Indecent’s characters speak primarily in accented English with occasional slips into Yiddish that are translated via supertitles. Throughout it all, Taichman’s precise direction enables her astoundingly talented ensemble to slip between the multiple characters they each embody, and to move seamlessly across international, social, and linguistic borders. Lighting designer Christopher Akerlind’s rich palette of reds and blues eases the actors’ transitions across layered planes of reality. Composers Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva’s klezmer-infused soundscape amplifies the storytelling as it dips from joyous classics to harrowing unease. Choreographer David Dorfman’s synchronic vignettes range from rousing renditions of the Hora to languid duets between characters whose orbits may or may not collide.
Indecent’s palimpsestic dramaturgy enables it to retell Ashkenazi Jewish history via the transnational circulation of God of Vengeance. Indecent weaves together excerpts from God of Vengeance with its behind-the-scenes drama (both fictional and real) to bring Yiddish theater history to life.
Sisters in Sin: Brothel Drama in America, 1900-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Vogel and Taichman blend facts with imagination to retell the history of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, which stands apart from other early twentieth-century Yiddish and American plays for depicting a love affair between two women. This will not be our last encounter with the rain scene, nor will it be the last time that characters, moments, and places fold seamlessly into one another. The lights brighten, “Ale Brider” begins to play, and we are somewhere else now, the two women part of the ensemble’s circle dance. “Remember this,” Lemml instructs as the two lovers-Rifkele and Manke-twirl together in the rain. Lemml has just introduced himself as the stage manager for Yiddish playwright Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, a love story between Rifkele, a brothel owner’s daughter, and Manke, the prostitute who lives downstairs. “It all starts with this moment,” narrates Lemml, a character in Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman’s Tony Award-winning play Indecent.Īs we are starting to learn, Indecent is a play about a play. As they shake their hair and laugh, we intuit that what is falling must be rain. They stand awash in emerald light, their heads thrown back towards something that falls from above.
Holding hands, two women face the audience.
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