Two-thirds of the way through Arthur Miller’s classic play “The Crucible,” the villainous Abigail Williams, who falsely accuses several of Salem’s prominent citizens of witchcraft, abruptly vanishes, leaving chaos and death in her wake.

Where she fled and how she ended up is the subject of “Abigail/1702,” opening on Saturday at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

“Abigail/1702” was written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, whose credits include the TV shows “Glee,” “Big Love” and Marvel Comics and picks up 10 years after the events of “The Crucible.” As the story opens, we find Abigail on the outskirts of Boston working in a pox house, treating plague sufferers. This contradicts the previous, perhaps more believable, legend that she boarded a ship for a tropical location or became a woman of the night. Play director Blake Robison explained why Aguirre-Sacasa went the opposite route.

“Based on my conversations with him, he took that direction because it was the more interesting one,” Robison said. “Drama is about conflict and the possibility of change. Since we remember Abigail as a duplicitous woman, the more interesting dramatic question is can she change, and, if so, how? Is redemption possible for somebody who did something that awful?”

Abigail’s atonement process seems to be humming along just fine, until she’s confronted by the Devil.

“He’s called ‘The Man in Gray,’ but it quickly becomes obvious who he is,” Robison said. “He’s come to collect her soul, because 10 years ago, she made a bargain (“The Crucible” opened with an account of Abigail’s ritual dancing in the forest in an attempt to eradicate her lover’s wife.) He gives her 24 hours to get her affairs in order. It’s a really jarring moment midway through the play. It heightens her redemption quest.”

Robison said when he first read the play, he had “the experience every director wants.”

“I knew Roberto was an exciting writer with a variety of experience, but the play itself is the most important thing,” he said. “I read it in one sitting, and it just knocked me over, and I said to myself, ‘I have to do this.’ ”

One of things Robison admired about the play was how the writing mixed the classical and the contemporary.

“The syntax is old-fashioned, yet the directness of the characters toward each other feels very modern,” he said. “We tend to think of Puritanism as buttoned up, where people keep their real desires hidden. But in this play, people say what they mean and mean what they say. They’re dressed like colonial folks, but they’re walking and talking like us.”

One important final note, or distinction, is that “Abigail/1702,” unlike its famous predecessor, is not an allegory for the current political environment.

“It’s commonly known that Miller was writing about (Joe) McCarthy through the prism of Salem, but this play doesn’t quite do the same thing,” he said. “There’s no political commentary, but it is a modern morality tale, full of issues of faith and forgiveness.”