Ghost Stories: Crucible the Musible!

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL Strange Tree’s maidens make a new friend.

When Arthur Miller penned The Crucible in response to Sen. McCarthy, his analogy drew on early American persecution of pagans. Now that proper Chicago has Crucible fever—there’s Steppenwolf’s muscular revival and the play’s selection for One Book, One Chicago—the storefront scene brings things full circle. Strange Tree Group’s ridiculous warehouse pageant Crucible the Musible! is about as deliciously pagan as independent theater gets.

Strange Tree had a sleeper hit with Schwartz’s tight Guignol gasser Mr. Spacky earlier this year. This messy musical spoof is, alas, neither as acute in its satire nor as hermetically contained in its production. Given that The Crucible and its resurgence are so primed for spoofing and this ensemble is so joyously contrapuntal, it could have been a perfect storm. As it is, the chaotic results are inappropriately closer to frat party than pinko party. (Director Klein is also in the cast, which may have taken a toll.)

But the central joke—it’s basically The Crucible as written by Dr. Seuss—still lands. And this coproduction with the poly-jointed women of Aloft Aerial Dance, who do their best work hanging ten feet above the stage, offers plenty of clusterpluck. (Our favorite witch, when about to be burned at the stake, instead did a pole dance on it.) Despite less-than-determined plotting, Musible! offers exemplary pan-century pop fusion. Watching 25 hipsters in Puritan costumes singing the Eagles’ “Witchy Woman” while a contortionist spins in the air is as comically kinky as anything in town at the moment.