By Mike Hoban
Indecent – Written by Paula Vogel; Directed by Rebecca Taichman; Music Supervision by Lisa Gutkin; Scenic Design by Riccardo Hernandez; Choreography by David Dorfman; Sound Design by Matt Hubbs; Lighting Design by Christopher Akerlind; Costume Design by Emily Rebholz; Projection Design by Tal Yarden. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Huntington Avenue Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston through May 25
“There is a story we want to tell you…about a play that changed my life. Every night we tell this story, but somehow, I can never remember the end.”
So begins Lemml (Lou) the Stage Manager/Narrator of Indecent, at the outset of the Huntington Theatre’s spellbinding production of Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning play with music. This often surreal account of the history of the controversial Yiddish play God of Vengeance takes us from its beginnings at a workshop read in 1906, through its final performances by the original cast performing for Polish Jews in an attic in the Warsaw Ghetto. It’s a deeply moving and wildly entertaining theatrical experience featuring traditional Yiddish music and dance as well as snatches of the original play, but the compelling narrative that runs throughout the 100 minute piece is of the political difficulties of presenting truth in art – or in everyday life for that matter.
The story begins when Polish playwright Sholem Asch, following a rapturous assessment by his wife, brings his new work to be read at the writer’s salon of none other than I. L. Peretz, the esteemed Yiddish playwright. Some of the men are horrified by the script and refuse to read on once they discover the storyline involves a Jewish owner of a brothel and two women in physical and spiritual love. One of the offended readers is replaced by his nephew Lemml, an uneducated tailor who will become the play’s staunchest advocate, and they continue. At the conclusion of the reading, where the brothel owner turns out his own wife and daughter (who falls for a prostitute) to work in his brothel and throws the Torah across the room, Peretz tells Asch to “burn it” – not only for its blasphemous content, but for painting Jews in a bad light at a time of rising anti-Semitism.
Instead, Asch takes the play to Berlin, where, with the help of the renowned Austrian actor Rudolph Schildkraut in the role of the brothel owner, the play becomes something of a hit, touring theaters throughout Europe. Lemml becomes stage manager for the play and eventually a kind of steward for the production, as God of Vengeance heads for the U.S., and becomes popular with the intellectual theater crowd. A producer, Harry Weinberger, decides to take an English translation of the play to the Apollo Theatre on Broadway in 1923, but chooses to cut the overt lesbian scenes to avoid controversy. The cast openly revolts, protesting that the removal of the scenes robs the play of its soul, but they relent, and the play opens on Broadway. Not long after, the producer and the cast are arrested for violating the NY penal code with “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure material,” effectively shutting the play down in the U.S. The cast returns to Europe and resumes performing, and in the end, stage their final productions in the Warsaw Ghetto before ultimately perishing in a concentration camp.
Despite its bleak sounding conclusion, this is truly a joyous production. It is clear that there was a lot of love invested by the performers in the telling of the original God of Vengeance, (at least in Vogel’s fictionalized story) and that love is felt in the performances by the cast in this production. Director Taichman (who collaborated with Vogel to create Indecent) brought many of the original members from the 2017 Tony Award-winning Broadway production, including Lisa Gutkin, who wrote the score and original music (along with Aaron Halva).
As Lemml, original cast member Richard Topol projects the essential warmth as the loving stage manager who seems to hold the company together during tough times. But it’s not until he explodes at Asch for allowing the play to be compromised for its Broadway run and his subsequent lack of support for the actors when they go to trial that we really see the true depth of his character portrayal. Adina Verson (also an original cast member) and Elizabeth A. Davis are well-matched as the lesbian lovers, providing a study in contrast. Verson plays two separate characters as the actress portraying the daughter in the play, first as a German who gets into an offstage relationship with her female co-star, and then as a goofy American girl in her first acting job. She provides much of the comic relief in this intense play, and is a terrific counterpoint to the regally beautiful and graceful Davis, who shines as the prostitute and a host of other roles, while also playing violin in the musical numbers.
The entire cast is first rate, and the Klezmer music and dancing, along with some comic touches, provide an energy that keeps the play buoyant rather than melancholy, given the subject matter. The final scene with the women dancing in the rain (a wonderful bit of staging) has an appropriately ebullient feel to it as we learn the struggle behind this play and celebrate Asch’s work, which he hoped would allow us to, “see ourselves as flawed and complex human beings.” For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/
