Indecent, Paula Vogel’s touching play about the history of God of Vengeance, has now come to the Ahmanson after a successful run on Broadway. It is not to be missed. Written by Sholem Asch, the first Yiddish writer to be nominated (in 1943) for the Nobel Prize, God of Vengeance told the melodramatic yet daring story of a Jewish-owned brothel in Warsaw, where a lesbian love affair takes place between one of the prostitutes and the owner’s daughter (Elizabeth A. Davis and Adina Verson). In one tender, hillside scene the two young girls---shock horror!---kiss and embrace. This display of affection upset the zealots of the day: Asch was accused of blasphemy, obscenity and anti-Semitism, charges that were hurled at the play on and off for the next fifty years. Fortunately, God of Vengeance also had its defenders and it continued to be performed in Europe, South America, and the USA. The New York premiere of Isaac Goldberg’s English-language version of the play took place at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1922, not long after, that same Playhouse premiered Eugene O’Neill’s first plays. (O’Neill, by the way, turns up briefly in Indecent when he defends Asch’s play in public after it had been shut down by the courts because of its” lewdness and indecency”.) Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman have teamed up to dramatize God of Vengeance’s journey in a unique way. The seven cast members, all of whom play multiple roles, are joined on stage by three klezmer musicians. A hybrid musical drama then ensues, with traditional and original Yiddish tunes threaded through the action. There is also a fair amount of dancing (choreographed by David Dorfman), but just when you begin to think Fiddler on the Roof, Indecent takes a dark, grimly serious turn, owing to the impact of the Holocaust. The Nazis killed six million Jews, the major audience for God of Vengeance. But while the killing was going on, the play was still being produced, the last time in 1941 in the Lodz Ghetto where an estimated 160,000 Jews were sealed off from the world. Vogel, Taichman and the cast re-create that deeply moving, painfully real scene with remarkable authenticity and delicacy. Not long after that, Asch, embittered by the murderous destruction of European Jewry, forbade all future productions of God of Vengeance. As performed powerfully by Harry Groener, Asch becomes a tragic figure during the course of Indecent—a major artist who takes a precipitous, painful fall. It didn’t help his spirits when, in America in the 1950s, he was smeared as a Red (because he had been a socialist in his youth). Asch fled the USA for England and then Israel, where he died in 1956. His home in Bat Yam is now the Sholem Asch Museum. All his life Asch stood for tolerance, culture and compassion. All of those qualities are celebrated in Indecent, a play that is a testament to his courage and stature as a man. Among the many captivating performances in Indecent is Richard Topol’s impersonation of Lemml, the stage manager. Lemml, serves as a kind of emcee, introducing much of the action and pushing it along deftly and jauntily.
