ROBYN SASSEN
Yael Farber (centre) directing Rebecca Saire (Ann Putnam) and Adrian Schiller (Reverend John Hales) in The Crucible.
In line for the Milton Shulman Award for best director, Farber is vying against directors Stephen Daldry, Jeremy Herrin and Ivo van Hove. Previous winners in this category include Sean Mathias, Trevor Nunn and Deborah Warner; performers including Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Dorothy Tutin and Judi Dench as well as playwrights Alan Bennett and Harold Pinter have been recognised by this award in the past.
Established in 1955 by the newspaper’s arts editor, Sydney Edwards, the award unequivocally represents the cornerstone of theatre. With categories named for former London Evening Standard staffers and critics, it is coveted by the industry and audiences alike.
Henry Hitchins, the Evening Standard’s theatre critic and one of the award’s judges, described Farber’s Crucible work as “astonishing”. In his review, he wrote “[it] has a bold simplicity yet grips like the most complex thriller. Miller’s vision of the Salem witch trials, which convulsed colonial Massachusetts in the 1690s, was intended to draw attention to the political repression that scarred America in the 1950s. It could just as soon be interpreted as a picture of how modern religious fundamentalism can strangle reason, tolerance and individuality.
“Farber makes the play feel immediate; the performances pulse with bruising physicality.”
Farber, who rose to become a prominent director in South Africa while still a student at Wits in the early 1990s, recently shocked Grahamstown, Johannesburg, Edinburgh and London audiences with her lurid local interpretation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. She subsequently directed a new work, Nirbhaya which recounts the gang-rape of a female medical student on a Delhi bus.
Farber told SAJR that The Crucible was among her favourite works. “I’ve loved it since I read it as a 13-year-old. The Old Vic had the rights to the script. They had seen my two most recent works, Nirbhaya and Mies Julie and agreed to my directing it. The Crucible sadly retains its extraordinary relevance – almost six decades since it was written, ” she adds.
While there have been explorations of both of these works travelling to South Africa, “this remains to be seen”, adds Farber.
* The 60th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards is at the London Palladium, November 30.
