‘Stranger Issues’ star Sadie Sink leads likable, lengthy MeToo drama

The loud title of the Broadway play “John Proctor is the Villain” reads just like the uncommon high-school essay that wasn’t written hours earlier than it’s due.

It’s a wise and edgy thesis about “The Crucible,” if not precisely a brand new concept.

But playwright Kimberly Belflower’s typically entertaining, largely intelligent, steadily phony dramedy that opened Monday evening on the Sales space Theatre might have used one other draft. 

The promising play set in a turbulent faculty plateaus about midway by way of after an early dropped bomb, after which falls into outdated classroom cliches: Women combating over a man after which turning on him, a candy boy revealing his delicate facet to viewers “awww”s and a last presentation day like we’re at “Crucible Akimbo.”

Say what you’ll about Arthur Miller’s 1953 drama — sustaining momentum isn’t its downside. 

“Villain,” starring Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things,” is ready in a Georgia English class stuffed with hormonal teenagers finding out Miller’s Salem witch trials basic — the primary character of which is the accused farmer John Proctor.

Their instructor, Mr. Smith (Gabriel Ebert, a tad too chirpy), tells them that within the author’s allegory for Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s notorious Communist hunt, the wronged John Proctor is our hero.

Then the #MeToo motion hits. A woman named Ivy’s (Maggie Kuntz) enterprise proprietor dad is introduced down by a feminine worker for wrongdoing, and one other bombshell declare is hurled at an grownup who works on the faculty.

Proctor, who in Miller’s play had an affair with 17-year-old “I saw Goody Proctor with the devil!” accuser Abigail and beats his employee Mary, all of a sudden doesn’t look so praiseworthy to Gen Z children surrounded by dangerous males of all ages. 

Nonetheless, not each pupil within the tiny Southern enclave believes the purported victims. Rifts type and clashes ensue, a lot as in seventeenth Century Salem.

In fact, not one of the murdered villagers in Massachusetts or “The Crucible” had been truly witches.   

Belflower’s play says the other whereas mirroring Miller’s ethical certitude about his personal characters’ top-to-bottom guiltlessness. She casts zero doubt on the boys being investigated. They completely did it. 

The gifted director Dayna Taymor is again to herding adolescents after final yr’s thrilling gang conflict musical “The Outsiders.” She’s expert with this age group, and makes dynamic use of an unchanging desks-and-dry-erase-board set.  

The power and camaraderie of her younger solid helps raise slower parts within the lengthy and intermission-less present, even when the appearing generally leans extra “Boy Meets World” than actuality.

Everyone is memorable, however most plausible in a backpack is Fina Strazza as Beth, a whip-smart firecracker who’s chummy with Mr. Smith. Strazza was final on Broadway because the lead in “Matilda,” one other precocious e book lover.

And Morgan Scott is definitely humorous as Nell, a lady who’s simply moved to city from Atlanta and is our window into this neighborhood’s peculiarities. 

Sink, who’s amassed an enormous following since starring on Netflix’s sci-fi hit, returns to Broadway for the primary time in a decade as Shelby, a insurgent with a trigger who reemerges after months away.

Coming from an ensemble collection about outcasts, she suits proper in right here, and is a assured stage actor.

Shelby has a strained relationship with Raeylnn (Amalia Yoo) over a boy named Lee (Hagan Oliveras). Though Yoo is transferring, I didn’t purchase the sit-down dialog that resolves their tiff. 

Talking of Netflix, all through “John Proctor is the Villain,” the streamer’s wave-making miniseries “Adolescence” stored popping into my thoughts. That harrowing present has scarred mother and father worldwide by depicting the darkish underbelly of contemporary teenage life. Its realism has been praised.

“John Proctor” additionally offers with massive, scary points — OK, not homicide — which are related to younger individuals. However most of the time, the script and manufacturing tidy them up.     

For example, Raelynn’s troubling relationship with violent Lee, the man she’s been seeing for eight months, is choreographed to be a lot simpler to observe than it needs to be. 

And as occasions unfold that would break a small city aside and nearly definitely make nationwide information, the characters follow a sit-com type.

That’s the play that Belflower wished to jot down, and there’s one thing to be stated about humor and lightness protecting the viewers invested. I loved myself. 

However whereas “John Proctor” is an effective time, it’s not a strong one.