This Arthur Miller play hasn’t had a professional production here in over fifty years and I’ve been waiting most of those years to see it myself, but it was worth the wait for Phil Willmotts’s excellent, timely production at the indispensable Finborough Theatre.
It’s set in a police waiting room in the French city of Vichy during the German occupation. Vichy is of course the centre of unoccupied France but German soldiers are present as part of the collaboration deal. The ten men are ostensibly there to have their papers checked but it’s clear they have not been selected randomly. They discuss what it must all be about, with some of the view it is just routine and others with more radical theories including racial selection. When ‘the professor’ and a German officer disagree loudly, the reason becomes clear – they are rounding up Jews.
The group includes a psychiatrist, painter, waiter, electrician, actor, gypsy and an Austrian prince. ‘The professor’ is accompanied by a French policeman as well as the German officer. The discussion extends beyond theories to options and issues of morality, notably the lengths people will go to in order to protect and save themselves. In the end both the German officer and Austrian prince show their humanity. It’s a tense and gripping ninety minute debate, set in a claustrophobic white box. The characterisations are finely detailed and the acting is outstanding.
This was a mid-career Miller play, coming between After the Fall and The Price, 10-20 years after classics like All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View From a Bridge. It’s a puzzle why it’s so rarely produced, but this is a very welcome opportunity to see it and the Finborough have done Miller proud.
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