Incident at Vichy

Incident at Vichy is a 1964 play by American dramatist Arthur Miller about a group of men detained in Vichy France; and held to wait unknowingly, for what turns out to be their "racial" inspection by German military officers and Vichy French police during World War II. It focuses on the subjects of human nature, guilt, fear, and complicity and examines how the Nazis were able to perpetrate the Holocaust with so little resistance.

The play premiered on Broadway on December 3, 1964 at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre in New York City. The production closed on May 7, 1965 after 32 performances. The cast included Michael Strong as LeBeau, Stanley Beck as Bayard, Paul Mann as Marchand, and David J. Stewart as Monceau. A London production in 1966 at the Phoenix Theatre starred Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle and Nigel Davenport.

Miller adapted the play for a 1973 television production directed by Stacy Keach and starring Andy Robinson, Burt Freed, Harris Yulin, Richard Jordan and René Auberjonois.

None of the characters in the play is referred to by name at any time, except for Von Berg and Ferrand.

The first half of the play revolves around the characters' struggle to accept why they are there. With few exceptions, notably the gypsy and Von Berg, all the detainees are Jewish, and most have fled to Vichy from the German-occupied northern half of France. Nevertheless, though they clearly grasp the reality and seriousness of their situation, they persist in allowing themselves a state of denial about the motivations for their arrests and the fate that awaits them. Lebeau, Monceau, and Marchand all grasp for explanations: "It must be a routine document check." Bayard, who may or may not be Jewish, is an outspoken Communist who warns the detainees about trains going to Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland and reports of mass killings. He enjoins the detainees to develop political consciousness to make an intellectual, albeit private, stand against the pressure of detention. "My faith is in the future; and the future is Socialist. ... They can't win. Impossible."

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