Incident at Vichy

Jew is only the name we give to that stranger. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. And the Jews have their Jews.

Arthur Miller’s largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy is a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all, inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a Jew his identity pass during a check, which would have resulted in the Jew otherwise being sent to a concentration camp.

This Methuen Drama Student Edition of the play includes commentary and notes by Joshua Polster, Emerson College, US, which investigate the politics of the play in the context of the African-American civil rights movement happening at the time; the Vietnam War; The House Committee on Un-American Activities; and the murder of Kitty Genovese, as well as exploring Miller’s own relationships that were central to the play including with psychoanalyst Dr Rudolf Loewenstein, his wife Inge Morath and his friend Elia Kazan.