Crucible is IMO perhaps the greatest play of the 20th century. Certainly one of my favorites. This is a situation where people's lives are being completely devastated. Loved ones are being taken from each other, people find themselves scared to speak out lest they be charged and sentenced to death, no one knows who they can trust, menace both real and imagined run rampant, Rebecca the town saint has been deemed and jailed a criminal. The townspeople's worlds are being turned inside out.
There were many things I noticed about this production, but the main point for me is the entire time I was watching, I didn't believe these were people who's lives were being torn apart, who's hearts were breaking, were experiencing the outrage brought on by the hunting and the trials.
While some of the director's (I'm assuming) unwritten additions were visually enticing (witchcraft, dog!, floating human!), in my opinion they didn't serve Miller's work. First off, the witchcraft isn't actually happening, so to have windows flying open and papers and desks tumbling around could confuse people unfamiliar with the play. Also, the point is these crazed girls put on a convincing show! So let the work of the performers be the thing that convinces us! The dog was cool, but I have no idea why it was there. And a minor thing that pulled me out in the final act was letting John and Elizabeth wander out on their own before the execution. It's a jail, so that reality still needs to be there even if the story is about them.
I felt Whishaw was very technically proficient (terrific mover and speaker), but he was a mostly gentle Proctor who seemed to be going through the motions of the play without really discovering things and taking in what was happening around him on a deep level. Really listening to and taking in pieces of news like his wife's pregnancy, for example, were missing. It seemed like this: because the script had already been written, John's decisions throughout the play had already been made.
I felt Tina Benko and Bill Camp gave some very solid work as Ann Putnam and Reverend Hale, respectively.