Incident at Vichy

"As the respectable if sometimes stolid revival reveals, the passing of the decades has perhaps inevitably dimmed the play’s power...What’s appealing about this rare chance to see 'Incident at Vichy' is the opportunity that it affords to hear Miller’s ethical insights and piercing intelligence resounding with such unbridled forthright eloquence. What’s less appealing? Well, all that resounding eloquence." Full Review

"While it occasionally feels like an essay repurposed as a drama this excellent cast breathes life into the author's extended musings…Unfortunately, there is precious little sense of impending doom in this play about men waiting to be taken to their deaths...Wilson's faithful, by-the-book staging, however impressive, does little to offset the feeling that we're watching an elaborately decorated college seminar." Full Review

"A fine and sensitively-acted production...Audiences love stories of heroism and self-sacrifice, and Miller does offer some satisfaction on that end, but 'Incident at Vichy' is more about the survival instinct...It can be an uncomfortable play to watch, but it's the discomfort that makes it good theatre." Full Review

"Directed somberly by Michael Wilson, 'Incident at Vichy' depicts 10 men who have been rounded up by the police on suspicion of being Jewish; their papers and their anatomy are to be checked...Earnest urgency often sounds like an essay or a lecture...The paradox of this highly discursive work is that the characters who say the least are in some ways the most effective...Dramaturgically stuffy though it may be, 'Incident at Vichy' gives an airing to still-timely concerns." Full Review

"It deals with powerful themes of guilt and responsibility, tautly dramatized and well-defined. But the play is also talky and didactic, its themes expressed too baldly…Still, the brief work has a gripping cumulative power that builds to a surprising conclusion, which is at once uplifting and tragic. Director Michael Wilson's staging is highly effective, with sound and projection effects heightening the tension at key moments. The large ensemble is mostly excellent." Full Review

"The director Michael Wilson has assembled a very worthy revival of Arthur Miller’s very worthy 1964 play, 'Incident at Vichy' which is a pleasure and a problem….Incident at Vichy is an occasionally poignant play...The pessimistic philosophy is somehow too assured. The arguments presented are impossible to disagree with and less nuanced as the play would have us think." Full Review

"Arthur Miller has had a great week in New York, with a riveting production of 'A View from the Bridge' and an admirably effective production of 'Incident at Vichy'. 'Admirably effective' isn't quite so hats-in-the-air as 'riveting,' but then 'Vichy' isn't nearly the play that 'View' is...The play is well worth visiting...which is recommended as an opportunity to catch a sturdy production of one of Miller's mid-level plays." Full Review

"'Incident at Vichy' has too little characterization to support its encyclopedic philosophizing…It is even possible to imagine its being gripping, under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, the current production, directed by Michael Wilson, only reaches that level a few times...The performances are not what they need to be, either. What’s needed are actors who know how to suggest complete histories, even where Miller doesn’t provide much opportunity." Full Review

"'Incident at Vichy' is intelligent, well acted, and occasionally so relevant that it’s chilling... It’s stagey, with a too obvious structure, a problem that even such a first-rate director as Michael Wilson is unable to solve. Some of the debates don’t hold the urgency they had 50 years ago. But there are gasp-worthy moments that make Miller feel like a prophet." Full Review

"The climactic sequence of 'Incident at Vichy' can feel a little too much like a structured debate...Even if a few things about this production don't fully work, it remains a vivid account of the administration of savagery as practiced in a not-too-distant time." Full Review

"This cast shows no real sign of fear...So the cast has two jobs: to touch our hearts and feed our intellects. Because, however, they seem to have been guided into a no man’s land between these two fronts and told to stay put, they are hobbled. They succeed as neither endeavor. They end up stranded...As do we. A disappointment indeed." Full Review

"It’s hard not to hear in the play’s preoccupations echoes of atrocities in the Middle East and Africa, international terrorism, mass deportations and migrations, racial and religious hatred, and many other continuing cruelties that show how little we’ve evolved...Still, everyone’s a theatrical construct, a mouthpiece for an idea or attitude...While this may not be its dream production, it nonetheless conveys those ideas efficiently and, for some, I’m sure, movingly." Full Review

"A creakily earnest one-act play...While waiting to learn their unsurprising fate, they make speeches, some of them craven, others noble, and all written in the well-known Miller manner….Miller undercuts their effect, such as it is, with a speciously uplifting denouement that fails to convince. Michael Wilson ratchets up the dramatic tension much higher than you’d think it could possibly go, and his ensemble cast is superior, especially Richard Thomas." Full Review

"A superb, highly compelling revival…A great chunk of the dialogue resembles a long-winded treatise on psychology and ethics. Nevertheless, the play is suspenseful throughout…The excellent ensemble cast includes Richard Thomas as a genteel Viennese prince, Darren Pettie as an assertive psychiatrist and James Carpinello as a stressed-out, increasingly unstable army officer." Full Review

"A first-rate revival…It's efficient intelligent playwriting that Wilson and a roundly capable, unglittering cast have treated with palpable care and affection…Wilson's well-judged pacing and a suitably bleak physical production further help anchor this as the inevitable potboiler it needs to be. The performances are of one piece, and in firm keeping with the times as well as the mood...'Incident at Vichy' could scarcely feel more alive." Full Review

"Michael Wilson's revival of 'Incident at Vichy' is a high-tension 90 minutes. Yet, the time spent with the group of men rounded up in Nazi occupied Vichy France in 1942 is also one of the most satisfying and relevant dramas currently in any New York Theater…While some of the seventeen actors have more significant roles than others, under Wilson's direction they form an extraordinarily effective ensemble...Don't miss it." Full Review

"A thoughtful, straightforward, perhaps unavoidably heavyhanded production…How did sensitive Germans turn into Nazis? Is there a limit to what anyone can consider personal responsibility and still be considered a good man? Miller’s answer here may strain credibility, but he certainly asked the right questions." Full Review

"Miller is at his best with the back and forth on whether the Nazis have no table manners or provide the world’s best audiences for music. The dialogue is both funny and devastating and the cast effectively makes those speeches more than sound bites from Miller’s socialist playbook.…In the final moments of the play, the acting becomes extremely overwrought. Granted, it’s an overwrought situation, but the results on stage are mawkish." Full Review

"The weakness of the play is that the characters emerge as mouthpieces for different ideas and attitudes rather than as rounded individuals…Miller's larger point of the malignant power of great evil, is not ambivalent, and it resonates strongly in this excellent production, directed by Michael Wilson with a strong, all-male cast of 17...'Vichy' might be more talk than drama, but the situation in which the characters find themselves provides its own, very potent, drama." Full Review

"While the play was a noted Broadway flop back in 1964, audiences at the Signature Theatre Center are more likely to give Michael Wilson’s well-acted production of Miller’s examination of the causes of the Holocaust hearty ovations rather than boos. Admittedly, like many Miller works, 'Vichy' has its shortcomings; it can feel overly philosophical, preachy and a touch schematic. But this 90-minute one-act also has enormous visceral power." Full Review

"A striking element of this 'Vichy' revival, coolly directed by Michael Wilson, is that few of the men look stereotypically Jewish - aside from one, whom Miller identifies only as the 'Old Jew'...There’s something chilling merely in the variety of the casting...As soon as we understand there's a question being posed, the stage goes dark. That's silence, speaking louder than words." Full Review

"That's a lot of humanity to crowd into 90 minutes and so the actors playing the parts have to create full lives and to make potentially polemic dialog sound like natural speech...But, under the unsteady direction of Michael Wilson, the acting is more of a mixed bag." Full Review

"An admirable staging of a flawed, but effective Arthur Miller play...The acting, though a tad uneven, is still on a high level. This cast generates a convincing ambiance of heightened reality, skillfully avoiding becoming walking/talking metaphors. Mr. Wilson has directed them as real, living, breathing people forced into an artificial theatrical situation." Full Review

"The 90 minute, no intermission, work is chilling in it’s dramatic intent as it grips the audience in tragic events that will never be forgotten. It is Miller’s way of marking society’s great horror by the Nazis by virtue of a sadistic nature – a frailty of the human race present in each of us. Michael Wilson brilliantly directs this large cast of 17 with an impressive hand." Full Review

"A large, all-male cast plays out this incredibly tense drama...Under the steady direction of Michael Wilson, all of the detained men are made full and distinct characters, underscoring the irony that despite their individuality, all are condemned based on a single random criterion...Signature has provided us an opportunity to revisit this complex and poetic work, sandwiched between the Broadway 'greatest hits.' It’s a worthy addition to the centenary season of Miller." Full Review