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Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, Senior Sports Editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures, and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams, and the legendary football Weekly podcast the Guardian bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more a better Help ad.
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Mickey Jo
after seeing this play a total of four times, twice in the US, twice here in London, I can confirm to you that yes, John Proctor is the villain and Kimberly Bellflower is my hero. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a theatre critic and a content creator here on social media and today we are going to be talking about the London arrival of a celebrated Tony Award nominated Broadway play written by Kimberly Bellflower. It is the very buzzy, the very exciting, the very sold out John Proctor is the villain. It is currently enjoying a sold out limited run as part of the Royal Court Theatre's 70th anniversary season. It's very special that this is a part of that anniversary season because the Arthur Miller play the Crucible with which this concerns itself played at the Royal Court Theatre 70 years ago in 1956 and I just think it's really cool that 70 years later to the day audiences are still gathering in the same auditorium and are still enjoying storytelling. It's a very and it speaks to how society has evolved and shifted over all of those years that it can be a play which is, you know, acknowledging the Crucible and what Arthur Miller was saying with it, but also standing in criticism of its attitudes as well from a perspective of intersectional feminism. Now, if you know nothing about this play, I'm going to tell you a little bit about it. We're going to begin with a spoiler free overview before we dig into some more specific themes, at which point there is going to be a spoiler warning because we kind of have to go go there with this one. For those of you who are curious about how it has translated across the pond, I am also going to talk about the subtle changes in the production because this is the same production that has been brought over from New York, as well as the entirely new cast, plus differences that I perceived in the audience response. As always, I'll be sharing my thoughts with you, but I would love to know yours. If you have had the opportunity to see John Proctor Is the Villain Already at the Royal Court Theatre, please let us all know what you thought in the comments down below. And if you'd like to hear more of my reviews, comment. You know what to do subscribe here on YouTube, turn on notifications, find me on podcast platforms. Do whatever you have to do. If you would like to keep seeing my face and or hearing my voice in the meantime, there is so much for us to talk about with this one. Let's discuss John Proctor is
Alex Abnos
immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, Senior Sports Editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures, and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams, and the legendary football Weekly podcast the Guardian bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for More Leadership used
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Mickey Jo
The Villain. So immediately from the title alone, it is clear that this original play is in conversation with Arthur Miller's the Crucible. It is not an adaptation, it's not a recontextualization, it's not a modernization. It's an original story in which students in an English classroom in a small town in 2018 Georgia are together reading the Crucible and responding to it authentically, not necessarily in the way that their teacher had anticipated. This is an indication of palpable shifts in society at the height of the MeToo era and conversations around feminism which are in real time beginning to permeate the local ecosystem. And there are moments of allegorical proximity between the characters in John Proctor as the villain and the Crucible, which these characters all but acknowledge for themselves and all but assign themselves to these roles. But the Crucible is also really only a jumping off point for a lot of other coming of age conversation. Our most central characters are a group of young women, almost all of them close friends with a little bit of emotional baggage at the beginning of the thing that we come to find out about. They are, alongside their study of the Arthur Miller play, trying to establish the school's first feminism club so that they can talk about issues that are affecting them only they can't possibly anticipate in the plays establishing moments how personally the MeToo era is going to have affected them by the end. I want to talk a little more about themes and character, but I think it's important that we discuss the way in which place and time is established here and how we're reminded of it and what it means to this community in particular, because the exact date of this in 2018 and conversation around the prominence of the MeToo era arises eventually. But before all of that it is made very clear to us the kind of school that we are seeing here. Because we open in an English classroom, in a lesson being taught by an English teacher. Only he isn't teaching literature, he is teaching mandated school approved sexual education, one with a significant focus on abstinence and one which is coming for these students significantly later than some of their peers living in different towns and bigger cities. We learn this via one particular student who has recently transferred from Atlanta. She's something of a barometer for us, the audience, in terms of gauging the local temperament with a couple of moments, some of them funny, some of them with a little more weight, when she recoils at something very unusual being said or done, such as when her new friends mention a tangential character and say, well, she's not from here, she's from this other place. And Nell from Atlanta says, isn't that only like 20 minutes away? Though evidencing the very different sensibilities, she also recoils at the way she is spoken to by the school's young guidance counselor, who herself had only been a student at the school around a decade previously, in fact less than a decade. Her name is Ms. Gallagher. She's mid-20s. Meanwhile, even though the other young women don't necessarily perceive the same quirks in small town behavior, they are aware of the place in which they live. And there's a great gag after they call it a one stop light in which one of them excitedly reveals that they've heard they're getting a second stoplight. Meanwhile, we don't necessarily spend all that much time talking about the state of education, but bless you, Kimberly Bellflower, for making sure that that is the context in which we arrive into this story. There are lines as Mr. Smith, the English teacher, is asked to explain why he is the one teaching sex ed, in which he describes recent cutbacks, acknowledges that there is no longer a drama program contextualizing this entire story as vital real world education in a time of underfunding and neglect, which as a former educator I could talk about at length, but I'm not going to now. Let's talk about the MeToo of it all. And there is a somewhat early revelation that figures within the community are beginning to become implicated within the MeToo era, which, if you don't know, and I'm sure you do, was all about women who had been victims of male violence and sexual assault speaking up and making their voices heard and revealing to the world the extent to which this was happening and continues to happen. I do love that they acknowledge within the play that MeToo was not this brand new witch hunt of a concept. That it had actually been going on for several years started in something like 2006. Of course, it's the witch hunt of it all that is going to lead us towards a conversation about the Crucible. And the students pick up on this as well as they are Reading chapters of the book aloud, they can't help but notice how pertinent it is in this current social and political moment. And as we juxtapose scenes in the classroom and meetings of the feminist club, as well as just encounters between these young friends and some former romantic partners, the group of six or seven becomes a microcosm for society. And the way in which individuals can take very different stances on feminist issues, even the way in which a group of women can form very different stances on these issues, because there is this common determination among them in the beginning that they be allowed to talk about women's issues and form a feminist club. They say it's 2018. Things are done differently everywhere. Only when MeToo gets a little closer to home. For some of them, they begin to feel differently. It shifts their perspective because suddenly it's personal. For some of them, this means stepping away from feminism and looking at it through a different sort of filtered lens. For others, it doesn't change anything, or it even makes it more relevant and more uncomfortable, but important to discuss. And we see over the course of the play and in Daniel Taymor's direction, these brilliant moments of awakening and realization and personal growth. And the dialogue is brilliant enough that you can just live in it. And I so love the way that these young adults have been written by Kimberly Bellflower. As someone who taught in a classroom, 16 to 18 year olds for like five years of my life, I love to hear accurate sounding dialogue of those kinds of conversations and the stuff that they were talking about. I love to hear that voice captured authentically and uplifted in the way that it is Here they are met with challenges, including the authority of a couple of teachers, both of whom are, it's worth pointing out, young educators, but they are undeniably the central voices of discussion throughout this play. There are so many scenes where they are allowed to just talk about the way in which these issues affect them without being chaperoned, without being overruled, without being diminished by the narrative, without it being suggested to us, the audience, that there is any insincerity in what they're talking about because of their age. The conversations that they have and the words that they speak and the feelings that they experience are allowed to feel real and fully formed and important. And that, I think, is what has been so empowering to young audience members. We saw it all summer long when the play was on Broadway. So many young audiences walking excitedly out of the Booth Theatre talking about this play. I think this allows young people to be seen in a way that they aren't consistently. And like I said, that dialogue is so good that you could just live in that. But if you study it, especially if you go back for a return visit, you can see over the period of like a few short weeks, the development for a lot of these characters and how they come into themselves. And there's something that Daniel Taymor, as the director, does with these pause moments and with these lighting cues in which a particularly impactful line of dialogue that ends a conversation or a scene lingers in the air, followed by a moment of silence with a bit of a soundscape underneath. And the final emotion of that character that they are processing is spotlight. Or occasionally it's an exchange between two characters, but it feels like these real turning points of discovery and these emotional moments that are going to fuel the flames of their awakening, which is really exciting to watch personally. In addition to the authenticity of the student voice and how much I love the classroom environment setting, I also worship this play because I am so encouraged and thrilled by the concept of a group of young people responding personally and truthfully to a dramatic work. I think I said this the last time I talked about seeing the play on Broadway, but the idea of the audiences of the future reading a play and talking about how it makes them feel and having original opinions about it that defy conventional interpretations of the text is just so exciting to me. It's a beautiful little radical thing that Kimberly Bellflower is writing about here. And I just love the audiences are falling in love with it as much as they are. And make no mistake, it is still having a huge effect on audiences in the uk, even if they are a little quieter for the duration of the performance itself. That is just a UK US sensibility difference. It was also licensed in the US before it arrived on Broadway. I believe it's been licensed here as well. And there have been Drama School productions, at least one that I've been aware of. But a lot of the young audiences on Broadway had done the play, knew the play, so it was more of like a dramatic rock concert for them. But even then, always a more responsive group. There are still some little bubbling up moments among the UK audience, which is a really big deal to be able to achieve because for the most part we sit there silently and then we stand up and applaud at the end. But I promise you, people are having a great time at the Royal Court with this one. And kudos to them for making the front few rows the under 35 tickets, because that's bringing a great energy. Plenty more that I want to say about this, but I do think at this point we're going to have to venture into spoiler territory, especially as we talk about the cast. Let me tell you about the UK company of John Proctor is Villa
Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, senior sports Editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures, and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams, and the legendary football weekly podcast the Guardian, bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more
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Mickey Jo
So we're going to talk about these young characters, but I want to talk about the teachers first. And in general, it feels as though the way the students have been cast has an enormous amount of parity with the Broadway casting. Like they retained a very clear vision for who they wanted these characters to be, and they're very recognizable to their Broadway counterparts. The teachers are quite different. They feel younger, the text is unchanged, but they read just a little bit younger on stage, which kind of reinforces the proximity of their age to that of the students. When this casting graphic was initially revealed and they just had of the different headshots and I saw these faces and I saw Donal Finn from Hadestown. I was like, oh, which of the boys is he playing before? I unfortunately realized that Even though he's two weeks older than me, he is playing the teacher, Mr. Smith. And he is a decent chunk of change younger than Gabriel Vick, who played the role on Broadway, which I think shifts certainly our early perceptions. There is less of a gulf between his age and that of the students. I'm going to remind you one more time. Heavy Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't seen the play yet. Would encourage you to see a version of it before you hear me discuss this next revelation. Those of you who already have seen it or have already read it will know that what we come to find out is that Mr. Smith has, according to one student, Shelby, had a sexual relationship with her. And I've heard a little bit of chatter of people debating whether or not we're meant to believe that. There's never been a question in my mind that it's anything other than the truth. And especially after his final encounter with Ms. Gallagher, when she informs him that she is aware of various stories from his past, ones that she had never really believed. Again, speaking to the culture of moving away from feminism, not believing MeToo accusations because it's a nice young man who, you know, whose family, you know, who is part of the community, who never seemed like the type. And the way Domhnall plays these final few scenes of transformation is such a world away from his portrayal of the early material. He's this very like Mr. Schuster from Glee in the classroom, kind of a vibe, playful teacher using everyone's first names until he doesn't. I so was attuned to this because it's this deliberate tactic that he seems to use when he's talking to Beth and he wants her to feel like a friend when he reaches the point where he even calls her a friend. And though she hadn't questioned texting him and having a close personal friendship with him up to this point, she can finally hear it seems that that sounds a little unusual. And she is reminded of what her friends have told her, that they think it's weird that she texts their teacher. He also, when Shelby first returns explosively to the classroom, calls her Shelby until the lesson takes a turn and she begins to be a little more vocal and alludes to the relationship that they had. At which point the he starts referring to her by her surname. He does the same thing with Ms. Gallagher in reverse. He professionally refers to her in front of the students as Ms. Gallagher, but later on, when they're having a more personal conversation. He calls her Bailey. And it feels kind of manipulative. We can definitely, by the end, see the darkness that lingers beneath the surface with Mr. Smith, with Carter. And we can also see what feel like more attempts at emotional manipulation. Or with Beth when he talks about contemplating suicide. But I like to think that an audience who don't know that this is where we're ultimately going to end up. Are surprised by all of this. Because of the demeanor that he has in the beginning. Because he is goofy and a little charming and charismatic. And without trivializing it, it does, I think, shift things towards the start of the play. Ultimately, we end up in exactly the same place. But towards the beginning, I think it hits a little different when he is a younger, handsome teacher. Also from one former teacher of teenagers to an actor playing one on stage. He does a really great job with the rapport, with the classroom management. And with balancing his passion for the material that he is delivering. With the fatigue of working in challenging education. As does Molly McFadden, who plays Bailey Gallagher, the guidance counselor who herself had, not too many years before, graduated from the same high school. She had had English lessons in the very same classroom. She has the most satisfying arc in this play. It's so fantastic. I spoke about these moments of awakening and realization for the students, but she is participatory in that as well. There's a great comedy moment when she is facilitating an English lesson after he has been temporarily removed pursuant to the accusations that were brought against him. And she's letting Beth, one of the brightest students, take the lead. And she's not really getting involved until she's reminded of feelings that she had when she read the Crucible years before. And she suddenly has a passionate outburst. It's great, but not nearly as great as her triumphant final moments in this play. And her arrival is so tentative. We see her first at the side of the stage, reassuring herself and adjusting her cardigan. And trying to make herself perceived in a professional academic role, conscious of the fact that she is not that much older than the young woman she is talking to, whose proposal for a club she has to deny. By the end, it could not be more different, as she is the one advocating for them and supporting them and protecting them from Mr. Smith, when he seems to be growing more and more frustrated in the play's anarchic, blistering, thrilling final moments. And when she truly stands up to him and steps in his way as two of the girls are performing an interpretive dance based on the characters of Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor in the Crucible. It is so satisfying. It's one of my favorite theater moments of the year, if not my entire life. She does a great job. And again, there's just so much nuance in the way that she approaches this character. At which point we have to talk about all of the actors playing the students. Now Sadie Soverol is playing the role of Shelby. Not only does she have an uncannily similar name, she's kind of a dead ringer for Sadie Sink, who played the role on Broadway. But she approaches it with some very different characterization. I love the energy that she. She finds. She's fascinating to watch once you know what's going to happen in the early scenes when she's being told about Mr. Smith and his wife expecting a baby, when she encounters him for the first time. And there's clearly no intention from her in this moment that she's going to bring anything up, that she's going to mention what happened. But there's a chaotic quality in her delivery that makes her performance feel unpredictable in a way that really works. She is so recognizable of countless young people who I encountered who feel neglected and who feel undervalued and underappreciated within the education system, who feel as though they have been written off and who notice when things like that happen to them, who notice the way in which they are perceived. We are allowed to find out exactly how smart and studious Shelby is before it's implied that she isn't. Before other students are given the credit for things that she has pointed out. We see a scene when she tells Mr. Smith as her. As her return to the classroom is being discussed with him and Ms. Gallagher, that she has already read the play. Later, when she makes reference to something that she read on SparkNotes, he insinuates that she hadn't read the play and she has to defend herself. This being one of the things that kind of sends her spiraling into a truth bomb admission. But she feels, as do the rest of the company, so of that age and so emotionally close to the surface in a way that we know Shelby to be, in a way she knows herself to be. One of my favorite lines of hers is when she talks about star signs and she describes herself as double fire. Huge surprise is I also once again love the way her friendship is played with Raelyn. She is played by Mia James and I love the way she approaches the complexity of this character, this young woman, not nearly as outspoken as her former friend Shelby, but one who wants to go on this journey of self discovery, who has an inclination that there are things about herself that she may want to come to terms with. There is a little hint of a possibility of sexuality to come. But my favorite scenes with her, in addition to a moment that she has where she finally speaks up about something in the Crucible and reveals something about Elizabeth Proctor and the way that she is treated by her husband throughout the play, which feels quite informed by Raelyn's own real life relationship with a rude boy. In addition to that, it's all of the scenes that she has with Shelby and the way they take their time with them. There's a huge thing in the script about pauses and beats and breaths and extended pauses and how long each of those need to be because they go on for a substantial amount of time. This silence that hangs there when Shelby first appears on stage and interrupts a Feminist club meeting unexpectedly and then doesn't quite know what to say. To see these conflicting emotions play out on each of their faces in these kind of moments is so fantastic, culminating in this glorious interpretive dance anarchy that arises at the end of the play. And it's a really great company to the last. I had a moment initially the first time I saw this. I've seen it twice in London now. Once just before the Press Night performance, and then again on the actual 70th anniversary date of the Royal Court Theatre. I had a little bit of a moment with the accents which are a degree or two less authentic sounding than the ones that I heard on Broadway, which is not really a surprise. Certainly by the second time around I'd stopped noticing it. And for me, I think it's more important that the youth of it all feel authentic and it not feel like actors in their 20s playing teenagers. Claire Hughes was one of the first to really impress me. She plays the character of Ivy, who has this challenging arc and who has this sort of a personality shift when accusations are made about her father. Early on in the play, she contributes a really important voice to this conversation about feminism and MeToo. But there was something so genuine about the way that she played some of those early scenes. Holly Haddon Gilchrist plays the brilliant role of Beth, who is this very eager, overachieving student who feels very personally close to Mr. Smith and who struggles to contend with the various accusations which are emerging. First about her best friend's father, then about this teacher who she tried trusts more than perhaps anyone else in the world. Beth is really challenged within the narrative to be the feminist that she claims to be. And you see the weight of that descending on her slowly over the course of the thing, as well as the tension that she carries. Trying to be the best at everything the entire time, trying to get ready for college, trying to make sure her feminism is intersectional enough while also being diligent to her faith. Talking about Lizzo and talking about Taylor Swift. Beth is a great role. She plays it brilliantly. Now, it's mostly the voices of young women that we encounter in this play, but there are a couple of male students as well. Leigh and Mason, played by Charlie Borg and Rhys Braddock. Each of them is making their professional stage debut with this production, which I think is incredibly impressive. Rhys has a couple of winningly charming comedy moments as Mason, who becomes steadily but surely more involved in the feminist club, initially simply because he needs the extra credit, but eventually because he seems to actually care, even if his feelings are a little misplaced and he interprets them a little incorrectly. It's kind of a bare minimum male allyship. But I like that Kimberly Bellflower takes the time to include that in the conversation as well. Charlie is Lee I have such profound respect for, because it's a very difficult character to portray. He is this antagonistic young man. He is the resentful ex boyfriend of Raelyn, who cheated on her with Shelby before Shelby took a leave of. Of absence. And he makes these provocative, incendiary statements in order to assert himself in the classroom and deflect feelings of inadequacy. But you see all of that playing out on his expression, and I just think it's a brilliant performance of a very complex role. Finally, Lauren Ajufo plays Nell, who has transferred from Atlanta. She is, in so many ways, the catalyst of the conversations that unfold over the course of the play. I love the comedy that she brings to it, but also the authenticity that she brings to it. One of my favorite sections of dialogue is when she is hearing the way in which they talk about Shelby. And she talks about overhearing her mother on the phone saying, like, Nell is too much for me right now. Nell is a lot. And saying. I feel like when she says that, what she really just means is Nell's a girl, and I think hers. And the play is one of the most impactful and powerful voices. But Lauren still finds a way to carry the wisdom of all of that with the adolescence of it simultaneously, when she, against her better judgment, develops this infatuation towards Mason and defends him in an argument, even after he said something problematic. When we see her realizing slowly and getting disappointed about the way that she's going to be treated in this different way, different community, and challenging Beth on some of her stances. It's really interesting to see it all play out and see these very real dynamics shift between these characters. It's not the sort of the two dimensional thing of like, well, these two are best friends and these two are best friends and this person wants this person. Like, it feels like real young people whose relationships and whose identities shift slowly in these incredibly formative years. And I am pleased to say that under the direction of Daniel Taymor, this company once again does a fantastic job with these characters. And those have been some of my thoughts about John Proctor as the villain at the Royal Court Theatre in London. If you can get a rush ticket for this, a return ticket for this, do it. It's very sold out. It's been very popular. We are manifesting that this will have a substantial further life, perhaps a West End transfer. You know, I'm going to be there to see it again if and when it does. I think the script is sensational. I think it has so many conversations that aren't being had elsewhere. I think the way that it uplifts young voices is important and remarkable. I also think the direction from Danya Taymor is not something that I specifically celebrate enough, having seen her work on the Outsiders, which was such overt, brilliant direction. It's so interesting to see a production like this. This in which it feels as though her hands are kind of more invisible because she's really just uplifting the characters and the material does a fantastic job. In all of my excitement, I didn't even tell you about the one substantial difference between the UK and US productions, which is the set is the same, but just flipped around the other way for only logistical reasons. What remains is the intense emotional response that I have to the play at the end, those final scenes played with just a little bit more steadiness in that very final moment. This time around, I think in comparison with the Broadway run is still so exciting, so thrilling. You have to go and see this play if you can, Especially if you're a young woman, especially if you're someone to whom these themes will be relevant and personal. So many people have told me that they feel as though this is perhaps the best thing they've ever seen in their entire life. And I get it completely. If you would like to find that out for yourself, see if you can grab yourself a ticket to see it at the Royal Court. If you've seen it already. Please let me know everything that you thought in the comments section down below. I feel like I've only really scratched the surface of this production and its brilliance. If there is more to say, especially anything that I didn't really mention, please share it with us in the comments down below. Try and hide the spoilers if you can. And thank you so much for listening to my thoughts. I hope that you enjoyed I certainly enjoyed sharing them with you. If you did enjoy listening to this this, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube. Turn on notifications so YouTube lets you know every time I share a new review or another theater themed video. Or you can also follow me on podcast platforms. Or if you want to stay up to date with everything that I see and everything that I share online. The best way to do that is to sign up to my free weekly substack email newsletter. You can find that at the link in the description. That is everything I have to say. Thank you for listening. As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. 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Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup I'm Alex Abnos, senior sports Editor from the Guardian. Whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered from one of the fastest growing soccer newsrooms. The Guardian brings you in depth World cup coverage that gets into the winners and losers on and off the pitch. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, a global perspective and a squad of Americans, including me, on the ground with the U.S. national team. Plus, if you want to test your soccer knowledge, try on the Ball. It's a game in the Guardian app and it's really, really fun. And if you're into stuff like this,
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Maybe you could just talk with a slight delay.
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Podcast: MickeyJoTheatre
Host: Mickey Jo (MickeyJoTheatre)
Episode Date: April 9, 2026
Mickey Jo delivers a passionate, in-depth review of “John Proctor is the Villain,” Kimberly Bellflower’s acclaimed play now running at London’s Royal Court Theatre for its 70th anniversary season. Mickey draws from his unique position as both theatre critic and educator—having seen the play four times, both in the US and the UK—to provide a highly informed critique. The episode explores the play’s themes, characterizations, production comparisons between Broadway and London, and the resonance for young audiences, especially in the context of #MeToo and contemporary feminism.
70 Years Full Circle
Not a Recontextualization, but a Dialogue
Premise & Structure
Small-Town Culture & Educational Realities
The Play’s Feminist Core
Complex Group Dynamics
Believable, Unfiltered Dialogue
Directorial Highlights
Reception & Audience Engagement
Mr. Smith
Ms. Gallagher (Molly McFadden)
Shelby (Sadie Soverol)
Raelyn (Mia James)
Ivy (Claire Hughes)
Beth (Holly Haddon Gilchrist)
Nell (Lauren Ajufo)
Leigh (Charlie Borg) and Mason (Rhys Braddock)
The Value of Young Audiences
Empowering a New Generation
Director Danya Taymor’s Craft
On the play’s purpose:
On youth voice:
On MeToo’s resonance:
On teacher dynamics:
On Ms. Gallagher’s arc:
On theatrical impact:
Mickey Jo’s review frames “John Proctor is the Villain” as a landmark play for young audiences, feminist discourse, and contemporary theatre. He passionately encourages listeners (especially young women) to prioritize seeing it, underscoring the unique energy, authenticity, and radicalism of Bellflower’s work and Taymor’s direction. This is a must-see for lovers of new theatre and anyone interested in stories at the intersection of generational change, gender, and the legacy of canonical works.
For further reviews or discussion, Mickey Jo invites feedback in the YouTube comments or on podcast platforms.