Arthur Miller’s 1953 drama _The Crucible_ is a big play — big ideas, big cast, big emotions. In a season of multiple Miller celebrations (last October 17 was the hundredth anniversary of his

birth), Ivo van Hove’s lucid and often mesmerizing production at the Walter Kerr Theatre honors all of those big factors without overwhelming us — unless it’s by the sheer impact of a

company so right in nearly every detail, from the major roles to those less so. That is to say, the play’s best known fact — that in writing a drama about the Salem witch trials of the late

1600s, Miller was really writing about the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s — is here left to our imaginations. Van Hove and his incomparable troupe — led by beautifully felt performances

dancing one night in the local woods. Their presumed leader, Abigail Williams (Ronan, as radiant and compelling a young actress as we have today) insists the dancing was innocent, even under

questioning from the “expert” Parris brings in, Reverend Hale (Bill Camp, as miraculously clear as ever). WATCH ON DEADLINE Abigail earlier had an affair with local farmer John Proctor

(Whishaw, youthful, serious and earthy) that she is eager to resume despite his ruinous guilt and the love he feels for his wife Elizabeth (Okonedo, in a performance whose truthfulness

glistens), who is now pregnant. Hysteria quickly takes over the town and sweeps up others in the growing insanity, including Giles Corey (Jim Norton, in another of his exquisite flights of

gruff solidity). Eventually, the state intercedes in the persons of Judge Hathorne (Shakespeare in the Park regular Teagle F. Bougere) and Deputy Governor Danforth (Ciaran Hinds, _Tinker

Tailor Soldier Spy_ — ever the thoughtful heavy). Van Hove (along with Steven Hoggett, credited with “movement”) limits the suggestive witchcraftery to a few brief blackout moments that

reveal the girls levitating, and some quakey rattling that dislodges the lights. But he has opted for simplicity, setting the play entirely in a drab chamber (designed and lit by his regular

partner, Jan Versweyveld) that does double duty as the drama’s public and private settings. The set is the production’s major misstep, a serious one, with it’s fluorescent lighting and

school-house chairs, a jarring environment for both Miller’s language and Wojciech Dziedzic’s elegantly simple clothes. Even Philip Glass’ underscoring holds back, letting the drama rule.

_The Crucible_ marks van Hove’s second Miller staging on Broadway this season, following his blood-drenched _A View From the Bridge_ last fall. He’s quickly become one of the leading

exemplars of director’s theater in the world, and where others have celebrated it, I have often found his work pretentious and misguided. Not here. For a play that worked so hard to drive

home its contemporaneous message, _The Crucible_ can be a challenge to make work. This is a definitive production.