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David Seaman
5.0 out of 5 stars It's Miller: Four Pulitzer's. So what am I?
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2013
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Arthur Miller jas never been afraid to s[peak out. In 1948, Ella Wheeler Wilcox said, "To sin by Silence when we should soeak out makews cowards out of men". She could not have been speaking of Arthur Miller, as that was the yeare that "incident at Vichy" premiered. And if silence is a sin, Miller is sitting in heaven on the right hand of god with plenty of parchment, a full ink well and- l;et's face it- a MacBook Pro.

During the Occupation of France during World War II, the Nazi's established the city of Vichy as a place to "check papers" and to deport hundreds of thousands of people by grain to south east Poland to be exterminated. This play moves without a break- yes, the audience is just as much prisoners as the dozen or so men who wait to be interrogated on stage. WE get to know them all, but some much better than others and we learn that one of our favorites will no doubt be gassed within days.

He is a Jew in southern France with bogus papers. He had a good hiding place with his wife and children but ventured out that morning to try to find codeine for a tootch ache that had become infected in his wife's lower jaw. On the street, he was detained, his nose was measured and he was brought to this detention center.

` In a way that only Arthur Miller could do , we are right there with there as the arguments and discussions o on between them while one after another is taken into thre office behind tghem. There are some we know will die; some we know will not. Those in question we form our own opinions about them but in the end it comes down to the morality of two men and the answer to the question, " What then must we do?"
This is an all male cast, so it's a fantastic project for a male prep school or college (How many times can you do twelve Angry Men) Arthur Miller is teimless and always remains fresh on the stage.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2016
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Brilliant Play! Saw it, then bought a copy. Older play but very timely, the way art works.
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Mary Whipple
HALL OF FAME
5.0 out of 5 stars "Every nation has someone they condemn for their race."
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2008
In this stunning play, set in a holding room in Vichy, France, in 1942, Arthur Miller introduces nine men who have been picked up on suspicion that they are Jews or Jewish sympathizers. As they are called, one by one, to be interrogated by Nazi officials before being released or put on the thirty-car freight train waiting at the station, they reveal their thinking, their rationalizations for having been picked up, and their belief that this is all a big mistake. A German major involved in the interrogations also begins to question his own role, reminding his colleague, a professor in charge of carrying out Nazi racial policies, that he is a "line officer," not trained for his role.

Waiting to be questioned are an actor, a waiter, a businessman, a psychoanalyst, a Marxist railroad worker, a gypsy, an ancient Hasid, a fourteen-year-old boy, and an Austrian prince. As they talk and begin to share bits of information, Miller examines the tendency of ordinary men, who are often victims, to become immobilized when faced with "an atrocity...that is inconceivable," to refuse to believe that such behavior can possibly happen in a civilized world. At the same time, he also examines those others, the Nazis and their collaborators in France, who serve an ideology, not mankind, those who subordinate themselves so completely to an abstract concept that they believe "there are no persons anymore."

As the truth about the waiting train and its destination slowly emerges, the sense of dread becomes palpable. The psychoanalyst, trying to rouse people to overpower the single guard on duty, cannot make his fellow captives understand that it is their belief that the world is essentially rational that keeps them from acting, and that the Nazis count on this belief. Pivotal to the action is von Berg, the young Austrian prince, a Christian who left his property and thousand-year-old heritage to escape to France, a man whose heart is in the right place but who does not understand that he himself must accept complicity in the rise of the Nazis.

Beautifully paced, the play is an unusually sophisticated treatment of this subject. Miller does not see events purely in black and white, showing instead that everyone creates his own reality to keep from accepting the unthinkable. Written in 1964, while Miller was representing the New York Herald Tribune at the Frankfurt war crimes trials of officials from Auschwitz/Birkenau, this play is Miller's creative reaction to the atrocities he has heard first-hand--and one of his most powerful plays. Mary Whipple

For videos or DVDs of live performances of Miller plays:
Incident at Vichy (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Death of a Salesman (Broadway Theatre Archive)
An Enemy of the People (Broadway Theatre Archive)
A Memory of Two Mondays (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Broadway Theatre Archive Arthur Miller Collection (Death of a Salesman/Incident at Vichy/Enemy of the People/Memory of Two Mondays)
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CorrieA
5.0 out of 5 stars We must never forget.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2017
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I have had the amazing good fortune to see the revival of this seminal work in London recently. My 13 year old daughter was also so moved by it that we went to see it three times.

It is a play so totally relevant to our world today. We must never forget.
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Debra Mervant
5.0 out of 5 stars Un texte introuvable ?
Reviewed in France on December 30, 2012
Verified Purchase
Une bouteille lancée à la mer...
J'ai lu d'un trait la pièce d'Arthur Miller, construite comme un huis clos.
Pendant l'occupation française de 1939-45, des hommes raflés attendent dans un commissariat ? (à vérifier..) pour savoir s'ils seront déportés ou pas.
Des jeunes, des moins jeunes, un noble autrichien échangent en attendant d'être fixé sur leur sort. Qui est juif ? Qui ne l'est pas ?
Miller était un dramaturge plus qu'engagé, qui a connu l'horreur du Maccarthysme aux U.S., et qui n'avait aucun mal à imaginer.. tout le Mal dont est capable l'homme (ou la femme) de tous les jours dans la vie de tous les jours. En proclamant, la main sur le coeur, qu'il (ou elle...) n'a pas le choix, qui plus est.
Avec peu de moyens, une écriture serrée, et dépouillée, Miller réussit à ressusciter ce contexte pour nous, et faire représenter les enjeux de situations finalement... très banales.
L'accumulation de tant de situations si banales finit par accoucher de l'horreur.
A une époque où nos institutions voudraient vacciner nos bambins contre l'horreur nazi, il est incompréhensible que cette pièce ne soit ni éditée, ni montée non plus.
Elle est bien plus puissante et évocatrice que cent livres ou manuels documentés avec des notes en bas de page.
Le spectateur/lecteur est tenu en haleine jusqu'à la fin où il y a un retournement de situation digne d'un film de Hitchcock.
A bon entendeur, salut.
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