Review of John Proctor is the Villain with Chiara Aurelia

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I’ve worked at an Off-Off-Broadway space for about five years now, but because I don’t live in New York City (god, I wish I could own a nice brownstone in the city, but we’re never probably getting to that point), my interactions with the theatre world can be quite limited. However, when I do come up to New York, I try to get as many theatre tickets as I can.

For this trip, in August 2025, it was a bit last minute so I waited to buy the tickets for shows. I was waiting to see if I landed a job by then, as I was unexpectedly unemployed for a while, but I didn’t! I did end up finding one but was scheduled to start in late August 2025, so this was my last venture around the city for a while.

I’ve known about John Proctor is the Villain for the longest time and wanted to see it, but my life and work schedule never really perfectly aligned with it. So when I was coming up for this trip, I looked to see what was available when it came to tickets and ended up purchasing a ticket. It was a shame I missed Sadie Sink, but I made peace with the fact I couldn’t make it before she left.

Through TodayTix I only ended up paying 60 something dollars for an orchestra seat. It blew my mind when I saw that possibility. I was sitting in Row O, closer to the wall, but I genuinely thought it was such a good seat. I saw everything from that angle and only missed a few entrances when they weren’t through the right door, but all in all I would recommend this row and seat on the far right side of the orhcestra.

A group of high school girls in rural Appalachian Georgia reckon with feminism, patriarchy, and resistance through the lens of The Crucible.

So major trigger warning for this play (which can be considered a spoiler, but I think it’s an important one): this is a play that discusses #MeToo and the rape/sexual assault of women, including minors. This is critical to discuss upfront because I can imagine someone who has been in a similar situation and hasn’t sorted through their trauma might find this difficult to get through.

Anyways, as my heading above suggests, this play takes place in rural Appalachia. We meet the core friend group of friends at a local high school, who are thinking about boys, college, and drama happening around the school. We often see them in their literature class, which is led by the beloved and charismatic Mr. Smith, a darling around the town.

The girls also want to start their own feminism club, which pushes back against the ideals of the small town they live in. All they know is a sort of Christian feminism, which is challenged by the arrival of the character Nell, who comes from Atlanta and even got sex education way before the other girls. Her inclusion in the friend group creates a ripple effect because she provides a completely different perspective to what’s going on here.

One of the girls, Raelynn, has recently broken up with her boyfriend, who apparently cheated on her with her best friend Shelby. Her ex-boyfriend, Lee, is someone we see in the play, but he’s not too bright and often represents the archetype of the alpha male who can’t understand why women fight for their rights.

We learn about Shelby in passing, but she doesn’t appear until the halfway point of the play. Something major happened to Shelby, as she took three months off of school and went to live with her aunt in Atlanta, but what exactly happened to her is a mystery until she herself reveals what happened in an explosive moment.

There’s also something major in the town happening; one of the girls’ parents, specifically Ivy, has been accused as a part of the #MeToo movement. As more women and girls come out against him, she refuses to acknowledge how he might have actually done something terrible to these women, leading to even more complicated discussions among the girls about who we can and cannot trust, as well as when you have to take a hard stance.

There’s more to the play, but I’m avoiding any big spoilers. All of this happens in a tight 100 minutes (there is no intermission), and the transitions between scenes are quite brilliant too because of how they reveal the mental state of characters and what they’re actually feeling.

And I have to say: the final scene in this show blew me away. I knew what it was going into it, but it was such a climax and incredibly well done that I started crying. I had experienced something similar to what Shelby went through, albeit not as bad, but I could relate to the feelings she had and how terrible the situation was in general. To see that on stage and her release/defiance—that was powerful.

Overall Thoughts

I already mentioned how powerful I thought that last scene was, but as someone who is a year older than the girls in the play, I could really see how the world of this play was genuinely rooted in their experiences. The popular culture references, the #MeToo movement, and so much more was what I had experienced around the same time as these girls.

The discussions around The Crucible were also really interesting! I had to read The Crucible in high school English and we also never brought up what the girls were saying about it. John Proctor was hailed as a hero in American drama, but it’s time to revisit who we call a hero when they actively harmed the women and girls in their lives.

I do really recommend this play. I looked around the audience and wasn’t surprised to see a lot of younger people hanging out around, but a good mix of older and middle-aged folks as well. I saw a handful of understudies for some roles, but Chiara was on,. Everyone did a fantastic job with the material—I was blown away at how good the acting was from everyone.

See it if you can! I did really like this a lot. They extended twice, and I’m so glad they did or I would have never gotten to see this.

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