THEATER REVIEW : Strong Ensemble Delivers Powerful ‘Incident at Vichy’

Distances in time and place do little to blunt the devastating impact of Arthur Miller’s “Incident at Vichy” at the Colony Studio Theatre.

With surgical precision, Miller’s taut drama about the rounding up of Jews in occupied France during World War II pares away the comforts of detachment until we’re left with an inexorable conclusion about universal complicity and responsibility for human tragedies like the Holocaust.

Ever-mounting dread is palpable in the nine detainees who wait in the anteroom of a makeshift interrogation facility. Questions about the authenticity of their identification papers are only a pretext--they soon realize they’ve been brought here to determine whether they’re members of Nazi-designated “inferior races.”

Trying to downplay reports of death camps in Poland and freight trains with locks on the outside, each man projects his own reasonable interpretation on the situation. Some of their assumptions are painfully fatuous--an actor (David Carey Foster) who once toured Germany refuses to believe such an enlightened audience could condone the rumored atrocities.

Even the clearer-sighted prisoners make their own compromises with reality. An amiable artist (Lon Huber) had left his hiding place for a walk even though he knew the danger, while the best-informed of the lot, a Marxist electrician (Tim O’Hare), lives his own life as a historical abstraction amid a larger class struggle.

Only a psychiatrist (David Rose) who studied in Vienna and observed the Nazis first-hand understands the hopelessness of the situation, but his efforts to rouse the group to resistance founder on individual excuses.

In microcosm, the group demonstrates the kind of paralysis that has played into the Nazis’ hands all along, as an unlikely new prisoner--an Austrian count (Todd Nielsen)--points out. Though his ultimate release is assured--he was detained only because the Nazis harass their own aristocracy--the Count’s agony at the vulgar excesses of his countrymen puts a human face on the enemy.

So does Silas Cooper as a military commander forced to preside over the ethnic cleansing--his crisis of conscience proves a harrowing descent into madness. The Nazis’ genocide is revealed as an all-too-typical example of how we treat “the other” on whom we project our fears--”Every man has his Jew,” Miller warns, “even the Jews have their Jews.”

In this well-cast ensemble, each performer convincingly renders the essence of his character, even in brief appearances--like the sinister Professor (Charles Howerton) conducting the inquisition, or the enigmatic French Police Captain (Jackson Sleet) who summons each prisoner to the inner chamber with a laconic “Next.” Jill Klein’s astute costuming establishes each man’s social station at a glance, while Gary Wissmann’s deliberately shabby set (including an ominous wall-blackened furnace door in the rear) sets a tone of evil amid banality.

Though Miller’s dialogue can be artificially focused at times, it brings breathtaking clarity and eloquence to a dizzying array of conflicting philosophies, qualities mirrored in Scott Segall’s assured staging. Grim but not fatalistic, both playwright and director are in perfect sync in their call to look beyond the fraud of ideas and rationalizations, for only by acknowledging our basest nature can we choose to behave otherwise.

* “Incident at Vichy,” Colony Studio Theatre, 1944 Riverside Drive, Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m., except Jan. 28, 1 p.m.; dark Dec. 21-24. Ends Jan. 28. $20-$22. (213) 665-3011. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.