A Professional Level Production: Audience members said the set was brilliant; the acting off-Broadway level; the costumes incredibly well-made. From start to finish, this production is top quality.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a test of endurance — emotional, moral, and theatrical. Greenwich Country Day’s Upper School Theatre production meets that challenge with striking assurance. It is taut, haunting, and unexpectedly powerful, the kind of performance that leaves the audience almost speechless at its conclusion. The emotional charge is real, the precision remarkable, and the ensemble’s hard work and dedication unmistakable.
An Unflinching Production
Director Gregory Grene has shaped something far beyond a routine student staging. His vision is clean and direct. Grene described the process as “an extraordinary journey,” noting how the play “still maintains this kind of emotional punch” even after months of rehearsal. The result does indeed hit with that kind of force — a slow-building unease that crests into moments of goosebump-inducing intensity.
What makes this Crucible most compelling is how the young actors rise to meet the material’s weight. They do not merely recite it; they wrestle with it, testing its ideas against their own limits. The effect is not polished perfection, but truth — real, immediate, and profoundly moving.
The set by Erik Johnke and Jonathan De Vries’ sound design serve the play’s atmosphere with admirable restraint. The stripped-down staging leaves no place for hesitation, only conviction. Lighting by Alexander Le Vaillant Freer, spare and focused yet evocative, never deters from the play itself, and Patricia Moran’s costume design treads a deft balance between meticulous homage to the Puritan palette while never descending into costume drama.
The Cast
At the heart of the story is John Proctor, played by Nate Smith, whose performance contains elements of pure brilliance. His moral conflict reads across his face in real time, revealing flashes of defiance and despair that draw the audience into his private reckoning. Lyla Sheedy’s Elizabeth Proctor provides a quiet center of gravity — strong, steady, and deeply believable. Their scenes together are built on restraint and are startlingly touching.
As Deputy Governor Danforth, Steele Barhydt delivers a performance of remarkable authority. His presence commands attention; his calm precision lends a powerful menace to his vision of justice. Sawyer Young skillfully lends the character of Reverend Hale both intelligence and compassion, charting a convincing descent from certainty to sorrow and heartbreak, embodying the play’s moral unraveling. Zach Bostock’s Reverend Parris bristles with anxiety, his voice rising with fear of exposure, while Shep O’Keeffe’s Giles Corey brings flashes of humor that briefly lighten the tension.
Brooklyn Setterberg’s Mary Warren trembles under accusation and guilt — her breakdown and terrifying transformation in the courtroom are some of the production’s most arresting moments. Georgia Dick’s Abigail Williams drives the chaos with chilling precision and compellingly narcissistic fervor.
Supporting roles strengthen the world around them: Adrian Tortoledo Gonzalez (Judge Hathorne) delivers an attack dog ethos masquerading as judicial gravitas; Lachlan Welch (Thomas Putnam) vigorously drives the machinery of accusation to selfish ends, abetted by the stoic Ryan Walmsley as Willard, empowered with an edge of new-sprung authority. Kit Knapp (Rebecca Nurse), Teagan Nygren (Martha Corey), Linnea Shah-Gustafsson (Ann Putnam), Georgiana Platsis (Tituba), Ali Bostock (Mercy Lewis), Annabel Kleinknecht (Betty Parris), Jane Pecorin (Susanna Walcott), and Riya Sharma (in the striking “yellow-bird” moment) each make their presence known, shaping the atmosphere of fear and hysteria with commitment and precision.
Design and Execution
Moran’s costuming is, as Grene noted, “absolutely brilliant.” The muted palette captures the austerity of Puritan life while allowing the actors’ faces — and emotions — to dominate the stage. Subtle touches of makeup suggest weariness and age, while the simple wooden set feels timeless.
De Vries’ sound design builds the tension quietly: the well-timed music, the heavy silences. It’s a design that doesn’t distract — it amplifies.
A Collective Achievement
If The Crucible is about fear masquerading as righteousness, this production unmasks it with discipline and honesty. The ensemble’s timing, diction, and emotional balance give the play a muscular rhythm. Grene sees each scene locking into the next until “the whole script comes alive.” That interconnectedness shows: there are no passengers in this ensemble, only participants in a collective act of excellence.
Greenwich Country Day School’s The Crucible is a triumph of ensemble theatre — raw, brave, and unguarded. It doesn’t ask for forgiveness for its youth; it earns admiration for its courage. The work itself is startlingly powerful, and so are the performances.
The audience doesn’t simply watch this Crucible; they feel it — a shiver that stays long after the
lights come up.
