A SICK child, a few young women acting strangely, and people terrified. Witchcraft, the work of the Devil, they whisper. Tension grows in the fissures of the conflict of interests that people try to conceal here in this isolated place. Accusation is rife. Arrests begin. Some innocent men and women end up hanged.

This is the mood—a terrifying mixture of paranoia, religious conviction, and power—that Arthur Miller depicts in The Cru