Incident at Vichy
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,Dramas & Plays,United States
Incident at Vichy Details
In a small and dark room, nine men are assembled under a shadowy pretext. As tension builds, the men are questioned: are they the sort of people that the new Nazi regime considers "inferior"?
Reviews
Arthur Miller jas never been afraid to s[peak out. In 1948, Ella Wheeler Wilcox said, "To sin by Silence when we should soeak out makews cowards out of men". She could not have been speaking of Arthur Miller, as that was the yeare that "incident at Vichy" premiered. And if silence is a sin, Miller is sitting in heaven on the right hand of god with plenty of parchment, a full ink well and- l;et's face it- a MacBook Pro. During the Occupation of France during World War II, the Nazi's established the city of Vichy as a place to "check papers" and to deport hundreds of thousands of people by grain to south east Poland to be exterminated. This play moves without a break- yes, the audience is just as much prisoners as the dozen or so men who wait to be interrogated on stage. WE get to know them all, but some much better than others and we learn that one of our favorites will no doubt be gassed within days.He is a Jew in southern France with bogus papers. He had a good hiding place with his wife and children but ventured out that morning to try to find codeine for a tootch ache that had become infected in his wife's lower jaw. On the street, he was detained, his nose was measured and he was brought to this detention center.` In a way that only Arthur Miller could do , we are right there with there as the arguments and discussions o on between them while one after another is taken into thre office behind tghem. There are some we know will die; some we know will not. Those in question we form our own opinions about them but in the end it comes down to the morality of two men and the answer to the question, " What then must we do?" This is an all male cast, so it's a fantastic project for a male prep school or college (How many times can you do twelve Angry Men) Arthur Miller is teimless and always remains fresh on the stage.