious and and other leaders lurk ever ready to exploit it. Tying its new production to this more universal impulse helps B&B’s The Cruciblemaintain everything that’s always made the play powerful and memorable (despite the primacy of its fierce ideals over its relatively weak characterizations), while also imbuing it with an urgency and immediacy that make a play set during the 17th century hit hard today. Miller, writes Palmer, “is asking questions about what happens to us when we are afraid.” But while that’s true, Palmer believes the 1953 American classic is really about something much deeper, much rawer than McCarthyism or even its other obvious themes of extremism, religious tyranny, or mob mentality.

In school, many of us learned that Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is “an allegorical lens through which Miller examines the nature of McCarthy’s Red Scare” via a tragedy set during the 1692 Salem witch trials, writes Bag & Baggage Productions artistic director Scott Palmer in his program notes to the company’s new production.

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