The wind rattled the single-paned windows of the 19th-century building. The trees, stripped of their foliage, stood in spidery outline against a harvest moon. And inside the Northwood Masonic Hall, men and women grappled with the realities of good versus evil.

“The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s tale of betrayal, lies and the hysteria surrounding the Salem witch trials has raised questions among the actors of the Northwood Theatre Workshop, and director Kevin Barrett hopes the fall production of “The Crucible” will get audiences thinking as well.

Miller’s script centers on John Proctor, a farmer in the Salem area in the 1600s who had an affair with a servant girl, Abigail Williams, seven months previously. He had broken it off to try and make amends with his wife Elizabeth. But Williams, spurned, leads the original “witch hunt,” accusing innocent women of witchcraft and getting the town caught up in her lies. Proctor, though flawed, is the “voice of reason” in his community, Barrett said, and ends up paying a terrible price.

The play, with a copyright of 1952, was a moral compass for Americans during the McCarthy era, and remains one today, Barrett said. “Hysteria — it’s all about who’s the loudest,” he said.

But “The Crucible” also helped has him to reexamine his own ideas of evil, he added. “Even people we think are evil aren’t always ‘evil’ — they have beliefs and are protecting those beliefs,” he said.

Lead actors in the production include Todd Gregory as the Rev. William Parris, Dale Gregory as Elizabeth Proctor and Dan Johnston as the Rev. Hale.

But there are no “small” parts in “The Crucible,” Barrett said, since every role is charged with emotion. Barrett drew from some of his “regulars” to assemble the cast. Rich Hurley, who was last cast as Victor Fleming in “Moonlight and Magnolias,” a comedy about the writing of “Gone With the Wind,” will play the tormented Proctor. Sarah Smith, the stoic secretary in “Moonlight,” will play the demanding role of the duplicitous Abigail. Abigail is “charismatic and manipulative,” Smith said during a rehearsal break. “She’s still in love with Proctor, and she’s doing whatever she can to be with him. Abigail’s emotions switch so fast (that at) the end of the rehearsal, I’m exhausted.”

While she plays Abigail as the person she’s become, Smith also thinks about where she came from. Abigail saw her parents killed by Indians and was taken into an uncle’s home, she said. “She doesn’t fit in, and she wants someone to pay attention to her,” Smith said. “Everybody can relate to that.” Proctor, Hurley said, is “the voice of reason in an insane situation. Nobody wants to take the time to look at the situation rationally.”

Hurley said the role required some introspection. “I try to look at the decent, rational side of things,” he said of his character’s motivation. “But I’ve done things wrong. Who am I to judge others?”

He admires Proctor, Hurley said. “In the face of adversity, even death, sometimes we have to stand by our word and do decent things. To die for an ideal, that’s something noble.”

“The Crucible” will be presented Friday through Sunday, Nov. 6-8, at the Northwood Masonic Hall at the intersection of Routes 202 and 43. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. For more information, call 339-2080.