Incident at Vichy NYC Reviews and Tickets

"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"'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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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