Theatre in Review: Indecent (Vineyard Theatre)

	Photo: Carol Rosegg

Indecent begins with Lemml, a stage manager, introducing us to the members of the company; as each of them steps forward, dust falls off them in piles. (It practically pours out of their sleeves.) It's an apt image, as the playwright, Paula Vogel, wants to shake the dust off of God of Vengeance, a once-notorious, now half-forgotten Yiddish drama that, amazingly for its time, portrayed in pioneering fashion a lesbian relationship. This was hardly the only provocation in a play that presents a seemingly pious Jewish family living over the brothel that is their main source of income. It also concludes with the patriarch condemning his daughter to a life of prostitution and sacrilegiously throwing a Torah scroll to the ground. You can imagine the effect all this had on audiences in 1908.

Unusually, God of Vengeance is the protagonist of Vogel's play, rather than any character. The script, which was developed with the director, Rebecca Taichman, chronicles the rise and fall of a work that significantly alters the fates of all who come in contact with it. The action covers the entire first half of the last century, beginning with a thriving Yiddish culture on two continents and ending in the smoke of the death camps. It starts in 1906 with the young playwright, Sholem Asch, presenting the play at a reading in Warsaw, an event cut short because the actors are too disgusted to say the words. Driven to put the burning moral questions of the time on stage, Asch takes the script to Berlin, where the distinguished actor Rudolph Schildkraut, seeing a sensational role for himself as the father/brothel keeper, stages it to tumultuous acclaim. The success is repeated all around Europe, and, ultimately, in America, when, in 1922, God of Vengeance opens at the Provincetown Playhouse.

The moment of fatal overreach comes when the producer Harry Weinberger decides to take God of Vengeance -- still starring Schildkraut -- to Broadway. First, he insists -- not unreasonably -- that it be performed in English. More controversially, he insists on a number of cuts, most notably the deletion of the entire "rain scene," an explicit depiction of the affair between Rifkele, the family's daughter, and Manke, one of the whores. Even this measure -- which, one of the actresses argues, cheapens and coarsens the play -- isn't enough for the police, and the entire company is arrested on opening night, signaling the end of a cultural phenomenon that was more than half a century ahead of its time in its treatment of homosexuality.

Like Shuffle Along, that other currently running theatre history lesson -- a show to which it has an almost eerie resemblance -- Indecent has a fascinating story to tell, one so vast and complicated that it gets caught up in its own sprawl. Because the focus is squarely on the fate of the play, characters come and go without our ever getting to know them. Asch dominates the early scenes, then fades from the narrative as he become a recluse, fed up with the theatre and increasingly obsessed with the pogroms of Eastern Europe. His decision to permit the play's bowdlerization is not convincingly explained, and we are left with a series of tantalizing clues to his life, including the late-career decision to write a trilogy of novels about Jesus Christ, which resulted in condemnation from other Jews, and his troubles with the HUAC, which caused him to flee the country. There is a fascinating drama to be made of Asch's life, but Indecent isn't it.

Other stories are left even more undeveloped. We are told that Schildkraut's career in America is derailed by the God of Vengeance scandal, but he doesn't get enough stage time to emerge as a distinct personality. In the downtown New York production, the roles of Rifkele and Manke are played by Reina and Dorothee, actresses who are real-life lesbian lovers. "This will be the only role in my lifetime where I could tell someone I love that I love her onstage," Reina says, before she is fired because she can't handle the English dialogue. This puts considerable strain on the pair's relationship. Reina's replacement, Virginia MacFadyen, is, surprisingly, a Smith grad with zero stage experience who, nevertheless, rises to the occasion on opening night. She candidly admits taking the job largely to tick off her parents, but why she gets hired -- as opposed to a professional actress -- remains a mystery.

The one character who seems intended to provide a through-line is Lemml, the timid country tailor who becomes Asch's right-hand man and stage manager, maintaining a proprietary attitude toward God of Vengeance long after Asch has lost interest in it. The always-fine Richard Topol excels in the role, whether trying on his new American name ("Lou"), furiously denouncing Asch for not testifying in the play's defense, and, back in Poland in the 1940s, covertly staging performances in an impromptu theatre in an attic.

Under Taichman's direction, the production has a distinctly Brechtian tinge, thanks to its often presentational style, projections that announce each scene, and interludes featuring song and stylized movement. (David Dorfman's choreography is equally fluent, whether the company is circling ecstatically to a klezmer-style tune or putting Charleston steps to "Ain't We Got Fun.") The entire cast, all of whom take on multiple roles, is first-rate: Katrina Lenk is touching as Dorothee, who puts her personal happiness in jeopardy to reach Broadway; as the most mordant member of the troupe, Mimi Lieber wryly notes, "Among the intelligentsia lesbians sell tickets. Uptown, for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, prostitutes in a brothel is all the excitement they can take." Tom Nelis strikes a distinguished figure as Schildkraut. Steven Rattazzi convincingly impersonates the forces of repression, including Weinberger, the producer; the Irish cop who shuts down the production; and a prominent rabbi who takes revenge on Asch for his unflattering depictions of his coreligionists. Adina Verson is equally strong as Asch's wife and muse; the hapless Reina; and the thrill-seeking Virginia. Standout work is offered by Max Gordon Moore as Asch, moving from a young firebrand, determined at all costs to have his play seen, to a world-weary literary figure, pained by exile and driven to "write something to change the way gentiles see us -- that make them see that we are one people with one common root -- or they will rip us out, root by root, from the earth until we are no more."

Taichman's design team delivers a nicely stylized look and sound, beginning with Riccardo Hernandez's set, a largely bare stage dominated by a raised playing area and a proscenium lined in lightbulbs. Christopher Akerlind's lighting has the precise color and warmth of period stage lighting fixtures; he also uses abundant side lighting to give a heightened quality to each stage picture. Emily Rebholz's costumes manage to neatly traverse several decades. Tal Yarden's projections -- in both English and Yiddish -- provide crucial scene-setting information and wry commentary. (Indecent, we are told, is "the true story of a little Jewish play.") Matt Hubbs' sound design includes such effects as applause and, rather surprisingly, the overture from Oklahoma!

There are occasional anachronisms in the dialogue -- for example when Asch tells Lemml, "You had my back," or when one of Lieber's characters cracks, "When the going gets tough, the goyim get goin'." But the real issue with Indecent -- a vast historical canvas on which many of the details are smudged -- is that it probably requires a longer and more elaborate approach to accommodate so many people and events. The result is more scattered and less gripping than one imagines Vogel intends. Still, it has its moments of real power. The finale, in one of the death camps, brings us back to the dust effect mentioned at the beginning of this review. Indecent begins with dust and ends there, too. There's no getting around it; it is the awful inheritance of the twentieth century. -- David Barbour