A bold new production of Arthur Miller’s classic American drama, The Crucible, is coming to Kent as part of a 2017 tour.

Starring Call the Midwife's Victoria Yeates and Coronation Street's Charlie Condou, the show will come to the Dartford's Orchard Theatre in March, after opening in Hornchurch.

One of the 20th century’s landmark plays, Arthur Miller’s work stands as both a historical record and a political parable for our times. The unrelenting witchhunt and violence, an allegory of the brutal McCarthyism of American politics in the 1950s, resonates in a post-Brexit UK.

The production by Sell A Door Theatre Company and The Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch in association with Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg stars Charlie Condou as the witch hunter, Reverend Hale, and Victoria Yeates as the falsely-accused Elizabeth Proctor.

In a small 17th century New England town, a children’s game has terrifying consequences as allegations of witchcraft break out. Quickly caught up in an unstoppable flow of paranoia, accusation and manipulation, the community is consumed by a climate of suspicion where no person is safe from its neighbour.

Directed by Douglas Rintoul, the artistic director of the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch, is an atmospheric staging of the theatre classic and is a chilling reminder of the frailty of reason in the face of hysteria.

David Hutchinson, artistic director of Sell a Door Theatre Company, said today: “The Crucible was the first production I ever witnessed on stage, and resonates today as it did when it first met an audience as a fundamentally important piece of American theatre that calls into question our highest beliefs and morals."

Watch a trailer for the show here:

DETAILS

The show will be at The Orchard Theatre from Tuesday, March 14 to Saturday, March 18.

To book tickets from £14.50 visit orchardtheatre.co.uk or call 01322 220000.