The case of the Salem witch trails is still one of the most infamous losses of innocent lives, and has gone down in history as an example of how mass hysteria can compound superstition and lead to fatal consequences. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller's seminal Tony winning contribution to the American dramatic canon, he brings the 1692 community of strong moral purists to life, and allows us to find, in the reflection, the atrocities commuted in the 1950s, in the similarly panicked climate under the shadow of McCarthyism.

A raw and powerful piece of theater, it is a true American classic and a valuable lesson in how judgement can be clouded by paranoia, and that those who hide behind their stiff principals are usually the ones who fall the hardest.