“From ashes they rise.”
“Six million have left the theater.”
How can one not stop to listen to such words in a play, especially with the distinguished Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel in Norfolk as its dramaturg, the production’s expert on stage history and theory?
Generic Theater’s last production of its season, “Indecent,” is a splendid, morally challenging work of sometimes breathtaking beauty and horrible, all-too-timely poignancy. Anti-Semitism, anyone? Anti-immigrant animus? Homophobia? Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”) and co-conceiver Rebecca Taichman created “Indecent” through a long process that eventually brought it to Broadway in 2017. The indecency in question, however, happened long before, in the actual 1906 play that “Indecent” references.
The 1906 play (titled “The God of Vengeance,” by Yiddish writer Sholem Asch) was actually banned on Broadway in 1923, as an already bowdlerized (i.e., sanitized) form because it contained a passionate kiss between two young women. Most of us learned the concept of a “play-within-a-play” when we studied Hamlet’s “Murder of Gonzago” a.k.a. “The Mousetrap,” a brief show in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” intended to snare old Hamlet’s killer. But “Indecent” is a full-on “play-about-a-play” (critic Miriam Chirico’s term) that coexists and constantly switches off with its source material.
If the quotations at this review’s start conjure Auschwitz and the Holocaust, how can this evening possibly be considered entertainment? Well, “Fiddler on the Roof” it is not —though God of Vengeance/Indecent does contain musical numbers and dancing. They share another similarity: Both are highly instructive and entertaining. It’s just that “Indecent,” with its additional theme of homophobia and its actors playing multiple parts, perhaps requires more work on the part of its audience.
It additionally contains a moral quandary for Jews and gentiles. Yes, good liberal Americans in 2024 decry censorship. But those Orthodox and Reform Jews who shut down “God of Vengeance” on Broadway were not entirely to blame for their fears. As Panitz notes in his playbill essay, “Antisemitic slander on both sides of the Atlantic promoted the fantasy of Jews as sexually depraved. In the idiom of the insecure Jewish immigrant community of the day, could such a production be ‘good for the Jews?’ ”
The Generic’s production, astutely and lovingly directed by Maryanne Kiley, begins with an apt stage image she devised: the establishment of a minyan, i.e., a quorum of 10 Jewish adults (all males in Orthodox tradition but not here) necessary to hold prayers. Ten of her actors/musicians quietly enter the upstage area and sit patiently on chairs. The character representing “God of Vengeance” playwright Asch (played by the gentle but intense Greg Dragas, the lynchpin of the show) later quips, “Do you know what a minyan is? It’s 10 Jews in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism.” But not here, not yet.
Minyan established, we are introduced to the troupe by their stage manager (nod to Thornton Wilder) named Lemml, the also gentle but equally intense Ed Palmer. The cast is divided into Ingenues (the younger players), The Middle (-aged) and the Elders. But here’s a troubling sign: everyone’s apparently dead (!) as indicated by the dust and sand pouring out of their clothing on cue when they stand and move forward. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes, with those horrible implications.
We’re soon treated to a more heartening scene: Asch, age 23, waiting for his wife to finish reading his new work “The God of Vengeance.” She helpfully (for critics!) summarizes the whole play, which I’ve included from the script:
“My God, Sholem. It’s all in there. The roots of all evil: the money, the subjugation of women, the false piety … [sic] the terrifying violence of that father … [sic] and then, oh Sholem, the two girls in the rain scene! …You make me feel the desire between these two women is the purest, most chaste, most spiritual—”
The greedy, violent father is Otto, who subjugates his wife (well played by Dorothy Shiloff Hughes, whose parents were Holocaust survivors), his virgin daughter and a stable of whores in his basement. Otto’s hypocrisy extends to commissioning a Torah to impress his community and win a suitable husband for his daughter Rifkele (nicely done by Margo von Buseck). He gets irate, however, when he learns that Rifkele is in a nascent lesbian relationship with one of his employees, a prostitute named Manke (played by the accomplished Rebecca Weinstein). Old pro local Clifford Hoffman also takes the stage with his usual panache, playing several minor roles. The doubling and tripling of roles present a host of characters to keep track of, but also some clever (on Vogel’s part) ironic cross-commentary. Dragas, our Asch, for instance, sprouts a silly, obviously fake mustache briefly to portray another playwright: Eugene O’Neill.
Finally, all praise deservedly goes to the three-piece klezmer-style band: Governor’s School for the Arts student Velkassem Agguini on violin; the fantastic Jason Gresl on clarinet and more; plus Ben Blanchard on accordion. Vogel deserves accolades for uniting two volatile topics, anti-Semitism and homophobia; for comparing religious and sexual transgressions (or perceived transgressions); and for uniting two languages, Yiddish and English, with ease and courage. The play is, in the words of critic Jennifer Scott-Mobley, “at once archival and prescient.”
There’s a marvelously theatrical surprise at this production’s end — simple yet thrilling. But we also see our now-beloved acting troupe returning to the dust from which they came. The dust and ashes, falling again from their clothing, remind us of the 6 million who indeed “left the theater” before us.
This play is, in other words, a painful but pertinent memento mori.
Lest we forget.
Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.
___
If you go
When: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through June 2
Where: Generic Theater, down under Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk
Tickets: $18, advance; $20 day of show
Details: 757-441-2160, generictheater.org
