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The hangman’s noose descends upon Macgowan Hall next week in the form of “The Crucible,” playwright Arthur Miller’s parable of paranoia and persecution set in Puritan Massachusetts.

Miller’s timeless tale, based on the Salem witch trials but analogous to just about any time of uncertain sanctions, is a perennial favorite of playhouses and schools across the country.

Theater directing graduate student Brian Kite can’t place when “The Crucible” was last performed at UCLA, but he certainly thinks now is as good a time as any to perform it again. Kite and his cast of third-year undergraduate actors will relive Miller’s maelstrom March 10 through 13.

“The play’s an extension of our acting training,” said junior transfer student Adam Kalesperis, commenting on the play’s long-standing popularity with actors, “because, more than many other plays, it is very character-driven.” Kalesperis stars as John Proctor, the play’s flawed hero.

Proctor severs an adulterous affair with Abigail Williams (Antonia Raftu), a young servant who once worked in the Proctor household. But “a promise is made in any bed,” and the scheming, delusional Abigail resolves to see that promise exacted.

Powerless before Abigail’s vengeance, the village of Salem is whipped into a witch-hunting frenzy, and Proctor’s long-suffering wife Elizabeth (Coco Kleppinger) soon stands among the ever-increasing number of innocent townsfolk accused of witchcraft and condemned to hang. Proctor must come clean and face his sullied past as he attempts to save his wife and redeem his soul.

“The Crucible,” first produced in 1953, helped cement Miller’s place alongside Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neil as America’s foremost tragedians of the modern age. The play, perhaps more so than Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” is widely considered the quintessential American play.

“Although set in an earlier age in American history, ‘The Crucible’ has an ageless quality and it speaks to the times,” said Kleppinger. “(The play) directly shows a lie being told, the truth being twisted and put on trial. … It exposes the type of corruption that we’re all familiar with and see about us everyday.”

There is little doubt that “The Crucible” is one of the great plays of our age, or any age for that matter, and Kite chose to direct the play for that very reason.

“I wanted simply to work with a great play,” said Kite. “With Arthur Miller, I know the play is great, so I can focus on everything else. I can’t say … something’s not right here, or it’s too long or it’s boring. If something’s not working, it’s my fault.”

And if actors are to be believed, audiences are in for a hell of a time.

“Come watch ‘The Crucible,’” said deadpanned Paul Peglar, who plays the conscience-stricken Rev. John Hale. “We’re well hung.”