John Proctor is the Villain review: Stranger Things star Sadie Sink leads likable, long MeToo drama

One hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission.At the Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street.The loud title of the Broadway play “John Proctor is the Villain” reads like the rare high-school essay that wasn’t written hours before it’s due.It’s a smart and edgy thesis about “The Crucible,” if not exactly a new idea.Yet playwright Kimberly Belflower’s often entertaining, mostly clever, frequently phony dramedy that opened Monday night at the Booth Theatre could have used another draft. The promising play set in a turbulent school plateaus about halfway through after an early dropped bomb, and then falls into old classroom cliches: Girls fighting over a guy and then turning on him, a sweet boy revealing his sensitive side to audience “awww”s and a final presentation day like we’re at “Crucible Akimbo.”Say what you will about Arthur Miller’s 1953 drama — sustaining momentum is not its problem. “Villain,” starring Sadie Sink from “Stranger Things,” is set in a Georgia English class full of hormonal teens studying Miller’s Salem witch trials classic — the main character of which is the accused farmer John Proctor.Their teacher, Mr.

Smith (Gabriel Ebert, a tad too chirpy), tells them that in the writer’s allegory for Sen.Joseph McCarthy’s infamous Communist hunt, the wronged John Proctor is our hero.Then the #MeToo movement hits.

A girl named Ivy’s (Maggie Kuntz) business owner dad is brought down by a female employee for wrongdoing, and another bombshell claim is hurled at an adult who works at the school.Proctor, who in Miller’s play had an affair with 17-year-old “I saw Goody Proctor with the devil!” accuser Abigail and beats his worker Mary, suddenly doesn’t look so praiseworthy to Gen Z kids surrounded by bad men of all ages. Still, not every student in the tiny Southern enclave believes the purported victims.Rifts form and clashes ensue, much as in 17th Century Salem.Of course, none of the murdered villagers ...