"The Crucible". Pilch

Charlie Lewis's second directorial project of the term (I know, it doesn't seem physically possible does it? Like eating three Weetabixes) is every bit as devastating as his first, Oleanna. If anything, it's an even greater achievement, as Arthur Miller's The Crucible is three hours long, has a huge cast of characters, and is written in an archaic American dialect that automatically makes it more remote than Mamet's realistic tones.

But Lewis's company, Boulevard Productions, has become something of a specialist purveyor of fine American drama. They're experts. Last term they gave us Annie Baker's Circle, Mirror, Transformation. What all these plays have in common is not just their transatlantic origin, but an intense, emotional crisis that strips away the outer layers of human social behaviour, revealing the passions that surge below the surface. And Lewis has shown, time and again, that he can devastate audiences with his staging of those passions.

He's also got an uncanny gift for getting American drawls out of his actors that sound so convincing you can almost name the road, never mind the State, they're supposed to come from. So it's quite remarkable that, this time, in mounting one of the most famous American plays of the 20th century, Lewis has decided to dispense with any American accents at all. Instead, the townsfolk of Salem, Massachusetts, speak with Irish, Scottish, English, Bajan and other accents. The effect, rather than undermining Miller's script, is to propel it to new heights of meaning and relevance. 

Here's why.

Miller wrote The Crucible (which is ostensibly an account of the Salem witch trials of the 1690s) as a direct allegory for the McCarthy communist witch hunts of the 1950s. They even have the word 'witch' in common. But McCarthyism is about as relevant today as Fredric Wertham. So, by prising off the US voices, Lewis has liberated this play from the confines of allegory, and allowed it to be a story. He's also given it universal relevance. Instead of a thinly-veiled portrait of communists being forced to rat on each other, it becomes a tragic depiction of personal values, the coercive powers of the ruling classes, and the value of truth when all else has been taken away. Rather than being something we merely observe, this Crucible is one in which we all boil. 

The set, designed by Ben Adams, is deceptively simple but pregnant with implied meaning. A humble, off-white backdrop that merges with the stage floor, it feels like we are inside one of the homespun shifts of the local women. And patches on that garment turn into windows, recesses and dungeon bars. Apart from that, the only other elements are three, foreboding ropes suspended from the ceiling, waiting to hang innocents. The lighting, by Alexandra Russell, chimes perfectly with that naked set: a few spots, gently dimming, intensifying, tightening or broadening in lockstep with the mood of the play.

And the cast, even in their multinational voices, produce an incredibly coherent, pulsating performance that screws the tension tighter and tighter throughout, releasing at key points in explosions of terror and revelation. At the end of Act One, the sight of the 'children' Abigail and Betty screaming in fake agony as they pretend to be possessed puts your hair on end. In Act Three, the flawed hero of the play, John Proctor, reveals he has 'known' Abigail (an affair that really is the source of the entire, State-sanctioned massacre), and it's a moment of deathly, damning admission - matched in intensity only moments later when his wife Elizabeth has to make the terrible choice between betraying her husband to his death or telling the truth. But for me, the most wrenching moment of the whole play comes in the final scene, when the elderly, principled Rebecca Nurse is led away to be hanged. She stumbles on her way to the gallows, and apologises with the explanation, 'I've not yet had my breakfast'.

What emerges from this sustained display of human suffering is the terrible hopelessness of resistance when faced with the prejudice of a perverse and fundamentalist ruling power. If you confess, they'll discredit you; if you don't, they'll kill you. There's no escape. If that sounds depressing, don't be put off. The Crucible is like a combination of Witchfinder General and Joan of Arc. It's also one of the most thrilling, finely judged productions of this endlessly remarkable term.