The Michael Pilch Studio’s production of The Crucible simmers with a fervent tension, delivered by brilliant performances and a minimalist set that focuses on the human tragedy of the witch-trials, where it is the townspeople that create their own despair.

We are transported to the world of Salem, 1692-3, where dancing shapes clad in white spin around an intimate, quaint stage, backdropped by a ghostly veil. The set design conjures an image of the afterlife, the concept of Hell an ever-present idea throughout the play. The stage is alive with movement and firelight, until a girl topples, a fall that marks the start of this retelling of the deadliest witch-hunt in the history of colonial North America.

We are introduced to one of the town’s young girls, and main accuser in the trials, Abigail Williams (Georgina Cotes), who during questioning by her uncle, the town preacher Samuel Parris (Rufus Shutter), insists the girls were only dancing in the forest. Abigail’s performance is a standout in the show, teeming with petulant rage while harbouring a darker, scheming edge. The preacher suspects witchcraft, and summons Reverend Hale (Ezana Betru) to investigate, at which Abigail threatens the other girls to ‘stick to their story’.

Amid the growing tensions, John Proctor (Nathan Harris) enters the scene, a weight to his shoulders and a gravity to his stance that foreshadows an unhappy ending. Through his interactions with Abigail, we find out they had an affair while Abigail was his maid, and the girls were dancing to summon a curse against Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth (Lucia Mayorga), a truth that never comes to light.

Over the course of the play, we see Proctor’s breaking down, as his wife is accused of witchcraft by a jealous Abigail, and as his attempts to dispel the rumours lead to his own accusation, and the uncovering of his affair. His fate as a damned man is sealed when he refuses to sign his confession. In a scene pulsing with anguish, he breaks down in court, wailing at the judges: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

Other standout performances including Betru as Reverend Hale, with a solemn gravity, and Shutter as Parris, a respected preacher decimated to a terrified outsider. The simplistic lighting and sound design allow the audience to focus on the tragedy unfolding, every silence heavier, every sound a drop in still water. At the play’s closing, as the Reverend begs Elizabeth to convince Proctor to confess, the quietness lets the final words wash over the audience: “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him”. In choosing to hang rather than confess and accuse other townspeople, Proctor upholds his integrity and morals and puts an end to the madness of the witch-hunt.

Charlie Lewis's second directorial project of the term (I know, it doesn't seem physically possible does it, like eating three Weetabixes) is every bit as devastating as his first, Oleanna. If anything, it's an even greater achievement, as Arthur Miller's The Crucible is three hours long, has a huge cast of characters, and is written in an archaic American dialect that automatically makes it more remote than Mamet's realistic tones.

But Lewis's company, Boulevard Productions, has become something of a specialist purveyor of fine American drama. They're experts. Last term they gave us Annie Baker's Circle, Mirror, Transformation. What all these plays have in common is not just their transatlantic origin, but an intense, emotional crisis that strips away the outer layers of human social behaviour, revealing the passions that surge below the surface. And Lewis has shown, time and again, that he can devastate audiences with his staging of those passions.

He's also got an uncanny gift for getting American drawls out of his actors that sound so convincing you can almost name the road, never mind the State, they're supposed to come from. So it's quite remarkable that, this time, in mounting one of the most famous American plays of the 20th century, Lewis has decided to dispense with any American accents at all. Instead, the townsfolk of Salem, Massachusetts, speak with Irish, Scottish, English, Bajan and other accents. The effect, rather than undermining Miller's script, propels it to new heights of meaning and relevance.

Here's why.

Miller wrote The Crucible (which is ostensibly an account of the Salem witch trials of the 1690s) as a direct allegory for the McCarthy communist witch hunts of the 1950s. They even have the word 'witch' in common. But McCarthyism is about as relevant today as Fredric Wertham. So, by prising off the US voices, Lewis has liberated this play from the confines of allegory, and given it universal relevance. Instead of a thinly-veiled portrait of communists being forced to rat on each other, it becomes a tragic depiction of personal values, the coercive powers of the ruling classes, and the value of truth when all else has been taken away. Rather than being something we merely observe, this Crucible is one in which we all boil.

The set, designed by Ben Adams, is deceptively simple but pregnant with implied meaning. A humble, off-white backdrop that merges with the stage floor, it feels like we are inside one of the homespun shifts of the local women. And patches on that garment turn into windows, recesses and dungeon bars. Apart from that, the only other elements are three, foreboding ropes suspended from the ceiling, waiting to hang innocents. The lighting, by Alexandra Russell, chimes perfectly with that naked set: a few spots, gently dimming, intensifying, tightening or broadening in lockstep with the mood of the play.

And the cast, even in their multinational voices, produce an incredibly coherent, pulsating performance that winds the tension tighter and tighter throughout, and releasing at key points in explosions of terror and revelation. At the end of Act One, the sight of the 'children' Abigail and Betty screaming in fake agony as they pretend to be possessed puts your hair on end. In Act Three, the flawed hero of the play, John Proctor (Nathan Harris), reveals he has 'known' Abigail (an affair that really is the source of the entire, State-sanctioned massacre), and it's a moment of deathly, damning admission - matched in intensity only moments later when his wife Elizabeth (Lucia Mayorga) has to make the terrible choice between betraying her husband to his death or telling the truth. But for me, the most wrenching moment of the whole play came in the final scene, when the elderly, principled Rebecca Nurse is led away to be hanged. She stumbles on her way to the gallows, and apologises with the explanation, 'I've not yet had my breakfast'.

What emerges from this sustained display of human suffering is the terrible hopelessness of resistance when faced with the prejudice of an unfair, superior power. If you confess, they'll discredit you; if you don't, they'll kill you. There's no escape. If that sounds depressing, don't be put off. The Crucible is like a combination of Witchfinder General and Joan of Arc. It's also one of the most thrilling, finely judged productions of this endlessly remarkable term.