Soaring prices be damned, Broadway may nonetheless be experiencing some kind of youthquake. Following on the heels of a successful Rachel Zegler-led revival of Romeo and Juliet, which supposedly broke records for the greatest share of under-25 ticket buyers for a Broadway show, another non-musical from the theatrical canon has a gen Z update of sorts, also featuring a familiar yet youthful face. Sadie Sink, best known for Netflix’s Stranger Things, stars in John Proctor Is the Villain, which turns on the ubiquity of The Crucible in high school English classes.
But the show, from Broadway-debuting playwright Kimberly Belflower, is not a strict retelling of that Arthur Miller classic. Proctor takes place in a “one-stoplight town” in Georgia, where beloved teacher Carter Smith (Gabriel Ebert) has just saved the high school’s nascent and endangered feminism club by agreeing to serve as its administration-handling sponsor. Overachieving and excitable Beth (Fina Strazza) is delighted, especially now that she’s befriended Nell (Morgan Scott), a recent transplant from Atlanta who’s even more up on intersectional-feminism discourse than she is. Two more founding members, Ivy (Maggie Kuntz) and Raelynn (Amalia Yoo), seem like they may be involved in the club more out of loyal friendship – which is just what Raelynn needs in the aftermath of a recent breakup.
