Incident at Vichy - Arthur Miller (Finborough Theatre)

Haha! Got my tix ages ago, going on 15/4. Been waiting for a production for decades.
Here's hoping it will prompt productions of some other lesser known Millers.

13/4 for me, so I'll get my review in first!

Well? Where's your comment on it???

Sounds good. There was a stunning production in New York a season or two ago Off Broadway and the play seemed eerily relevant - one assumes it has only become more so!

I thought this was tremendous, wonderfully acted by a great cast and surprisingly thought-provoking, given that the subject matter has been covered many times before. The Electrician character, a socialist who assumes he has the support of the working classes but doesn’t seem to know them at all, could be a member of Momentum, and the discussion about how the Nazis were able to succeed because “decent” people couldn’t believe that civilized people would behave in such a way, is reminiscent of the rise of Trump in the US (obviously that’s a rather unfair comparison – or at least I hope it is).

As martin1965 said, we really could do with seeing more of these rarely produced works by Miller (and others). Full credit to the Finborough for digging this gem up.

It is quite a feat to fit thirteen actors into the tiny stage at the Finborough. More than this, it is also a feat to hold the audience when very little movement is possible - the action takes place entirely in a crowded waiting-room. But this timely revival manages that, and more.

Miller's language hooks you in and quickly develops the theme of how an individual can behave in the midst of horror. Does the mere fact of survival when others are bing murdered imply some sort of moral collaboration? How do we square obedience to the rule of law when the law has been corrupted to incorporate the legal murder of innocents?

Insofar as its politics is concerned, Miller was no prophet - if he was he wouldn't have married Marilyn - so there is no point in crediting him with a vision of our times. He wrote about what he knew, his present and his immediate past, and if there are any echoes beyond the immediate fact of the rounding up of Nazi victims, they lie in the racism which was still being practised in the US as he wrote. We can draw parallels with current scenarios but those parallels are ours, not Miller's. It is not a preachy type of play, ultimately he seems to suggest that it is only through individual acts of heroism that humanity can be saved rather thn by any ism.

The acting was mostly very good - a distracting tendency from a couple of actors to ham it up, especially when the focus should be elsewhere. Word of advice: terror can be conveyed by stillness as much as by trembling and shaking. The proof is that the straight-through ninety minutes performance in the crowded and not especially comfortable benches is not onerous.

Full house, what a nice thing to see in a fringe theatre.

For more than a decade the Finborough has had programming like this, for part of the year they do a season of neglected classics, and for the rest of the year seasons of new plays and musicals. I have seen rarely-produced plays there by Gorky, T.W.Robertson, William Saroyan, J.B.Priestly, R.C.Sherriff, Robert Bolt and James Bride and I by no means go to all their productions.

Odd you felt unwelcome in the pub - probably they thought you looked like a trouble-maker. I imagine, just like in the past, it will close down in due course - other than the theatre audience there is not much custom in that area.

I thought this was good. A perfect piece for this venue (as it is almost entirely static). The acting was a bit uneven as you would expect for a cast of 13 on the fringe but generally good. However, I agree that one actor in particular was over-acting terribly the whole time, even when not speaking, drawing attention away from where it should have been - really that is a failure of direction and I am surprised it has been allowed to continue - rather uncharitably I kept hoping he'd be the next to be taken away by the SS.  

Thoroughly enjoyed the play - despite the discomfort of the Finborough bench squeeze.

Agreed about the unevenness of the performances, with a couple of very keen and over-cooked performances emoting all over the place and unbalancing the production.

Thought PK Taylor as the actor, and Edward Killingback as the nobleman were excellent though.

That is a bold claim. Interestingly another candidate that immediately occurred to me was also in a Phil Willmott production. I blame him really, a quick "Tone it down a bit love" during rehearsals would have surely done the trick.

Isn't it the case that the director's work ends on press night? So this may be an unfortunate case of performance drift over time with no official structure to check it? (Haven't seen it).

Are you talking specifically about the unfunded fringe? Maybe those fringe regulars are in a position to survive without income from their acting? Maybe they have partners in secure, well-paid employment, for example?