In John ProCor is the VillainKimberly Belflower’s Angry, Funny, and Excellent New Play, Both the Surprise and the Real Potential of the Title Lie in How Quickly Its Moment Zips by – The Speed with Which The Phrase Bubbles Up As Idea and, spreads the most crucial, with what In an 11th-grade-angel classroom in rural georgia, Seven students are Reading The crucible with their Very Cool Teacher, Carter Smith (Gabriel Ebert, Demonstrating His Genius for Subtly Terrifying Characters Who SEEM SUCH Sweet, Fun, Sensitive Guys). Mr. Smith is the type who charms kids no matter where they are on the sexual-awakening continuum: The Willowy, Woul-Be-Worldly Ivy (Maggie Kuntz) and Smart, Straight-Shooting Student Nell (Morgan Scott) About His SweatPants. The Anxious, Straight-A Addict Beth (Fina Strazza) Wriggles in Protest: “You Guys, Stop! He’s, Like, My Friend.” A student Named Shelby Holcomb (Sadie Sink, Taching a Hiatus from Hawkins and Giving a Body Blow of A Performance) isn’t for this conversation. She has ben mysteriously away from School for months, and the Girls’ Rambunctious Banter Slows Her Name Is Mentioned – AFTER ALL, SHE WAS LIFELONG BEST FRIENDS WITH RAEELYNN (Amalia yoo) UNIL SHOKED UP WITH RAEELYNN’S BOYFRIEND, Lee (Hagan Olivelas). “She’s a Lot,” Sayys Raelynn Guardedly after Shelby Crashes Back Through the Classroom Doors. “Yeah…,” Says Beth. “She Kind of Always Has Been.”
Shelby’s A-Lot-Ness Blazes Int Full Focus a Few Scenes late as Mr. Smith Tries to Wrangle a Conversation About Arthur Miller. “Because it is my name! Because of cannot have another in my life!,” The slightly derpy but increasingly Curious Mason (Nihar Duvvuri) Reads ALOD at His Teacher’s Request, and the students Thrill at John Progor’s Celebrated Words. All except Shelby. “I don’t get it … your name is literally just a word that someone else gave to you,” she insists. “… That’s what names field: They’re fiction. But my body is a fact. I live inside of it… Abigail was a human being… but john proor is just obsessed with this made-up thing… he’s just dunno, i dunno, like, his fiction is more important than her fact? Of mean, that sucks. Like, John Procor is Clearly The Villain, right? ”
Bless the Director, Danya Taymor, for Paying Close Heed to Belflower’s Note on Pacing. “The Page Count Might Be High,” Writes the Playwright, “But this Play Moves Very, Very Quickly. IF IT Over 1: 45-1: 50Is, You’re Going Too Slow.” Taymor Keeps Crackling Things. Shelby, Upon Her Return, Has Brought Something Perilous and Explosive Back Into Her Old Classroom, Her Old Group of Friends, Her Old Life – Something ‘They Not Ready for and That She Hersself is Still Struggling to Articulate. IT STARTS TO FINT VOICE IN HER CRITIQUE OF The crucibleBut Mr. Smith leaps to shut it down. “John Proctor is one of the great heroes of the American theater,” he declares – defensively, decisive. In that moment, I wondered how many many audiences were sharing a flashback: My Own 11th-Grade Teacher Used Practically The Same Words. We loved that play. We loved Procor’s Speech. He had flawsyes, but he was an honorable man, a you good man. We were taught the Same Thing About Robert E. Lee.
Along with a dexterity for shaping character out of the casual contours of contemporary speech, belflower also have a keen sense of balance: she hangs just enough play on The crucible but not too too. This isn’t a riff or a rewrite. Miller’s Text Functions As a Kind of Flint – A Surface on Whice Belflower’s Characters, Especialy Shelby, Can Create Sparks, but the fire that grams belongs to say. They are the living, wrestling soulas, condensing with more than any teenager should have to and just as Many as Many will. They are the bodies to proor’s name – and they’ve got plenty to puzzles and menace say before and his fiction enter the picture. “Oh no …,” Gasps Beth, Checking Her Phone Over Lunch. “Oh my God. You guys. Oh my God.” One of the Sharp, Sad Jokes of John Proctor is that beet and her friends have ben attempting to start a “feminism club” On this participation day, the girls’ Phones all buzz with a panicked text from Ivy: Her rich, successFul haen been accused by a former employs. “She’s Saying that, Like, Stuff Kit happened Between I say. I Mean, Not Good Stuff-In, Like, A Not-Good Way, ”Quavers Beth, Drained of Her Usual Fervor.
With the Sharpest of Needles, Belflower Starts to Stitch Real Catastrophes, Real Moral and Emotional Tangles, ino the Fabric of the Students’ Days, Throwing the Play they’re inoEsy New Relief. “I do not know if I feel good good doing this anymore …,” Ivy tells her friend, close to tears, nor she trees to back of feminism Club in the wake of her degrace. “I Mean, these are People’s dadsyou know? ” It is true, though not in the way poor ivy means it. Smith, Belflower’s Characters Find ThermSlves in their Own Crucible, Boiling, Thrashing, Trying to Keep their Above the Molten Surface. “But i just… i know Him, you know? He’s, Like, The Best Person of Know. He’s the Besta Person… ”
In a Way, John ProCor is the Villain Forms A Powerful Companion Piece for BESS Wohl’s Trenchant Liberation. One Closes as the Other Opens; One Bears Witness to A Group of Women 50 Years Ago, Using Every Tool to Try to Carve Out a Better World For Therld and Their Daughters, Literal and Otherwise. The other turns its sights on the daughters of their daughters-a half-centenary of “Progress” beened, intersectionality in their vocabularies and taylor swift and lorde on their iPhones-WHO ARE stall Confronting, Eve internalization, basse-level the Daily assumptions of their own less-ness, their own fundamental inferiority in the ranks of humanitity. Belflower’s play is full of zing and zest, but there’s also Heartbreak in every moment of watching the wonderful yoo’s raelynn-atce wary, thughtful, and seized with dubt- A liffetime of living with a mother who “taught me how to do my face before she taught me about my period.” Every moment in which beth herself checks; or ivy retreats; or the well-meaning, impeccably southern School Counselor, Miss Gallagher, Encourages the Girls to “Choose (Their) Words with Care” Becauses “Feminism is Just-People sensitive right now,” IT’S Family and Horrible Wrench. Nesa is oroured to Remove References to Women in leadership roles from websites, and as – wildly, dystopically – Women Appears on a list of terms the Current Administration is attempting to wipe from federal material, how can we not quake and seethe along with Shelby? “Maybe She Didn’t ‘Go’ Crazy Because She’s Always Been Crazy,” Quips Raelynn. Or Maybe Crazy is the way any Awakening Soul Looks and Feels in Such a Mad and Brutal World. Forget the villain – Belflower’s play hits as hard as it does Because at it heart, Fighting their way through hell of a junior, are the kind of heroes we actually need.
John ProCor is the Villain is at the booth theater.
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