Playwright: Arthur Miller
At: Steep Theatre, 3902 N. Sheridan Rd.
Phone: ( 312 ) 458-0722; $15
Runs through: April 2
Our play opens on a group of people confined in a single room. They don't wear uniforms, so we aren't in a prison, a hospital or an Outpost Behind Enemy Lines. They are there involuntarily and a deadline looms, but we're not in a jury-room. Their jailers are also their executioners, but this is not a hostage play, and the detainees are all men, so neither is this a docudrama of the Richard Speck murders. But we know what to expect, having seen this premise mined for dramatic suspense many times before.
We are in France—specifically, central France, in the town of Vichy—and the year is 1942. Citizens have been pulled off the street, seemingly at random. They are told it is for inspection of their identity papers, but the presence of a 'racial anthropologist' eager to study their physical characteristics raises the possibility that they are suspected to be Jews. As, one by one, they are summoned into the interrogation room—some returning to go free, others not—we become acquainted with the circumstances bringing them to this crisis, as well as the various responses suggesting a solution.
So what would YOU consider the appropriate alternative to waiting in helpless uncertainty? Would you trust in the Law for protection? Would you accept your martyrdom? Would you maintain your social prejudices to the end? Would you use them to your advantage? Would you call for your fellow captives to unite in a plan for escape? Would you ask a survivor to take a message to your mother? A German soldier clearly uncomfortable with his current assignment declares, 'There are no persons any more'. But in a world where individuals are no longer recognized, individuals are precisely those who must take action.
These complex moral questions may seem irrelevant in our age of committees, coalitions and support groups, but no American playwright ever wrote better roles for male actors than the late Arthur Miller. And this often-neglected classic provides an abundance of them for this Steep Theatre production. Under Luke Hatton's expert direction and Martin Aistrope's likewise expert dialect instruction, a squad of muscular players carry their weighty issues with heroic dignity and unaffected grace.