Professor Butter Beard and Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”
“There is something within chocolate itself, a dark and powerful magic which works on the mind and body.”
- H.Y. Hanna, “Dark, Witch & Creamy”
It is the season of the witch. I stated that earlier this summer when the Stone Church Players mounted a “spirited” production of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” featuring the four witches as masterful puppeteers manipulating the arrogant king-to-be and his power-obsessed wife into actions that would both entertain and create a powerful barrier against the emerging Christian wave into medieval pagan Scotland.
And then our production of “The Crucible” opened this past Friday evening.
Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” relates the story of a late 17th-century New England so gripped by hysteria that they eventually brutally murdered many of their own founding residents. The antagonist is broadly the town of Salem itself, whose residents temporarily lose their sense of community and vilify one another. The inciting incident of the play occurs when the teenage Abigail confesses to witchcraft and frenzied further accusations rapidly spiral out of control. The town, already on the brink of fracture, quickly falls apart and neighbor turns on neighbor both as a way of releasing past anger and also out of fear of being implicated in the terrifying hunt for “witches.”
The American playwright Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” in 1952 following his success of “All My Sons” in 1947 and “Death of a Salesman” in 1949. In writing his “Crucible,” he dramatized (and partially fictionalized) the story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692-93. Miller himself admitted that he wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists.
In 1952, Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets, Paula Strasberg, Lillian Hellman, J. Edward Bromberg, and John Garfield, who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party. Arthur Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan's testimony to the HUAC, the pair's friendship ended. After speaking with Kazan about his testimony, Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, to research the 1962 witch trials. He and Kazan did not speak to each other for the next ten years.
“The Crucible” opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E. G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood. Miller felt that this production was too stylized and cold, and the reviews for it were largely hostile (although The New York Times noted it as “a powerful play [in a] driving performance”). The production won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play. A year later a new production succeeded, solidifying the play into an instant classic now regarded as a central work in the canon of American drama.
Miller wrote, “The Crucible became by far my most frequently produced play, both abroad and at home. Its meaning is somewhat different in different places and moments. I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit. There is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past.”
We chose to mount our current production outside on the historic church campus, chilled by the autumn winds and enhanced with the natural backdrop of an actual 18th-century cemetery. The director of this production, Liz Carlin, wrote in her director’s note: “This did not come from people with evil intentions - that this all happened (this real life event of mass murdering women that actually happened, mind you) was the result of people acting out of their righteous intentions. The Crucible is so relevant to us now for this reason - because now more than ever, we need a reminder of the moral gray area that we all live within. This show offers us a mirror into our humanity, but also acts as a bit of a cautionary tale - a reminder of how much harm can be done when we choose to fight for what we believe in by blindly persecuting what we don't understand.”
Another level of Miller’s masterful play explores the idea that all of us are a complex weave of both good and bad. In considering various ways of portraying this internal knitting, my baker’s soul conjured this “weave” of bewitching dark chocolate with the wicked temptation of pumpkin cheesecake. I baked a double batch and offered them to the opening night audience. I actually overheard one gentleman mutter between bites, “he must be a Scottish witch himself.” High praise indeed!
Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies
One Full Sheet Pan – Roughly 32 Brownies
Pumpkin Cheesecake Filling:
8 ounces full-fat cream cheese
4 Tbsp granulated sugar
4 Tbsp pumpkin puree
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 large egg plus 1 additional egg yolk, room temperature
Dark Chocolate Brownie base:
18 ounces dark chocolate morsels (12 to melt and 6 to fold in)
12 ounces (three sticks) unsalted butter
1 Tbsp instant espresso powder
5 large eggs, room temperature
1 ¾ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp chili powder
Optional: ½ cup of cocoa nibs to sprinkle on the brownies before baking
1) Heat your oven to 350 degrees and line a full baking sheet with parchment paper.
2) Melt together the 12 ounces dark chocolate and the 12 ounces butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Gently whisk to combine, add the espresso powder and stir into a smooth mixture. Remove the bowl and set aside to cool slightly.
3) In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sea salt, cinnamon and chili powder.
4) Make the cheesecake filling: In a standing mixer, cream together the cream cheese and sugar. With the mixer on low, add in the pumpkin puree, salt and spices. Mix to combine. Add the egg and additional yolk and mix to combine. Scrape the mixture into a medium bowl and set aside. Don’t bother to wash the mixing bowl.
5) Return the bowl to the mixture and whisk together the 5 eggs and granulated sugar until pale and thickened. Add the vanilla paste and mix to combine. Add the chocolate/butter mixture and mix on low until thoroughly combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold in the dry mixture until no white streaks remain. Fold in the remaining 6 ounces chocolate morsels. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and gently smooth with a spatula.
6) Using a tablespoon, drop dollops of the cheesecake batter onto the brownie batter. Use a wooden skewer or knife to swirl the cheesecake batter into the brownie batter. Sprinkle the top with cocoa nibs. Bake the brownie for 30-35 minutes until the top is cracked and crusty.
7) Let the brownie cool completely in the pan before cutting into individual pieces.
