Review: Paula Vogel's Stunning INDECENT at American Stage

I always tell people that, as a reviewer, if I don’t write much in my notebook during the show it can mean one of two things: 1) The production in question is so incredibly compelling and powerfully mesmerizing that I don’t want to look down for fear I might miss something;  or 2) the show is so mind-numbingly tedious and jaw-droppingly terrible that I hurl my notebook to the ground in disdain and start counting in my head the number of ways that I despise what I am viewing.  While watching American Stage’s production of Paula Vogel’s INDECENT: THE TRUE STORY OF A LITTLE JEWISH PLAY, I wrote nary a note.  In this case, that’s a good thing.

I kept my notebook scribble-free because I was so stunningly entertained and informed by Ms. Vogel’s brilliant script and this grade-A production.

Even though INDECENT is only 100 minutes long, and a brisk 100 minutes at that, it is sprawling and almost epic in scope, in story, and in emotion. At its center is a real Jewish play from the early 1900s (The God of Vengeance) and INDECENT'S timeline will span the globe where we witness so much antisemitism, censorship, homophobia, fascism, and Red-baiting.  Using this play-within-a-play and a particular scene in it repeatedly shown of two women kissing in the rain, INDECENT wades through the muddy first half of the Twentieth Century: From the Pogroms to Ellis Island, from the Holocaust to the Red Scare.  And it uses music, dance, projections, accents, clever staging, repeated motifs, and actors playing multitudes of various characters to tell its important story. 

The script is informative, inspiring and inventive; the production at American Stage is stellar in every aspect.    

The plot of INDECENT may seem labyrinthian as it weaves through time and place, from Warsaw, Poland in the early 1900s to Bridgeport, Connecticut in the 1950s, but it’s not too difficult to follow. 

The first moment is a doozy and only later does it make sense.  The characters (called “The Dead Troupe”) are sprawled on the stage, lying on the ground, including two women holding each other, reminding me of the cemented dead family in Pompeii that held onto each other in their final pose as they were crushed by the ashes of Mt. Vesuvius.  Slowly, one by one, they rise, wiping something that looks like dust from their clothing. But it isn’t dust; it’s obviously ash.  This opening plays like an ending of sorts, as if dust-bunny-covered artifacts had just been discovered in an attic.

The likable and buoyant stage manager, Lemml, introduces the audience to the concept of the show where the small troupe of actors will play many, many characters. Per Ms. Vogel’s note: “When a character speaks his/her native language, they speak in perfect English. When they speak a second or a third language, they speak English with an accent.” This is marvelous to experience, and the actors at American Stage do a sensational job of accomplishing this difficult task.

We follow the Yiddish play The God of Vengeance written by the central character, Sholem Asch, a Jewish lawyer and playwright from Poland. His first play includes a lesbian love story as well as the then-shocking misuse of the Torah, and early readers and viewers seem appalled by it.  Still, it becomes a sensation in Europe, and one hundred years ago, in 1923, The God of Vengeance makes its Broadway debut. But the cast is arrested on obscenity charges due to the first lesbian kiss seen on the Broadway stage. It is noted that The God of Vengeance never faced censorship in Moscow or Berlin, but America is where it would find its greatest pushback.   (“What can you do?” reads one of the projections.  “It’s America?”)  While some think antisemitism is the hidden reason for the arrest, it is surprisingly engineered by a Rabbi horrified by the play’s content. Asch meets Eugene O’Neill, a supporter of the play, but the great playwright had been refused the right to testify on the play’s behalf. Ultimately the defendants are all found guilty.

But due to Limml’s diligence and love for Asch’s work, The God of Vengeance finds yet another life in Europe years later, staged in an attic in the Lodz Ghetto during the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. This leads to the play’s most chilling line: “I too have lost audience members. Six million have left the theater.” Years later, in Staten Island after World War II, an older Asch finds America less free than he had hoped and decides to venture to England as he faces persecution from the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. And yet, almost fifty years after the initial writing of his play, a new generation once again falls for Asch’s powerful work that was both timely and way ahead of its time. And it’s all true.

Now, let’s put all that  storyline stuff away because recounting the plot of INDECENT takes away the pure theatrical pleasure of the piece; it’s one hell of a good time at the theatre with its singing, dancing, and sheer joy.  As the show’s director (and American Stage’s Artistic Director), Helen R. Murray, writes in her Director’s Note: “There is so much celebration in Judaism.  I mean, we love a party, and we have so many holidays.  Sure, a bunch of them are memorial days and days of atonement, but even those days end with delicious food and song. We are people who eat, decorate, joke, play, dance, sing, and love.  Even when things get ugly or heartbreaking, we always work to find the sweetness.”

It’s a lively Director’s Note--livelier than most--and you feel that same aliveness on the stage, the joy of life even amid the darkest of times. 

The seven-member cast plus three musicians, working as a unit, a true troupe, is breathtaking.  Not a missed note, not a weak link among them. 

Josephine Phoenix is such a lively force in her various roles (Halina Cygansky, Manke, Frieda and Clara).  She has a face that lights up the stage and she revs any scene into overdrive.  Playing her various partners, Emma Friedman, who grew up in the Tampa area and was a part of Blake High School’s outstanding theatre program, is also incredible.  She has such a vibrancy, a realness, grounded and alive, reacting and passionate and always in character. (She's particularly strong accent-wise when bouncing from "English" to "Yiddish" and back.)

The two of them, Ms. Phoenix and Ms. Friedman, connect so well onstage, and their key (choreographed) scene, showcased several times, is nothing short of exquisite.  At the end, something gorgeously moving and unexpected occurs, and I will leave it for you, the reader, to see the show, to experience what I’m alluding to.  It is a joy meant for the stage and for the moment. My only further statement about it is that I wish the audience didn’t erupt into hearty applause so soon after so we could savor those final moments even more.  The applause and immediate standing ovation are certainly well-deserved; I just wanted a little more time to soak it all in before the overwhelming burst of appreciation from the audience for a job well done.

Cynthia Beckert, so memorable as the scarred teacher in American Stage’s Pipeline several years ago, brings her characters (Vera Parnicki, Sarah Esther Stockton, Mrs. Peretz, and the Older Madje) to so much life with such a command of the stage.  Cody Taylor is equally thrilling in his variety of roles (including Mendel Shultz, Nakhman, Harry Weinberger, and the historically villainous Rabbi Joseph Silverman who was behind the arrest of The God of Vengeance cast). 

Mykail Cooley gives a very natural, wonderful strength to playwright Sholem Asch (and he’s also delightful doing double-duty as Eugene O’Neill).    Eric Olson is marvelous with a stirring speaking voice, a raise the dead level excellence, that he lends to his variety of parts: Otto Godowsky, Yekel, Rudolph Schildkraut, and even playwright Asch as an older man.

And there’s no such thing as too many accolades with Michael Raver’s Lemml, a part that stirs the soul with love, exuberance and heartbreak.   Lemml’s outrage over cuts to the play that Asch allows was so strong that it earned applause when he had finished, and near the end he has a moment that led me to tears.  The entire cast may be Next Level, but Mr. Raver’s work here is Next Next Level if such a thing exists.

Just as important to the production are the three onstage and all-over-the-stage musicians, Samuel Perlman on clarinet, Melody Allegra Berger on violin and mandolin, and Julia Williams on the accordion. (If any of you don’t think accordions are cool, then watching Ms. Williams will surely change your mind.) Music Director Matt Deitchman has done an amazing job guiding these musicians as well as the casts’ superb vocals.

No one steals any scenes in this show; they all work harmoniously together, cast and musicians alike.  Jessica Scruggs’ choreography, David Aterberry’s lighting design, Debra Kim Sivigny’s appropriate costume designs, Matthew M. Neilson’s sound design, Jonathan Dahm Robertson’s set (that’s like a wooden porch with planks, which is exactly what the script calls for), and especially Mr. Robertson’s projections create something beyond special.  All aspects of the production go above and beyond.

The main laurels should land at the feet of director Helen R. Murray, using Paula Vogel’s wondrous words as a springboard.  She and her cast, musicians, and crew have mounted a one-of-a-kind theatrical piece, a work that must be on the stage, that cannot be accomplished or equaled in a movie or a TV show.  Not since The Royale in 2017 have I enjoyed the sheer theatricality of a work at American Stage like I did with this show.   

After the play, which packs quite a lot of punches in its 100-minute runtime, I kept replaying the scenes in my head on the drive home.  There is a lot of pain in INDECENT, but there is also so much hope--hope that art can actually save lives, reflect the world and make it bearable at the same time, acting as a sort of refuge in a world of doom.  As one character aptly says, “Six nights a week we gather together to sing songs we know and love, to dance, to escape our daily lives. But on the seventh night … God created Yiddish theater!”

Sometimes we can get cynical these days, and when it comes to the stage, some of us see so many shows that, whether they turn out to be gloriously good or notoriously bad, we must fight any instincts to become jaded.  INDECENT is the tonic for anyone’s cynicism. It reminds me of why I love the theatre so much.

Photo Credit: Chaz D Photography

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