Incident at Vichy
Incident at Vichy
Backstage
Karl Levett
March 16, 2009
It's 1942 in German-occupied France, and 10 men sit in silence in a bleak detention room, waiting. As Joseph Trapanese's music clearly indicates, this waiting has ominous expectations. Thus begins one of Arthur Miller's least-examined works, first presented in 1964 and not seen in New York for more than 25 years. The Actors Company Theatre, whose worthy mission is to rescue plays that have been forgotten or have gone into a period of eclipse, here presents a first-class interpretation of Miller at his most earnest. The play, whose theatrical history is checkered, is ripe for re-examination.
Audience reaction to this 80-minute intermissionless drama is going to vary, with each viewer responding to different aspects on display. Let's call them the three faces of Arthur. Some will see a well-crafted, moving story of dramatic intensity, alive with contrasting characters, weighted with philosophical content. Others will see only a high-toned moral debate that overwhelms the drama as it juggles guilt, complicity, and personal responsibility and utters things like "We have learned the price of idealism." And for some (especially younger playgoers), on show will be a record of an intriguing, not-much-known historical event that throws a scorching searchlight on Jewish identity.
Under Scott Alan Evans' sensitively streamlined direction, all three faces merge into an absorbing whole. Miller is at great pains to make his 10 men as representative as possible: There's a businessman, a waiter, a Communist electrician, a teenage boy, an actor, an artist, an old Jew, a Gypsy, a doctor, and an Austrian prince (perhaps a too obviously varied assortment). While each oppressed character is given his moment, the drama focuses on the doctor (Christopher Burns), the prince (Todd Gearhart), and the German major in charge (Jack Koenig). Miller makes each of these characters nicely complex, with splendid opportunities for the actors, who, happily, are up to the task. Burns' tormented doctor provides the moral drive of the play, Gearhart's princely hauteur is tempered with good sense, while Koenig's seemingly good Nazi proves otherwise. Also notable are Gregory Salata's actor and John Freimann's old Jew, who without saying a word says a great deal.