And yet they do it rousingly - through a rich blend of movement, text, and music, the ensemble weaves a richly textured, decade-spanning tapestry. So the performers have to work hard to conjure the play’s period setting. It’s just wooden planks, chairs, and prop-holding suitcases.

It’s produced by Studio 180 Theatre, which director Joel Greenberg is Artistic Director of, and is chock full of well known Canadian theatre artists at the top of their game.Īs the script instructs, the space is sparse. Indecent is the best show I’ve seen at a Mirvish theatre. A three-piece klezmer band punctuates the action with musical interludes. They are, we are told, a Yiddish theatre troupe back from the dead. It’s sweeping in scale, taking place over 46 years a cast of seven play more than 40 characters. In one 100 minute act, Paula Vogel’s Indecent covers the leadup to and fallout of The God of Vengeance’s Broadway cancellation. But when an abridged English translation reaches Broadway’s Apollo Theatre in 1923, and features the first lesbian kiss on a Broadway stage, a Reform rabbi calls for its cancellation. The God of Vengeance is - and was, in real life - a hit across Europe. “This play will be done all over the world: Moscow, Berlin, Paris…” “Acchh! Warsaw is a provincial little town,” replies Madje. Sholem is happy she likes it, but doubts anyone in Warsaw will produce it. A woman, Madje, reads a manuscript of a new Yiddish play by her husband, the 23-year-old Sholem Asch.

Indecent by paula vogel script