Saoirse Ronan

It’s two hours before the curtain goes up, and Saoirse Ronan is making a cup of tea in her cramped dressing room. She offers me a cup, though thankfully not the “gross” licorice-flavored kind Ronan is drinking to revive her voice before she takes the Broadway stage as Abigail, the manipulative maid at the heart of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. As the Irish actor, whose first name is pronounced Ser-sha, searches for her favorite green mug, we discuss how Abigail is traditionally played as a teenage seductress who beguiles the noble John Proctor. When the older man later casts out Abigail, she brings the 17th century Massachusetts town of Salem to its knees by accusing Proctor’s wife and others of witchcraft.

At least that’s the way U.S. schools usually teach it, I tell her. “I bet it