I've got a surprise, dear reader(s?), that will shock and delight you. Our production of The Crucible is the best performance I've seen at The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Now, those that know me might not find this entirely overwhelming news, so I'll take it a step further: I sincerely enjoyed it.

The Crucible, unlike virtually every show I've seen through our department, worked together. No element of the design was weaker than another, surprising for a college production.

The scenic design was good. There. I said it. It was simple, but it worked. Granted, there were some sight line issues for certain rows, but only for certain scenes, and not for long. Theatre in the thrust is hard pressed to show everything to everyone at all times. Thus, I was pretty willing to cut the blocking some slack. What bothered me were the massive beams hanging over the set, which are just so, so, high school. Every production of this show featured somesort of hanging beam, and I felt like their addition was a concession to designs past, instead of the text. But enough of that.

I wasn't crazy about the sound design, though it was very, very refreshing to see a sound designer who designed sound. It seems to me that more often than not, a sound designer will come into the space, aim their speakers at the set, and tell their board operators how to press play. But oh no, not Theresa Huber, our designer. She incorporated tribal drumming into the play, at the beginning and end of both the show and intermission. The idea, from what I've gathered, was to riff off of Tituba's connection to Barbados, and to underscore the rising tension and violence present throughout the piece that is only felt, but never seen. The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that Tituba isn't a large enough character to warrant basing a major part of the design off of her. Also, I think the idea of violence was plenty conveyed without the aid of sound to bookend the performance. The other element of the sound design incorporated the singing of hymns at the same time as the drumming, usually trailing it off or starting it up. These, in juxtaposition to the drums, were very well done, and very beautiful, the last song especially. They also served to illustrate Proctor's point, an important task when he had so few allies.

I also noticed the lighting far more than in any other production, and not because it was awful. As in Othello, Light is mentioned all over the place, and is equally as thematically important. Jeffery Hannah, our lighting designer, used the light to highlight the darkness of ignorance versus the light of reason. Whenever a character who embodied that reason came onstage, the light levels would increase a bit. As one would then assume, when a character representing ignorance and intolerance took the stage, everything got a bit dimmer.

To be continued.