[spoilers!] Richard Armitage working; John Proctor topless

[Same warning on spoilers as previously. Don’t read this if you have yet to see the play.]

John Proctor (Richard Armitage) washes his upper body at the beginning of Act Two of The Crucible. Source: Something About Love (A).

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Another much commented moment in Yael Farber’s production of The Crucible has been the “Armitage topless” scene near the beginning of Act Two. Indeed, it was the first piece of information about the production to break on the first night of previews. To me, this piece of the play was one of the more evocative, if not the most evocative moment, of the entire piece.

Much has been said in reviews (both positive and negative) of the scene changes. They are moody, contemplative, atmospheric, rhythmic, symbolic, and set the background for the scenes they precede. Proctor’s shirt removal happens on the cusp between a scene change and the beginning of Act Two, and so in order to explain why it is so evocative and emotional, I need to say a bit about the transition.

This scene change begins with the cast carrying in the implements of a colonial house. The house is shadowy and mostly dark. Elizabeth Proctor (Anna Madeley) brings in a large basin and a ewer of water, and pours the water into the ewer; other cast members bring in a table and chairs and a dish with rising bread dough, a small brazier that stands in for the house’s hearth, and a table with cooking implements, a lamp, and a pot that will be the Proctors’ dinner. As the change opens, Elizabeth moves from the water, which is placed directly at the front of the stage, to the table, where she kneads the dough for a time. Then she moves to the side table, and uses a long wick to transfer the light in the lamp to start the brazier. Finally, she tastes the stew in the pot before moving off stage, where we hear her humming (what is presumably a lullaby for her sons). This piece of the change I will discuss more fully when I talk about Madeley’s performance, because it is the first chance we have to grasp her characterization.

At this point, Proctor enters from the rear of the stage, carrying a lamp before him in his left hand, a rifle (tja) in his right, and a whip in his pocket. He goes to the table, sets down the lamp, unloads the rifle, and then takes the whip out of his pocket. Just at the point at which he’s about to set it on the table, he hears his wife humming from off-stage, and that awareness affects his posture. He takes off his jacket and scarf, and moves toward the kitchen implements. First, he seems to warm his hands briefly over the fire; then, he moves to the side table and tastes the stew and corrects the seasoning (I wrote about that moment in the script here), and then moves to the basin of water.

The lights rise, and Proctor removes his (tunic) shirt, pulling it off from the shoulders, and thus naked from the waist up, kneels to the floor to wash himself. It’s so simple, and a nearly perfect moment.

Now: I’m not saying that no one responds to this in terms of its most obvious valence (beefcake Armitage) and I am sure that this is one aspect of the effect the director wanted to achieve — because boy, do you find yourself watching what he’s doing intently. Indeed, once this piece of the production was known, fans exchanged notes on which seats are best from which to view the spectacle (F15 stalls is the closest). One thing that’s interesting is that despite fan awareness that this will happen, big segments of the audience are clearly not expecting it, and Armitage pulls his top off so quickly and smoothly that you can feel a sudden group inhale on that side of the theater if you’re sitting close enough. So the disrobing certainly has the effect of provoking our appreciation of the nude male figure with the usual concomitant responses of the involuntary nervous system.

I sat in the F 18 or 19 seat three times, so I saw this moment from very close range during those performances, and then twice more from a slightly greater distance, at twelve feet or so from the 90 degree perspective shifts on both sides (C8 and C19). The moment is gorgeous from any perspective, and we see different elements of Armitage’s body from any of them. In the front we see his upper chest most clearly, which is in good shape without being body-builderish, and his broad shoulders, along with a light but very masculine covering of hair. From this perspective, his waist is caved in as he bends to wash and you can see the incipient trail of body hair from his lower stomach very faintly. From the side, however, one sees the curve of his waist, which emphasizes the muscularity and strength of his shoulders and upper arms, and even more decisively, the viewer sees the movement of all of his back muscles. The profile view also underlines the powerfulness of his thighs and buttocks. In short, from every vantage point on Armitage’s body we see a combination of masculinity, power, and the harmonious working together of curves and muscles.

The question is, though, what do we see when he disrobes, and this is why the movement is so evocative. For Proctor is a farmer who’s worked all day and now wants to wash himself off before dinner. And Armitage goes at this with the muscular energy that comes with fatigue — he kneels before the basin, cups water in his hands and brings it up over his face, then over his head, dousing himself. He gasps all the while — as the water touches his face for the first time, as he leans into the basin, resting his right elbow and forearm on the bottom, and as he then splashes more water past his head and over his shoulders. (You see the water traveling down his back from the side perspectives as well.) He scrubs at his shoulders and his upper arms and particularly at his back and the space between his shoulder blades with a will — to eradicate dirt, to get rid of sweat and, one feels, to displace a certain amount of anger or frustration.

For there’s a tension in Proctor foreshadowed by his washing — a tight emotion that spans the axis between anger, exhaustion, frustration, and determination. Eventually, he stops washing and leans into the basin, resting on his forearm, his head close the water — and he gasps out again a sort of resignation. At that point, we hear Elizabeth asking why Proctor is so late, and as he turns to answer, grabbing a rough towel from a chair behind him and drying off his chest, the scene begins. As it moves on, Proctor puts his shirt back on and goes to the dinner table.

Armitage uses the washing here to make Proctor into the rough, determined character he is — setting up the tension of a man who is proud of his work and proud that he can make his body do his his will and who will do anything for the wife he has wronged, even as she is unable to accept his labor in place of the feelings she demands. Seeing Proctor naked, washing himself, then, lets us see the farmer stripped down to his essential acts and emotions. We love Armitage’s body, but even more we’re drawn into the emotional life of Proctor who sees himself as simple and hardworking and yet, no matter how much he exerts himself and how completely he tries to wash away the grime of the day, can’t seem to do quite enough to please her. His energetic scrubbing will never fully remove his sins, and the gasp at the end is one not only of physical exhaustion, but also of resignation in the face of dirt that will never go away.

~ by Servetus on September 1, 2014.