The eerie, minimalist set design on the stage evokes the ominous unfolding of an incident. The metal staircase and a large, circular tube, covered with plastic stripes on a shadowy back wall, set the background of a stage, designed for a theatrical narrative under a cloak of foreboding. Several wooden benches, delineated with bluish shades on an unkempt floor, induce an awareness of emptiness, amplified with reflections of bright lights that float off several hanging lamps that are tied to long wires from the dark ceiling. The single piercing bluish light through the mysterious tube is the most disconcerting to an audience that has its first encounter with the play through such disconsolate scene design.

The uncanny combination of color and dark shades uniquely distinguish the brightly lit yet gloomy indoor setting of this 2016 production of Arthur Miller's 1964 Incident at Vichy at Iranshahr Theatre, Tehran's first privately run theater. The ensemble of several men and women, sitting on a bench or standing, as they anxiously wait for their fate in detention after a police roundup of Jews, invites the audience to a tantalizing performance of a traumatic experience to be unfolded in Vichy France in 1943. The location is a metaphoric setting for the banality of evil and, concurrently, the human denial of such peril, ironically, as a means for survival. This one-act play, which has been on revival for its depiction of dehumanization and moral predicament under the shadows of the Holocaust, has undergone a translative transformation in postrevolutionary Iran. With this unique performance at the Iranshahr Theatre, the play has now taken on a new life.

On a stage that fuses realist and abstract themes, the unnerving ambiance of a chain-wired fence, symbolizing militarized detention, has a haunting effect on the audience. The dark, securitized space of detention becomes intrinsic to the performance of Iranian actors who seek to depict an “incident” of moral and universal significance, though translated for an Iranian audience. What translates is a tense relationship between the realism of human futility, best personified by Leduc, a Jewish psychiatrist, and the idealism of Von Berg, Prince Wilhelm Johann, a nobleman from Austria, whose ultimate act of courage allows Leduc to escape detention and seek a better life.