Don't get me wrong; this play about the Salem Witch Trials is a very powerful dramatic piece with important historical significance (and political overtones). However, I honestly think that community theater groups could make other, more audience-friendly, choices.

That said, Heartwood Regional Theater Company does an admirable job with The Crucible. A good part of that is due to the performance of Brendan McQuillen in the lead role of John Proctor. I was surprised to read the Cast Bios and find no acting credits for this man. Zero. When I asked Director Jake Braley about it, he said “he might have acted a bit in college.”  Wow. It was a thrill to see such quality acting from a person with little or no experience. Not just community theater-level acting ability---a real professional caliber performance.

And believe me, I had the opportunity to see his work up close and personal because I was sitting in the first row of the audience in the Skidompha Library Atrium in Damariscotta where the play is running through February 3.

McQuillen never misses a cue, a line or a nuance. He commands the stage with authority and humanity. It's a very impressive theatrical debut, well worth seeing.

Laura Graham as Proctor's wife Elizabeth also gives a fine performance. As the long suffering wife who has not been able to emotionally forgive her husband for his one transgression of fidelity, she gives an honest and believable performance.

Elise Voigt as Abigail Williams, the “other woman”, is powerful in her depiction of the crazed and vengeful catalyst of the witch trial tragedy.

In large part, Arthur Miller's play is surprisingly true to historical knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials. However, there is one major difference:  the infidelity between John Proctor and Abigail.

In the play, John is continuously troubled by a brief affair with Abigail. In reality, Proctor was over sixty years old when the trials began and Abigail was eleven. In the play, Miller made Abigail seventeen and John in his mid-thirties. This artistic license helped strengthen the plot, tying characters together in a way they never were tied together in real life. Miller might have done so to add more tension to a story that would have had a less provocative plot if it were an exact transcript of actual events.

This presentation of The Crucible is well directed by Jake Braley. Costume Coordinator Mary Linda Rapelye has done an excellent job recreating the clothing of 1692.

This is not an easy play to watch.  One can appreciate the fine performances, but the hypocrisy, madness and mass hysteria portrayed are themes that are still all too present in the world today. Let's hope we make more progress as human beings in the next 316 years.