| Title | : | Incident at Vichy |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140481931 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140481938 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 80 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1964 |
"One of the most important plays of our time . . . Incident at Vichy returns the theater to greatness." —The New York Times
Incident at Vichy Reviews
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I have been exposed to Arthur Miller my entire life. He is a Michigan man, so, granted, my father being a Michigan man, always thought highly of his work. Miller is revered as far as American playwrights go, penning classics as Death of a Salesman, the Price, and the Crucible, and winning a Pulitzer for his work. Last week I read a lesser work by another American great playwright and was referred to Miller's an Incident at Vichy. Reading through goodreads reviews regarding this play as both important and timely, I had my curiosity piqued and decided to read this vintage Miller play for myself.
It is the time of the Vichy government in France. French soldiers collaborating with Nazis have begun to round up Jews and Gypsies and question them as to their true identity. The play takes place in a waiting room of a police station as a myriad of Jews, one Gypsy, and an Austrian noble await their fates. Each character has distinct views on what it means to be Jewish as well as the ability to love their fellow man. The news of the concentration camps has not yet spread to France, and most of the characters are living in a state of denial. When questioned by authorities, each character does not openly deny their Jewishness because they do not believe that a fellow human being would have the capacity to send them to slaughter in cattle cars. As a result, one by one, each character awaits their fate.
The dialogue in this play is as powerful as in any Miller play, especially the exchanges at the end between the Austrian noble Prince Von Berg and Dr. Leduc as they are the last two personas to be questioned. The two men have a distinct view of love and hatred, the Austrian making excuses for the Nazi regime whereas the Jewish Dr. Leduc is appalled that educated people in other nations would view him as the scum of the earth. As Leduc deduces manners in which he could escape the fate befalling his fellow Jews, the script comes to an impassioned denouement. Not being one to show emotions while reading, I was moved as I read this short yet powerful script.
I have been exposed to the Holocaust and its literature for my entire life, and it is easy to become desensitized after reading many testimonies and histories. With survivors dying out, each piece of Holocaust related literature is important as it is some of the few surviving memories. Miller's noted classics are studied at length, but Incident at Vichy should be regarded at their level, and hopefully taught in schools as well. A true masterpiece, by an American master playwright, I am grateful that for once I took the advice of a Goodreads recommendation.
5 stars -
[A Gestapo holding center in 1942 Vichy France. Several visibly terrified prisoners are under the guard of the German MAJOR. The phone rings]
THE MAJOR: Ja? [He listens] Ja. Ja. Jawohl. In Ordnung. [He puts the phone down] It's a message from the future.
THE OLD JEW: From the future?
THE MAJOR: Yes, from 2017. America is in trouble. Newt Gingrich wants everyone to read Arthur Miller. The Crucible has already offered to help. We're being asked if we're also willing to come in.
THE GYPSY: I not understand. I not thief.
FERRAND: [Angrily] You don't have to understand. Just do what you're told and you'll be alright.
BAYARD: But what can we do? We're just one of Miller's minor plays. We're not famous like The Crucible. No one will listen to us.
LEDUC: It doesn't matter. You can always do something, as long as you don't give up hope. Mr. Gingrich asks for our help. Let's try to help him.
BAYARD: But what--
LEDUC: Don't just sit there repeating yourself. Think! For example, we could say how important it is to look facts in the face.
MONCEAU: What kind of facts?
LEDUC: For example, the fact that when your country has been taken over by a gang of racist lunatics, there's no point in pretending that really everything is fine.
MONCEAU: Please, not this again. These tired fantasies of concentration camps and gas ovens. As I have told you before, the Germans are practical and logical. If we obey the laws, they will too.
LEDUC: No! I'm sure that's the very last thing Mr. Gingrich wants to hear. We're dealing with people who have no respect for the law at all. They are the exact opposite of practical and logical, they are poets of evil. And something tells me Mr. Gingrich has the same problem. We must give him our full support. Now who is with me? [No one will meet his eye] Someone? Anyone?
PRINCE VON BERG: I will help you. To the extent I can. I like the sound of this Mr Gingrich.
LEDUC: Thank you, Von Berg. Now let's get to work.
CURTAIN
[Coming up next: Death of a Salesman] -
How can fascism, such as the likes of what happened in Germany, happen? Can you believe it will happen where you live? Is it just something unfortunate, like death, that happens to other people? “An Incident at Vichy” is a one-act play by Arthur Miller written in 1964 about a group of men who await interrogation and racial “identification” by German soldiers and French Police in Vichy, France. Most of them would seem to be Jews, though there is a non-Jewish (Gentile) businessman and a gypsy. They talk among themselves as they await their turn. Some are confident that everything will be ultimately okay. Others are terrified; they have heard rumors of Jews deported on trains to camps in boxcars, and mass murder.
This play takes a close-up view of a particular moment in time, in 1942, when people were just beginning to hear rumors of concentration camps--not possible! Why would the Germans exterminate people? They need workers! The men, most of whom will actually end up in concentration camps, we know, here get their noses actually measured, and they have their penises examined for evidence of circumcision. They have, most of them, fled from other, more completely Nazi-controlled areas of France. They are guilty! Yet the men waiting inspection doubt that they can be in any reL trouble; they’re law-abiding citizens! Their papers are in order! They are in denial. Some (even the Jews here) seem to be at least passively complicit in supporting the Nazi-French regime. Hey, they’re doing the best they can in a tough situation oour French cops. Don’t rock the boat.
This play is chilling in showing how one of the most horrific events in human history took place for ordinary people, slowly, incrementally, quietly. In case you are wondering if this little “minor” play from Miller has any relevance to Trump's America, or what is happening in many countries in the world, I quote from Manny’s fictional review: “When your country has been taken over by a gang of racist lunatics, there's no point in pretending that really everything is fine.” -
First staged in 1964, Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy remains as up to date as Donald Trump’s latest tweet. A group of men have been rounded up by the Vichy police soon after the German occupation begins. It’s early yet in World War II, and the vast majority of the French have no idea what’s already begun in Poland. The men — one Gypsy, a gentile nobleman and the rest Jews — nervously try to come up with excuses of why it’s only a papers check or a possible mistake. But one by one, they’re taking for interrogation.
Miller explores who has the right to life and what can an individual do when an entire society turns to authoritarianism. In the Age of Trump, Incident at Vichy is more relevant than ever. And L.A. Theatre Works’ dramatization makes the play really come alive. -
American playwright known for A view from the Bridge, The Crucible, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Price
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Incident at Vichy is a harrowing play set in France during German occupation. 6 men are being detained in a room. "It must be a routine document check."
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Throughout the play you feel a cloud of sadness enter as they speak to one another. As they talk about stories of trains filled up with people, locked from the outside, heading to Poland. Are they going to be sent away too?
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I’ve only seen A View from the Bridge by Miller on stage and it was magnificent. I intend to read more of his plays and hope to see them performed one day... -
I can not remember how I came across Arthur Miller's play, "Incident at Vichy", I had thought it was from an OTR (Old Time Radio) show but I think I was wrong there and for some reason this crossed my path. The play ran from December 3, 1964 until May 7, 1965 for 32 performances which seems very little amount. Though it run was limited and years after The Holocaust and WW 2, it is an important play for you feel you are in this building made into a police questioning center with these men, Miller shows us through his drama how people were taken away and without resisting due to not believing the worst could happen to them, fearing to leave the detention area or attempt to do so. How rumors that are true are not believed and the duty of the police to do this work or they will suffer, so fear for themselves brings others to suffer. As I read this I felt for these men and the hopelessness that pervades them. This play could only skim the surface of what feelings, reality and suffering that people experienced in that reality.
After reading my second play after about 40 years when I read a couple of plays in High School, I am beginning to see how Miller writes like Ibsen, that was brought to my attention because Miller thought of Ibsen's The Wild Duck when writing "All My Sons". In my early twenties, I loved reading any Ibsen paperback book that came available at the local bookstore, I remember that his plays had a moral significance besides entertaining the audience. Miller it seems follows Ibsen's lead and that is why Miller is a favorite playwright of mine as Ibsen has been for years.
The play in short- The scene 1942 France Vichy and different men are picked up for questioning but think it might be more than that.
I did not read this edition but a collection of his works which I have more highlights and notes.
"CAPTAIN: Try to avoid taking anybody out of a crowd. Just cruise around the way we did before, and take them one at a time. There are all kinds of rumors. We don’t want to alarm people."
"MONCEAU: In my opinion you’re hysterical. After all, they were picking up Jews in Germany for years before the war, they’ve been doing it in Paris since they came in—are you telling me all those people are dead? Is that really conceivable to you? War is war, but you still have to keep a certain sense of proportion. I mean Germans are still people." -
I can’t see that we are ever so good that this play can be missed. At its most obvious it’s about what the Germans and their collaborators did to Jews and other inferior types. But even to extrapolate to present day is an inadequate representation of what it’s about.
It is a discussion of the human condition, its wretchedness, and the capacity of a few to rise above it. The amazing Hora, who did much to see to the shaping of the philosopher Raimond Gaita in Gaita’s younger years, believed that always
…even in the most appalling circumstances, there has been a handful of men and women who redeemed humanity by the nobility of their vision and their courage to be true to it. He told me this often. Each time he paused, visibly moved….
Hora and his migrant friends had lived through WWII in Europe. This play, Incident at Vichy, captures one of these moments. An Austrian aristocrat, caught in a roundup meant for not the likes of him, is sitting with Jews and a Gypsy waiting to be interrogated. We know that most, if not all of them, will never be let out. Whilst waiting, they share their various views on the nature of the Germans and whether it is really possible that the things they don’t want to mention are really happening. One says it’s a ridiculous idea, that the Germans would want to kill them. The Germans are rational. Of course they simply want them for labour. No biggie.
The Austrian prince passionately explains what is really happening. How could you be so stupid as to think it is about being rational. These people are nothing and they make themselves something by what they do, by what they believe in. What they are doing, the mass murdering of Jews is a moral principle.
At some point he gives a great speech where he too says the same as Hora. It is a tiny number of people who redeem the rest of us. Unfortunately I don’t have the play, or I’d share it. And then, at the end, and I didn’t see this coming though I should have, he turns out to be that man. He goes in second to last, reappears with a get out of gaol free card and gives it to the waiting French Jew so that he can escape. We assume that the prince will be killed in his place.
And all this made me remember a book I have, a book of little consequence I expect.
Rest here:
https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre... -
Preciso ler mais Arthur Miller
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A short play that takes place during WWII mostly about the conflict between the Nazis and the Jews.
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Totalitarian power feeds on and distorts fears and desires.
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This play is spooky. And while it may be relegated to dusty shelves of the past, it feels more like a premonition. I am so saddened by it all. A mere eight decades have passed since the Holocaust, and brown-skinned Latin Americans have become the latest nativist American scapegoat. For them, as for ourselves, there remain but a few more detents before those without a voice will be met by those who failed to speak up to the intolerant and arrogant.
"...Until you know it is true of you, you will destroy whatever truth can come of this atrocity. Part of knowing who we are is knowing that we are not someone else. And "Jew" is only the name we give that stranger, that agony that we cannot feel that, death that we look at like a cold abstraction. Each man has his 'Jew" what with the black, the yellow, the white. It is the other. And the Jews have their Jews! And now, now - above all you must see that you have yours. The man whose death leaves you relieved that you are not him - despite your decency. And that is why there is nothing and there will be nothing until you face your own complicity with this, your own Humanity." -
On this Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust.
An incredibly powerful piece of Theatre recounting events as relevant and important today as they were seventy-five years ago.
It forces us to face up to the same moral challenges of the current era as the French Jews and German Citizens had to during the Holocaust. Will we have the courage to try to do The Right Thing in the face of Evil? -
A claustrophobic one-room one-act play set in Occupied France that puts the characters in a situation we hope we never have to face- awaiting a fate dependent on the will of the power who gets to decide which race, creed, or colour gets to survive. Tense and fraught.
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Goooodddd
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The poison of ideals. How does everything get to backwards? So perverse? And what can anyone do to slow the momentum-heavy locomotive? How can we do anything to change 1942?
This play is amazing. I so want to go see it now. It puts real people in the place of the millions we hear about. A dozen people in a room; the story of the fear and impotence of struggle. Everyone has a theory, but nothing seems to tell the whole story. What do we do now? What can we do now? How do we get out of this trap we have fallen into? What can one do? Why is no one trying to help us?
#relevantForToday #change2016 -
Miller examines the passivity which enabled the Holocaust to take place. The paralysis and inability of people to determine their personal moral compass amidst turbulent times, and determine a series of actions from that points to a recurrent theme in society again and again. When faced with the unspeakable, the reactions of trying to comprehend, engage and then draw a line of resistance is not easy. To keep the eye on the end game despite chaos, is the only way we will survive with our morality intact.
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It’s a minor play about the Holocaust, taking responsibility and guilt. Characters are rounded up and waiting to be interviewed by Police in France.
Maybe I'd love to see a production of this, as I did
All My Sons, a couple of years ago, but reading it, immediately after reading
After the Fall, no thanks. -
One of the best, most searing plays I have ever read. This cements Arthur Miller in my mind as one of the most important American artists of the 20th century; he has a piercing, unnerving ability to reveal the ways we harm one another through group (in)action, how unconfronted histories destroy us, and how evil nearly always takes banal shapes cloaked in authority.
What Miller has to tell us about America and human behavior is as urgent in our time as it was in his own. I wish it was not so, but I am grateful to be able to read and re-read and reflect on his work. -
I like the Crucible, but I am not a huge fan of Death of a Salesman. I understand why it’s great, but the play never did it for me. And I am more of a Neil Simon fan.
But this play. This play. This they should use in schools. It would resonate more than the Crucible.
Most powerful play ever. -
Powerful, much more so than any of Miller's other plays.
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“Part of knowing who we are is knowing we are not someone else”
Outstanding play -
Talk about a high-stakes drama! I wonder what the actual playing time is. I want to watch it.
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Incident at Vichy is based on a real-life occurrence. I do wonder what happened to the French Gentile who really made that sacrifice, and indeed to Von Berg, the one in Arthur Miller’s play.
The story centres on nine men who have been detained in Vichy France. They are uncertain why they have been detained, but it soon becomes clear that seven of them are Jews, one of them a Gypsy, and the other a non-Jewish man who has been mistakenly rounded up due to his accent.
It is clear that the men have been rounded up for inspection to check whether they are Jewish, and that the intention is to ship them off to a concentration camp, possibly for extermination. What we see are a wide cross-section of the people persecuted by the Nazis, albeit that the story involves men only.
There is a poor Gypsy, and reasonably prosperous Jews. There is a young boy and an old man. What is happening is not dictated by any rational appraisal of the level of threat posed by these individuals. They are merely to be arrested and possibly killed because they are Jewish.
What is happening is nationalistic, but it is also a way of asserting one’s existence. As Von Berg tells the others:
“These things are not done because they are German but because they are nothing. It is the hallmark of the age-the less you exist the more important it is to make a clear impression. I can see them discussing it as a kind of….truthfulness. After all, what is self-restraint but hypocrisy? If you despise Jews the most honest thing is to burn them up.”
There is nothing vulgar about this hatred, and some of the most cultured people have embraced Fascism. Even among the Jews there is some unthinking prejudice against the Gypsy prisoner.Then again there are people such as the Major in this play, a decent man who protestingly goes along with the atrocities because there are no personal relationships any more, and all the kindness of the past seems lost.
Miller looks at why many Jews accepted their situation and did not fight back more. The prisoners here delude themselves that the situation is not as bad as it seems or find rationalisations to justify inaction, even as their captors call them in one by one, and the number of prisoners whittles down.
The rationalisations are what keep the men going until it is too late. The other prisoners must have done something wrong. They are too wealthy and influential to suffer the same fate. An actor thinks that he can face down his tormentors by putting on an act. A communist insists that his personal sacrifice will not matter because his cause will win in the end, even though many of the more enthusiastic Nazis are the very working-class he pins his faith on.
So the prisoners sit still, and refuse to join in with an escape plan made by Leduc. They imagine their personal dignity will be enough when what lies ahead of them is having their penises examined for evidence of circumcision, and being carted off in locked train carriages.
Miller seems almost judgemental about these men for accepting their fate, but their behaviour is understandable on one level, as they are facing an unprecedented situation. Jews have been persecuted and murdered for centuries, but no Jew had ever come across a situation as ghastly as the Holocaust – a systematic and clinical attempt to exterminate an entire race. It would be hard enough to believe now, let alone then when it had never happened before.
There is a similarly overly-critical view of Von Berg. Von Berg is a decent man who sought to protect a few Jewish musicians, and was appalled to see them marched off. However he speaks warmly of his cousin Baron Kessler, even though Kessler is a Nazi who removed Jewish doctors from medical school.
Again what we have here is condemnation on Miller’s part, but no understanding. The condemnation is fair in its way. From the point of view of Von Berg, Kessler is a decent man who happens to be an anti-Semitic Nazi. From Leduc’s point of view, Kessler is nothing but an anti-Semitic Nazi, as that is all that affects him.
Still would not most of us share some of Von Berg’s rationalisations? How many of us have friends or relatives who make appalling racist remarks, and yet we love them anyway, and view that trait as a mere blemish on their personalities? How would we feel if we were part of the group that our friend or relative was maligning?
The depressing truth about Incident at Vichy is that it is only too true. To take sharp defensive action or to make a courageous stand is one that involves taking a very dangerous risk, and it is one that most people will not take, even when passivity exposes them to dangers no less horrific. For this reason, there will be more incidents at Vichy in the future. -
"But, you see, this is why one gets so furious. Because all this suffering is so pointless--it can never be a lesson, it can never have a meaning. And that is why it will be repeated again forever."
A powerful one-act play that places a group of men in a tension-filled waiting room after they were pulled in from the streets of Nazi-occupied France. The men rationalize why they were brought in, grapples with rumors of camps and deaths, and discuss the nature of the "good Germans," all while they disappear behind the office door, one by one, to uncover their fates.
It can be a bit too lofty at times, but not to an excessive point; there are plenty of perfectly crafted, honed pieces of dialogue that are sure to stick with readers or viewers who watch a production of the play on stage.
The script contains an element that was missing from a livestreamed production of the play I saw a while back, an element which reveals the ultimately minuscule nature of the play's events: the shuffling in of an entirely new round of men, rounded up with the intent of determining whether or not they should be sent to certain death.
Yes, one life in a small group potentially saved in this one incident at Vichy, but how many more will go in through that office door--through all those same horrifyingly mundane doors being set up throughout Europe? -
The dialogue in this does not feel realistic or natural at all, it feels extremely theatrical and meticulous. This bothered me quite a bit at first, but the discomfort later subsided.
In addition to mentions of the stagey quality of the dialogue, I've seen some criticisms of Miller's thoughts as potentially banal; I guess this stems from the general feeling that "fascism is bad" is not the hottest of takes. This is fair enough to an extent, but I think there are plenty of piercing, trenchant observations made in here. They rang as relevant to today, too - which I feel a bit bad in saying because the times we live in now are a far cry from the horrors of the time period being portrayed. Still, in a lot what was being said - about the fervor of common, ordinary people for leaders without compassion, or about how cruelty can be the point of an ideology - I felt sorrowful for some sense of familiarity and immediacy. -
As the title indicates, this play takes place in France in the early days of Nazi occupation. A group of men have been brought into a local jailhouse in order to be questioned. They are not entirely sure why, and even though they have heard rumors, they are still just rumors. The men come from many different backgrounds, walks of life, and histories. As they sort things out, one by one of them gets called into question. They don’t return, which of course sets off their worst imaginative impulses.
Along with them, they begin to slowly rope in the local police officer, who is acting under orders to bring the men together, but not with larger mission in question. -
"My faith is in the future; and the future is Socialist" says Baynard. Some people agree with him, some people don't. Either way, no one stops the train from going to a concentration camp. No one even tries. That would be too difficult. This is as relevant now as it was when Miller wrote it in 1964.
