Wang's production pays lip service to period authenticity while succeeding spectacularly at bringing out the message. The hollowed-out wooden structure functions as a metaphor for prison. Ropes for hanging, accompanied by ominous music, serve as a constant visual motif for the penalty for integrity and holding onto truth. A giant mask is placed where the chandelier is for The Phantom of the Opera, right above the orchestra seat.

Subtlety is not a forte for this production. Actors invariably speak at the top of their lungs and act with exaggerated movements, which was the generally accepted idea of how Westerners express themselves before pirated undubbed movies flowed into China and showed that naturalism is the norm of acting in Western countries.

Anachronistic details abound. For someone who cannot tell a Puritan of colonial America from a Protestant or a Catholic, symbol-rich Catholicism stands in for everything Christian. You'd be much better off if you don't know the sources of the music, which comes from medieval chanting of European monks, the strikingly pagan thumping from The Rite of Spring and, in the case of the native American slave girl Tituba, a folk song eerily similar to the style of some Yunnan-based ethnic minority.

I don't think most Chinese would mind these foibles. But the fact that actresses who play Abigail and the other young girls are old enough to play their mothers is a major distraction and takes a lot of getting used to.

This version of The Crucible ran at the National Center for the Performing Arts from Jan 14 to 18. In a post-show speech, Wang said Miller must be watching from heaven. I'd be interested to know what he makes of the local equivalents of what happened in Salem 300-plus years ago.