Review: INCIDENT AT VICHY at Theatre Southwest

INCIDENT AT VICHY is a lesser-known work by the legendary Arthur Miller in which nine men wait in a quiet detention room in Nazi-occupied France, unsure why they’ve been taken, what’s coming next, and who will be spared. As questions swirl and suspicions rise, a chilling truth emerges: the arrests are not random.

Miller’s VICHY is a tense, thought-provoking one-act that probes complicity, conscience, and the terrifying consequences of silence, confronting how ordinary people respond when their values, and even their lives, are on the line.

This was my first visit to Theatre Southwest, so I can’t speak to the old space. But I’m excited to see what they do in their new one. The cozy lobby runs the length of the building, with tickets at one end and refreshments (by donation) at the other, plus chairs and tables for waiting before the house opens. The theater itself is a versatile size that director John Patterson uses well, staging the play on a thrust with the audience seated in a V-formation.

I was impressed with the range of actors. Miller isn’t writing a mystery about who will be deported; he’s staging a moral laboratory. Each character is a facet of society under authoritarian threat, and the play’s ending forces us to ask which archetype we ourselves might resemble. Without spoiling specifics, the playwright deliberately stages the characters’ departures as a moral x-ray: one by one, they’re called in to be examined; some are released, most are doomed, and only one chooses self-sacrifice.

The set, though minimal, exudes confinement while giving the actors space (if limited) to maneuver. Costumes are well done, even if a few logos peek through or pieces aren’t strictly period. Each character still reads clearly in terms of identity and social status.

One small quirk: some characters are named in the playbill but never in the script. Bain Beason plays the Artist (“Lebeau”), Scott McWhirter the Actor (Monceau), while the Waiter and the Boy remain unnamed but no less relevant.

I was impressed by the quality of acting across the board. In a show this intimate and intense, there is nowhere to hide. Everyone did a really good job bringing their specific archetypes to life with understandable and empathic emotion. Some stand-outs were James Sheahan as the Major, who as a German line officer is conflicted by what is happening. He has been drawn into this social experiment due to his injury which has kept him out of the line of duty. While he must remain at his post, visibly sickened, he still must follow orders. Sheahan does well representing the moral corrosion of the perpetrators, trapped as much in his role as the prisoners are trapped in theirs.

As the Electrician, Hayden Messamore brings gravity to his role. He is pragmatic and has information on what is happening, as he works in the railyards and sees people being carted in and out like cattle. Randall Packer plays an aristocratic Prince, and brilliantly walks the fine line of privilege and moral sacrifice. The Actor (played by Scott McWhirter) is certain that this is all just about papers, and as his confidence waves, still believes that his celebrity and status as an entertainer will help (or save?) him. Jody Koster as the Doctor is the one Jewish intellectual that Miller allows a possible escape, symbolizing the possibility of redemption. I am not sure I necessarily saw it that way, but Koster’s arc is well worth watching.

This timely revival challenges us to reflect on moral courage, social responsibility, and the price of inaction. Gripping and unsettling, INCIDENT AT VICHY speaks as powerfully today as it did when it premiered. It feels less like a dusty history lesson than a mirror held up to our own anxieties. Its portrait of denial, scapegoating, and self-preservation in the face of creeping authoritarianism echoes uncomfortably with today’s headlines. We, too, live in an age of economic precarity, widening inequality, and easy demonization of “outsiders.” Social feeds and partisan bubbles make it even simpler to look away until someone we know is taken, silenced, or stripped of rights. In Miller’s detention center, no status or profession ultimately protects anyone from the machinery of injustice—a warning that feels startlingly current.

And yet, Miller insists on the possibility of moral choice. Von Berg’s small but profound sacrifice stands as a rebuke to passivity and a reminder that courage often begins with one person deciding not to look away. In a world where whistleblowers, journalists, and ordinary citizens still take personal risks to call out wrongdoing ,INCIDENT AT VICHY lands less like a period piece and more like an urgent call. It asks not only whether we recognize these patterns, but which character we might resemble when our own moment of decision arrives.