Arena Stage: "Indecent" by Paula Vogel

I almost let this one slip by.  I have known of the playwright Paula Vogel for some years, and only just saw my first one of her plays this past autumn "How I Learned to Drive".  It was smart and tight and nuanced about a subject (pedaphilia) that it is not easy to be nuanced about.  I was truly impressed.  When I saw that Arena was doing "Indecent," I was interested.  Then one day I got a coupon for 35% off a ticket--even better!  And then I tried to use it.  The website wouldn't accept it.  I tried again...and again....and again.  All to no avail.  Here's an insight into my psyche, better you should never offer me a discount than to offer me one that is no good!  So I washed my hands of it.

But it would not let me go...  It nagged at me.  On the strength of one of the actors, Susan Rome and a playwright that I wanted to know more of her works, and, well, Arena Stages penchant for excellence, I relented.  And man-O-man, am I ever glad that I did!  From the first moment the lights dimmed and then came up on the stage it was MAGICAL!  The play is written like a finely woven garment.  It's a play within a play.  A play about a play.  The original play was written in Yiddish by Sholem Asch, "The God of Vengeance" in something like 1905.  The contents of Asch's play involves a Jewish patriarch who is raising a family on the second floor of his home while running a whore house downstairs.  He is pious within his community and is trying to raise his daughter in innocence.  But she sees his hypocrisy and falls in love with one of the prostitutes.  In the end in an attempt to shame his daughter, she turns the tables on him and in his anger he renounces God and grabs the Torah and throws it on the ground!  Asch's play ends with the father holding the Torah aloft ready to fling it.  (No actual or prop Torah is desecrated in the production of the play).  "The God of Vengeance" was a play that faced a lot of criticism within the Jewish community beginning in his hometown of Warsaw, but as a play it found great success across eastern Europe first and then the theaters of Berlin and Paris.  He brought the play to the United States where it was translated into English and a producer took it to broadway in 1923.  However, the translation removed the beauty of the love between the two women from the script out of fear of homophobic backlash and replaced it with the older woman seducing the younger daughter.   An American rabbi offended by the content took out a complaint and the cast was arrested, the play shutdown, etc.  This is wrapped around portrayals of the actual actors weathering the storm and the growing anti-semitism of Nazi and Fascist Europe, as well as homophobia, yadda, yadda, yadda.  It is dense, but like a Mozart symphony, there isn't a note out of place.

The staging and sets, the costumes and even the choreography was, again, magical.  I could not choose a favorite actor, they worked so well together as an ensemble.  Susan Rome was wonderful, but so, too were Susan Lynskey, Emily Shackelford, Ben Cherry and, okay I will set one just a wee bit apart, Max Wolkowitz in the role of the young Sholem Asch.  It was produced in conjunction with the Kansas City Repertory Theater.  I think owing to this the cast also included Victor Raider-Wexler whom I had seen in August of 2017 as the judge in Kansas City Actors' Theatre production of "Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie.  My seat was on the front row of the balcony, and I had no qualms about standing for my ovation.  Once up, everyone else on the front joined in.  I would hope that they were going to stand anyways.

I have to say, this definitely ensconced Paula Vogel in my mind as one of the truly great contemporary playwrights.  There are only a few short days left to see this.  I promise you an amazing evening of memorable theatre if you can get out to see it.