Chana, who played Rifkele in Europe, cannot master the play’s English translation and so is recast with an American gentile named Virginia who, though earnest, can’t understand the play’s layers of Jewishness and lesbianism (in an amusing double-casting prescribed by Vogel, Chana and Virginia are both played by Greenberg).īack home in Europe, attitudes toward Jews are getting worse and worse, and Asch, woefully depressed, removes himself from his play’s daily operations - even when the American authorities arrest the cast and producer for acts of obscenity when the play opens. But then things get sticky a producer (Dov Mickelson) changes the script, grinding the Sapphic love story down to its bones and stripping the play of its iconic “rain scene” between Manke and Rifkele. “God of Vengeance” has great success in Europe and even in its Yiddish premiere in New York City. The girls in question are Rifkele, played by a sweet Jessica Greenberg, and Manke, acted with subtle compassion by a fiery Tracy Michailidis. It’s 1906 and Asch, played with a fitting dash of intellectual aloofness by Jonathan Gould, has written a play about women in love - they even kiss onstage - and Lemml is smitten by the girls’ tenderness.

Lemml, the troupe’s stage manager (played by a perfectly cast Matt Baram), wants to tell us the story of a play that changed his life: “God of Vengeance” by Sholem Asch. “Indecent” opens with small mountains of ash falling from the sleeves of a dusty theatre troupe. Languages intersect, memories collide, bodies tangle.īut if it’s a love story, it’s a haunted one, a play-within-a-play that spirals in on itself like a ravenous snake. Mirvish and Studio 180’s “Indecent” is anything but.īrought to life with gentleness by director Joel Greenberg, Paula Vogel’s tribute to theatre-making has all the trappings of a world-class love story.

Indecent theatre