By Martin B. Copenhaver

The energizing force of this production comes from the students and, more specifically, the cohort of young women in the cast, each of whom is excellent.

John Proctor Is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower. Directed by Margot Bordelon. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for The Arts, 527 Tremont St, Boston, through March 10.

Brianna Martinez, Jules Talbot, Victoria Omoregie, Haley Wong in the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of John Proctor Is the Villain. Photo: T Charles Erickson

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is more than a historical drama about the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century. It was written as a commentary on current events. First staged in 1953, the play is, by analogy, about another kind of “witch hunt” — the hysteria of the Red Scare in post–World War II America in which many innocent people were wrongly accused of being Communists. Since the play’s premiere, it has been a staple of American literature curricula in high schools and colleges.

Now comes a drama by Kimberly Belflower that contains thematic echoes of The Crucible. It, too, is a commentary on current events. At the same time, the script offers a powerful contemporary critique of the play that inspired it. The summary of that critique is in the title of Belflower’s play: John Proctor Is the Villain. Proctor is the protagonist in Miller’s play who faced death rather than cooperate with the authorities with a lie. Belflower reflects, “I was taught, and almost every single person I know is taught, that John Proctor is this beacon of goodness and the girls are hysterical. And rereading it, I found myself saying out loud, ‘John Proctor is the villain.’”

Proctor is villainous for having had a sexual relationship with young Abigail Williams while she was a house servant for Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth. Proctor later vilifies Abigail as a “whore.” By focusing on these facts, rather than on his refusal to testify falsely against others, Belflower is giving Proctor a #MeToo reckoning with a three-century reach.

John Proctor Is the Villain is set in a high school classroom in a “one-stoplight” town in rural Georgia. The English class is taught by a charismatic young teacher, Carter Smith (played by Japhet Balaban), who is eager to dive into The Crucible with his students. He declares that Proctor is one of the “great literary heroes” ever written.

Okay, we can overlook that grand assessment because it comes from an overly earnest young teacher. But then, in a slow reveal over the course of the show, we become more uneasy with Carter. It begins early on, when he offers to be the faculty advisor for the school’s “Feminism Club.” By the time it is revealed that he had a sexual relationship with one of his students, it is both shocking and, given what we have already sensed about him, not all that surprising. Near the end of the show, when he tells another female student, “You are the only friend I have left in the world,” it is clear that he is an unrepentant serial predator.

Gratefully, John Proctor Is the Villain does not belong to the teacher, or any adult, for that matter. The energizing force of the play comes from the students and, more specifically, the cohort of young women in the cast, each of whom is excellent. As an ensemble, they carry the play. Their characters are navigating the choppy waters of adolescence, teeming with convictions and uncertainty, with sexual curiosity and vulnerability. They are left largely to figure things out on their own with nary an adult — or, at least, any functioning adult — to guide them.

Victoria Omoregie, Jules Talbot, and Haley Wong in the HTC production of  John Proctor Is the Villain. Photo: T Charles Erickson

The term “finding your voice” has become cliché, but in this instance it seems a particularly apt description of what the girls are able to achieve. They speak up when Carter declares that John Proctor is “one of the best characters ever,” and defiantly declare that Proctor “put Elizabeth [his wife] through so much.” At other points in the play, their voices are raised in raucous laughter and even, at one juncture, in loud and lengthy primal screams.

Belflower has a particular gift for capturing the cadences of adolescent girls’ speech. Her sentences are short or incomplete. The pace is hold-on-for-dear-life fast, slowed down, if momentarily, only by the insufficient verbal speed bump that is the word “like.”

Even though the young women emerge in confidence and begin to claim their agency through the course of the play, Belflower portrays them as fully developed characters from the start. She avoids the kind of caricature into which portrayals of adolescent girls often descend. It seems clear that Belflower likes the girls she is portraying and that helps us like them, also.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the two boys portrayed in the play. In contrast to the nuanced portrayals of the girls, the young males are treated more like cartoons. One is defined almost exclusively by his ridiculously loutish behavior, the other is goofy in the extreme. The relatively flat rendering of their characters is distracting, particularly in contrast to the more subtle and shaded depiction of the girls.

The climax of the play comes when the students gather for class presentations on The Crucible. In one presentation, two of the girls, after hammering home the point that Proctor is referred to as a “hero,” while Abigail is a “whore,” eschew words altogether and begin to dance to Lorde’s “Green Light.” The song is a defiant declaration of independence from the grip of an unhealthy relationship: “I know what you did and I wanna scream the truth.” The song starts slowly, like a meditation. The girls’ dance is awkward, almost embarrassing. But then the music accelerates in velocity and ferocity and the girls are lost (and found) in a frenzy of heedless head-banging exuberance.  The teacher, Carter, protests the display, but to no avail, as the other girls join in.

It is a powerful climax to the play and a perfect bookend to the dancing of the girls that opens The Crucible. Both are expressions of freedom and defiance in the face of abuse. At the performance I attended, audience members responded with hoots and hollers.  Other points in the play were greeted with the kind of jeers and hissing more often associated with an old-fashioned melodrama.  Such loud expressions of approval and disapproval — not usually displayed by staid Boston audiences — are clear signs that this play hits home in some powerful ways.

I imagine that The Crucible will continue to be taught in schools, in spite of its blind spots. (Belflower herself says that she continues to admire Miller’s drama.) I can also imagine, however, a classroom in which The Crucible is taught and John Proctor Is the Villain is read alongside it, as a needed commentary on the classic play.

Martin B. Copenhaver, the author of nine books, lives in Cambridge and Woodstock, Vermont.