Indecent at Mirvish Productions
Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann
Warsaw, 1906. A woman, Madje, reads a manuscript of a new Yiddish play by her husband, the 23-year-old Sholem Asch. She weeps. Sholem is happy she likes it, but doubts anyone in Warsaw will produce it. “Acchh! Warsaw is a provincial little town,” replies Madje. “This play will be done all over the world: Moscow, Berlin, Paris…”
Madje is right. The God of Vengeance is — and was, in real life — a hit across Europe. But when an abridged English translation reaches Broadway’s Apollo Theatre in 1923, and features the first lesbian kiss on a Broadway stage, a Reform rabbi calls for its cancellation.
In one 100 minute act, Paula Vogel’s Indecent covers the leadup to and fallout of The God of Vengeance’s Broadway cancellation. It’s sweeping in scale, taking place over 46 years; a cast of seven play more than 40 characters. They are, we are told, a Yiddish theatre troupe back from the dead. A three-piece klezmer band punctuates the action with musical interludes.
Indecent is the best show I’ve seen at a Mirvish theatre. It’s produced by Studio 180 Theatre, which director Joel Greenberg is Artistic Director of, and is chock full of well known Canadian theatre artists at the top of their game.
As the script instructs, the space is sparse. It’s just wooden planks, chairs, and prop-holding suitcases. So the performers have to work hard to conjure the play’s period setting. And yet they do it rousingly — through a rich blend of movement, text, and music, the ensemble weaves a richly textured, decade-spanning tapestry. Onstage period pieces can feel a little dead, but this one is eerily alive.
And the performers milk every line for maximum dramatic impact; they start at a 100, so by the end of the play, they are in the stratosphere. Matt Baram’s plays Lemml, the stage manager, and he is the ensemble’s bedrock: while everyone else rushes to change costumes and characters, he remains constant.
Indecent has the pacing of a hyperactive hamster, but the play’s real beauty surfaces towards its end, when it slows down. Its climactic sequences are not historical reenactments but carefully calibrated theatrical moments, riddled with slow-mo movement and choral singing. And though most of the play is performed in English — surtitles demarcate shifts in language — near the end, there’s a long chunk of the original Yiddish, and it’s heart-stopping.
Indecent is a thrilling piece of entertainment and a moving piece of art. It’s the rare show I would recommend to anyone, whether they usually like theatre or not.