Senior trio stages final production for Morse, ‘The Crucible’

BATH

Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” opened Thursday in Morse High School’s Montgomery Theater, and by the time the curtain goes up Saturday for the final performance, it will signal the last time Dana Douglass, Jen Dolloff and Clare Tolan will take the stage together.

Drama director and ninth grade English teacher Kevin O’Leary calls them the “three sisters of Morse Drama.”

“These senior girls have given to me and to the Morse High Drama Family for four years. They have been in every show save one. Together they share over 30 productions, most working side by side,” O’Leary said.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of “The Crucible’s” first production, which was considered a flop. It wasn’t until its second production a year later that Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials — an allegory to rampant McCarthyism during the height of America’s communist Red Scare — found triumph.

According to O’Leary’s program notes, “Writing ‘The Crucible’ cost Miller a friendship; producing ‘The Crucible’ brought Miller a hardship. People didn’t get it at first because they didn’t see it at first. It was too close, too familiar, too American.” Miller was questioned in 1956 by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities and held in contempt of Congress because he wouldn’t give up the names of his friends.

That’s the same type of friendship, loyalty and love that have made the “three sisters” a core of the “Family,” as students call those involved with Morse Drama.

“To be honest, I cast them in their roles in ‘The Crucible’ four years ago. Not really, but I knew that this was the play in which I wanted them to go out. They are precisely cast in that their dramatic sensibilities and through lines match perfectly their respective characters,” O’Leary said.

In an email to The Times Record, the girls described what it’s been like to rehearse ‘The Crucible’ in the last months of their senior year.

Dana Douglass, who plays Abigail Williams, the ringleader of the witchhunt, fell in love with her character. “I had a strange fondness for this indomitable, cunning young girl,” she said.

“‘The Crucible’ is the story of a warped time, in which dozens of innocent women and men were hung and burned for the crime of witchcraft. These people believed Satan came through the pure and forced evil upon all that is good. Abigail Williams is a true whirlwind of a character: manipulative, conniving and, in her own twisted mind, absolutely justified in her actions,” Douglass said. “She controls this world of corruption that Miller creates.”

At the mercy of Abigail Williams’ accusations is Elizabeth Proctor, played by Jen Dolloff.

“I’ve played endless characters, but I’ve felt the most attached to Elizabeth Proctor,” she said.

“I started in the drama program as a freshman playing a princess and worked my way up. My sophomore year I played the part of Chrissy in ‘Dancing at Lughnasa.’ I’m not ashamed to confess that I’ve played a lot of evil characters. Last spring I played Hecate in ‘Macbeth’ where I was the manipulator of evil and in the winter I was a devious harpy in Cassia Tirrell’s ‘Foreverland.’ Now I play the role of a ‘convented Christian woman’ who has been struck with tragedy.”

Clare Tolan is cast as Mary Warren, Elizabeth Proctor’s housemaid and an officer of the court that tries the Salem women for witchcraft. The role challenged her to portray her character’s submissiveness when she’s used to much stronger roles, like Lady Macbeth.

She said, “Mary Warren is my favorite character in ‘The Crucible’ because she shows how good-hearted people can be swept up in terrible behavior. Quickly, she begins to feel guilty as innocent people are sentenced to death for witchcraft, and she makes an effort to expose Abigail’s lie.

“However, when confronted with accusations and death herself, she is unable to stick by her idealism,” Tolan said. “Mary comes across as a sympathetic character, because most people can relate to her moral dilemma. Everyone wants to stand by what they think is right, but it becomes difficult when one has to choose between her ideals and her well-being. In this respect, Mary is very weak.”

Such thoughtfulness and dedication to getting inside the motivations of their characters is something O’Leary will miss when the girls graduate from Morse in June.

But it’s more than that.

“I can count on one finger the times they have missed a rehearsal in the past fours years,” O’Leary said. “Their dedication to the theater and their ferocious loyalty to the Family and to me have been unprecedented. Time and again, they will pull me aside to say ‘We’ll stay later, Mr. O’Leary or ‘We’ll run that again, Mr. O’Leary.’ In the theater we call it ‘having the chops.’ And these ‘three sisters’ of Morse Drama have and have always had — the chops.”

“The Crucible,” which opened Thursday, runs again tonight and Saturday, May 18. The curtain is 7 p.m. sharp. The cost is $10 for the general public and $5 for students and senior citizens.

rshelly@timesrecord.com