Incident at Vichy: A Play (Plays, Penguin)
by Arthur Miller
List Price:
Our Price: $4.00
You Save: $8.00 (67%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.26 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Arthur MillerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1985-04-02
ISBN: 0140481931
Number of pages: 80
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Incident at Vichy: A Play (Plays, Penguin)
Book Review: Miller. What can one say?
Summary: 5 Stars
Incident at Vichy, first published in 1964, is one of Miller's lesser known works, but I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I conclude once again, as I did earlier this year after reading Death of a Salesman.... Miller is a genius!
The Crucible is another gem that everyone should read! Really, he is fantastically good.
Incident at Vichy takes place in 1942, in Nazi-occupied France [Vichy].
The setting is very simple. A detention room, where eight men and a young boy are being held. One by one, they are interrogated in an adjoining room and none of them are sure of the reason for their arrest.
In the tense interim, as would be expected, they talk with one another.
Some of these men are Jews, and some are not.
Soon, the consensus is that Jewishness is indeed the "crime" for which they've been rounded up, and rumors and speculations are exchanged.
Those who feel that their interrogation may end with a "pass" allowing them to leave, become optimistic. Those who know that they themselves are Jewish, panic. And the tension in the room mounts.
Should they try to escape? Should they behave themselves and hope for release? Surely, surely their worst fears cannot be true?
Soon there are only two men left in the room, awaiting judgment.
And Miller ends this 70-page nerve-rattler with a wonderful twist.
I'll only say that it is amazing how little paper Miller needs to show us the worst and the best of what it means to be a human being.
Apparently, the story itself came from a tale that Miller had heard about a Holocaust survivor, told to Miller by his psychiatrist. It was about a Jew who was rescued from the Nazis by a total stranger.
Miller speaks of directing a production of Incident at Vichy some 20 years after the end of the war and, to his astonishment, having to explain to the young actors what the SS was!
The only other play that had dealt with the topic in the twenty years since the end of the war was The Diary of Anne Frank. Miller said, "There is something wrong when an audience can see a play about the Nazi treatment of a group of Jews hiding in an attic and come away feeling . . . gratification."
From the time that he was very young, Miller was aware of being "different" (Jewish) and felt a sort of warning atmosphere from adults. Whatever it was that gave him this feeling of foreboding, he was aware of it hanging over him. He writes at length of his mother's "mysticism" and her fervor extending even to the point of feeling that the dead communicated with her. And in fact, she may have been right.
While they were vacationing, and she was in a deep sleep, she suddenly sat up and said, "My mother died."
She was right. Her mother had died during that exact hour.
Miller said that his experiences with this sensing of lurking danger was something he had learned, but he had not been taught "how to defend against it. The dilemma would last a long time. The ... effort to locate in the human species a counterforce to the randomness of victimization, underlie the political aspect of my play, Incident at Vichy."
The play, then, attempts to answer the question of how to defend against danger, or evil. A topic that seems to enthrall many people [including myself].
Most critics panned it as being too lecture-riddled. Too didactic. Vichy was banned in the Soviet Union.
All I can say is that I am glad it is available to us today.
Listen, I encourage you to spend some time with Incident at Vichy.
You can read it inside an hour or so.
It is truly unforgettable.
Summary of Incident at Vichy: A Play (Plays, Penguin)
In Vichy France in 1942, eight men and a boy are seized by the collaborationist authorities and made to wait in a building that may be a police station. Some of them are Jews. All of them have something to hide?if not from the Nazis, then from their fellow detainees and, inevitably, from themselves. For in this claustrophobic antechamber to the death camps, everyone is guilty. And perhaps none more so than those who can walk away alive.
In Incident at Vichy, Arthur Miller re-creates Dante's hell inside the gaping pit that is our history and populates it with sinners whose crimes are all the more fearful because they are so recognizable.
"One of the most important plays of our time . . . Incident at Vichy returns the theater to greatness." ?The New York Times
United States Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in United States Books
Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in Americaby Eliz Brown Guillory
Praeger; Published: 1990-03-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.95
PLAYS FOR AN IMAGINARY THEATERby Judson L. Jerome
University of Illinois Press; Published: 1970-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Differences in the Darkby Michael T. Gilmore
Columbia University Press; Published: 1998-07-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.49
Price in other shops:
Acting Gayby John M. Clum
Columbia University Press; Published: 1992-04-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $60.66
Price in other shops:
Absurd, Black and Comic Sketches (Drama)by Peter Joucla
Nelson Thornes Ltd; Published: 1991-03; Paperback; Book
The Sorrows of Frederick and Holy Ghosts (An Original harvest book ; HB 355)by Romulus Linney
Harcourt; Published: 1977-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $50.31
The Glass Menagerie (Modern Classics (Penguin))by Tennessee Williams
Penguin Books; Published: 2009-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.06
Price in other shops:
An Enemy of the People (Penguin Plays)by Henrik Ibsen
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1977-11-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Five O'Clock Angelby Tennessee Williams
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1991-08-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.94
Shakespeareby Michael Wood
Basic Books; Published: 2004-10-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
An Enemy of the People (Dover Thrift Editions)by Henrik Ibsen
Dover Publications; Published: 1999-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.39
Price in other shops:
Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)by Allen Ginsberg
City Lights Publishers; Published: 2001-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.65
Price in other shops:
Gulliver's Travels (Dover Thrift Editions)by Jonathan Swift
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1996-09-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.88
Price in other shops:
An Enemy of the People (Penguin Plays)by Henrik Ibsen
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1977-11-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Crucible (Penguin Plays)by Arthur Miller
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1976-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories (Vintage International)by Philip Roth
Vintage; Published: 1993-01-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.74
Price in other shops:
The Price: A Playby Arthur Miller, Arthur Miller
Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; Published: 1998-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
All My Sons (Penguin Classics)by Arthur Miller
Penguin Classics; Published: 2000-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.88
Price in other shops:
Broken Glass.by Arthur Miller, Arthur Miller
Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; Published: 1995-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.58
Price in other shops:
After the Fall: A Play in Two Acts (Penguin Plays)by Arthur Miller
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1980-12-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.57
Price in other shops: