Incident at Vichy

ON GUARD Jack Koenig, left, gets disciplined by Hawkins.

Photograph: Stephen Kunken

The setup for Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy (1964) would make a good joke: A prince, a gypsy and a businessman walk into a room.… Unfortunately, the room is a holding cell for Jews rounded up on the streets of Nazi-occupied France, and there is no punch line. In this Actors Company Theatre revival, ten harrowed men are ranged along two benches in a stark antechamber, trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare: arrest without any crime. One by one, they are led away by a sinister German called the Professor (Jeffrey C. Hawkins), but not before they have had the chance to parse the greater implications of their situation from a historical, social and psychological angle.

This conceit might easily have turned pedantic—or at least static—in less expert hands. But with its deep intelligence and high tensions, Miller's drama is quite stunning, if not very subtle. Scott Alan Evans's reverence for the text is evident in his sober direction, and the adept cast mines the humanity of their (sometimes sketchy) characters. Exchanges between a nervous painter (Mark Alhadeff) and an electrician with a proletarian dream (Ron McClary) are especially effective, and Gregory Salata is heartbreaking as an optimistic aesthete who refuses to accept the realities of war. The final showdown between the psychiatrist (Christopher Burns) and the prince (Todd Gearhart) is more labored, culminating in a twist ending of Hollywood proportions. What resonates instead is the shrink's chilling vision of human nature: "Each man has his Jew," he says. "It is the other."—Pamela Newton

See more Theater reviews >>