At a time when many are trying furiously to erase the past rather than expose it, a play like Sarah Ruhl’s Becky Nurse of Salem: A Contemporary Comedy about a Historical Tragedy, hits the zeitgeist punch with illuminating humor and intelligent drama which telegraph the real meaning of witch hunts.
With Morag Shepherd’s sharp-witted direction, PYGmalion Productions Theatre Company’s Utah premiere of Ruhl’s play affirms the verdict with outstanding performances and a rollicking pace which commands the audience’s interest. Shepherd’s touches of theatrical choreography along with live sound effects and designs handled by McKell Petersen (who also takes the role of Stan) are welcome embellishments.
At the center of the action, set in Salem, is Becky, a present-day descendant of the accused witch Rebecca Nurse. The role is perfect for Teresa Sanderson. In her early sixties, Becky has just been fired from her job at a wax museum for taking liberties with the docent’s script while speaking to a group of students from a Catholic high school.
The 205 words that led to Becky’s firing encapsulate Ruhl’s inspiration for setting the narrative structure. Aware that her audience has, like practically every other student in an American school, read Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, Becky intends to set the record straight. Emphasizing the erroneous underpinnings behind the trope of witch hints, she says Salem’s story is not actually about the supposedly virtuous John Proctor but of 14 dead women. Sanderson digs into the rightly ironic and acerbic humor of her lines: “When Arthur Miller was writing The Crucible, he was married to another woman but he really wanted to fuck Marilyn Monroe who was much younger—and he was like—I want to fuck her but I can’t fuck her. Meanwhile he was writing this play, and he made the 11 year-old Abigail older, and the 60 year old Proctor younger and gave Abigail a big crush on John Proctor, even though in reality, they never met. And now our country’s whole understanding of the Salem witch trials is based on the feeling of—I want to fuck Marilyn Monroe but I can’t! And that’s really weird when you think about it.”
In her program notes, Ruhl acknowledged the underlying truth about The Crucible’s provenance came from the award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (a writer who should be on the radar of every serious theatergoer), who researched Miller’s work for an advanced seminar he had taught. The evidence was couched in Miller’s own words for a 1996 essay that was published in The New Yorker: “My own marriage of twelve years was teetering and I knew more than I wished to know about where the blame lay…My own marriage of twelve years was teetering and I knew more than I wished to know about where the blame lay.”
Ruhl’s play channels the rage about this appropriately, without necessarily diminishing Miller’s work. Instead, as she explains, it arises from “how I felt the whole concept of witchery was redirected toward girls’ desires for older married men which felt like a massive historical imposition.”
And, Sanderson excels as the brassy proxy for Ruhl’s muse. The real curse for Becky comes from her dependence on opioids, which were prescribed for her endometriosis and a hysterectomy after giving birth to Gail, her daughter. At the age of two, Gail was taken away from Becky after suffering an overdose. Becky had given her daughter the pills for a kidney infection. After being separated for more than twelve years, Gail (with the right touches of teen angst played by Lily Hilden) returns to her mother’s home.
Needing a new job and wanting to get revenge for being fired, Becky consults a witch (with a tour de force performance by Reb Fleming) who concocts two portions. One is for Becky to secure her romance with Bob (with fine nuances to shape the ambiguities of his own moral conflicts in his soul, rendered effectively by David Hanson), a bar owner who also is married. The second one is formulated to split Gail from her boyfriend Stan (McKell Petersen).
One of the first act’s most significant scenes stems from the luckless romance between Bob and Becky, which started when both were in high school. Becky became jealous when Sharon, now Bob’s wife, wooed him away. Enchanted with the love potion, Bob wants to kiss Becky but feeling pangs of guilt, Becky asks him, “What about Sharon?”
Becky isn’t buying Bob’s rationalization: “That’s not always how it works in a marriage, Bob. Sometimes you just don’t feel like having sex, you’re not communicating to your husband— please go have sex with someone else.” Bob is sweet and gentle while Becky is blunt in her boot-stomping mannerisms. Sanderson and Hanson deftly craft the emotional counterpoints in their chemistry on stage.
Likewise, Ruhl’s Gail is redeemed from a portrayal of her either as a lustful teen or as the victim of an older male predator. When she appears in her high school production of Miller’s play, Gail has the epilogue: “Every time another woman takes a bow in The Crucible another lie is told about history and how the lust of young women destroys good men.” Becky Nurse of Salem premiered in 2019 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California, then had its off-Broadway premiere in 2022 at Lincoln Center Theater.
This play is a marvelous blend of humor that sparks robust laughs and emotionally intelligent drama that always has its eye on historical truths. Rounding out the cast ensemble are excellent performances by Whitney Black (Shelby and minor character roles) and Bryce Fueston (jailer, judge and shape shifter).
Extending a streak of outstanding productions spread over recent seasons, PYGmalion delivers on every bullet point in the creative brief. Performances continue through Feb. 21. For tickets and more information, see the PYGmalion Productions Theatre Company’s website.