In the spring of 2000, for her thesis project at the Yale School of Drama, a student named Rebecca Taichman created The People vs. The God of Vengeance. The show was a riveting courtroom drama about an internationally renowned Sholem Asch play which had — in its Broadway debut following engagements at other New York theaters and a triumphant European tour — been put on trial, charged with obscenity. Asch’s drama was about a man who runs a brothel and keeps his daughter in the dark about the nature of his work, only to have her fall in love with one of the prostitutes. A New York rabbi thought the play misrepresented the Jewish community and brought the charges against it. The show’s defenders argued that realistic plays about modern morality were what the Jewish people needed in order to grow.
It was a fascinating case, not least because only the actors — not the playwright or producers — were charged with a crime. Also, many of the theater professionals who were eager to defend the play were not allowed to testify because they’d seen an earlier version of it.
Taichman’s Yale School of Drama project used the court case to argue the merit of the play, and to enliven its message, which frankly is hamstrung by the melodramatic conventions of early 20th-century Yiddish theater. Scenes from the play alternated with excerpts from the trial, and we got to see what motivated The God of Vengeance’s creators and cast as well as its legal defenders.
Indecent, which the Yale Repertory Theatre is presenting at the Yale University Theatre through Oct. 24, has a direct link to The People Vs. The God of Vengeance, but it’s barely visible to those who’ve seen both shows. Taichman, now an acclaimed New York and regional theater director whose recent work at Yale Rep includes two engrossing dramas by David Adjmi (The Evildoers and Marie Antoinette) as well as last season’s Danai Gurira world premiere Familiar, is credited as both co-creator and director of Indecent. The program informs that Indecent is “inspired by The People Vs. The God of Vengeance, conceived by Rebecca Rugg and Rebecca Taichman.” Rugg was a student dramaturg who helped work on the script, which had undergone several years of development.
Taichman sensed how compelling the story would be simply by juxtaposing Asch’s play with transcripts of its trial. In returning, 15 years after her graduation from Yale, to the source material, Taichman enlisted the Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel to pen a new script. Indecent is thus structurally, thematically, and fundamentally different than The People Vs. The God of Vengeance. But the new work has its own charms and fresh aims, one of which is to state loudly and clearly that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Vogel’s script starts in Warsaw, Poland in 1905 and returns to that country for one of its final scenes, but it’s very much an American story, a tale that touches on freedom of speech, immigration, race relations, sexual identity, cultural taboos, redbaiting, and the U.S. court system. As she did with a previous play, Civil War Christmas, Vogel uses both a conventional chronological structure and some fresh angles and perspectives. There are an awful lot of men running things in Indecent — producers, investors, directors, actors, lawyers, playwrights — but Vogel creates an admirable gender balance, finding a fluid and consistent female voice throughout the piece.
Taichman’s work at Yale Rep has been awash with spectacle. By contrast, Indecent is rather sparse, despite the scenic designer being the same guy (Riccardo Hernandez) who worked with Taichman on the visually stunning Marie Antoinette and The Evildoers. There is one overwhelming effect near the end of the play (in fact, at a point which some might argue should be the very end), but most of the spectacle is created by the project designer (Tal Yarden) and a motivated ensemble cast. The human element of this production is so pronounced that the three-piece band — live musicians onstage has become something of a Rep trademark — aren’t shunted into a corner, but dance and interact frequently with the actors.
It should go without saying that Indecent is a text-heavy play. It’s about a text, one written by a man who wrote a series of big fat novels. Besides playscripts, Vogel and Taichman quote from correspondence, legal decisions, and — in regular interludes throughout the intermissionless 105-minute show — vaudeville and cabaret songs that underline some of the bigotries and cultural misunderstandings inherent in Indecent. Some of the songs are willfully ironic, like the German pop standard “I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin.” Others are comical various exaggerations of some of the obstacles Jewish people in America faced in the first half of the 20th century, and Jewish theater performers in particular.
The projection design renders long speeches and court decisions as supertitle wall-art, even indulging in introductory notes on the play, song lyrics, lists of famous works by Asch, and a rundown of what plays and musicals were playing on Broadway in 1923, the year that The God of Vengeance ran into trouble.
Indecent also has a narrator — a Stage Manager, reminding us of Vogel’s oft-stated admiration for Thornton Wilder and Our Town. Lemml, played by Richard Topol, is a full-bodied character who is present at every key event in the decades-long history of The God of Vengeance. He reminds other characters at regular intervals that The God of Vengeance is a life-changing play, “the greatest play written by one of our countrymen.” Others echo his enthusiasm:
“It’s wonderful. It’s so sad.”
“This play will catch fire in Berlin!”
“You can say to your grandchildren: “I saw the great Rudolph Schildkraut in Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance!”
“We are potchkying wid’ a masterpiece.”
Topol holds onto his single part of Lemml throughout the play, while the other six members of the ensemble cast assume dozens of roles. Having a few ringers — who, like Taichman, went through the Yale School of Drama system that prizes ensemble work — helps the cast gel in such a natural manner that you might think they’ve been rehearsing and working together for a lot longer than they actually have. Adina Verson, who distinguished herself as a YSD student in such gender-conscious roles as Yitzak in Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Rosalind in As You Like It, plays a succession of young women who are all playing the same ingenue role in The God of Vengeance, a part that figures in the controversy that swirls around the play and affects the young actor’s relationships with other cast members. Verson, truly the type of performer who helps raise the standards of any ensemble cast, also plays Asch’s wife. Another fairly recent YSD grad, Max Gordon Moore, seen at the Rep last year as the male romantic lead in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, plays Sholem Asch as a young and middle aged man (with another cast member, Tom Nelis, essaying the elderly Asch), but also gets a neat stand-alone scene as Eugene O’Neill. Most of the cast are seasoned veterans of New York and regional theaters, capable character actors who bring experience and versatility to a show that becomes a whirlwind of changing roles, times, and temperaments. Katrina Lenk and Mimi Lieber have highly emotional scenes. Tom Nelis dances often, and takes on such commanding roles as the great Polish actor Joseph Schildkraut and am imposing arts patron named Peretz. Steven Rattazzi adds considerable comic relief, nailing a tricky song called “Pittsburgh, PA” and its long litany of surnames ending in “-berg.”
In not maintaining the clever, focused stage/court juxtapositions of Taichman’s long-ago The People Vs. The God of Vengeance, Indecent loses a certain clarity and momentum, yet gains a universality and historical overview. Some of the scenes seem to exist only to remind us of certain major events happening in the world at large at the time of The God of Vengeance’s various troubles. The story is extended unnecessarily, starting perhaps a decade earlier than it needs to and ending several decades after that aforementioned visually stunning scene that seems like a natural stopping point. Vogel’s historical footnotes and annotations come off, in total, as simply too much information, detracting from the intimate moments between the characters that she has so carefully crafted. Vogel crystallizes, into a single moment of a single scene of Asch’s play, much of what made The God of Vengeance both a landmark drama and the target of lawsuits and denunciations. She’s working at both extremes here: expanding the drama around the play with all sorts of enlightening details, illustrating a whole century of the Jewish experience, while at the same time reducing a large, complex Sholem Asch drama to one or two scenes. Where Indecent excels is in showing how Asch’s play allowed artists and audiences alike to confront their own prejudices and preconceptions about sexism, sexuality, gender, and religious identity.
Like The God of Vengeance and so many other plays before it, Indecent has a long journey ahead. After the Yale Rep, it goes to the La Jolla Playhouse in California and will be seen in New York next year. It is clearly in an early stage of its development, and is likely to change quite a bit in the coming weeks and months. Whatever form it takes, it remains a terrific concept for a play — one that covers the creative process, the need for art to reflect contemporary culture, and the conflicts that can arise when art that is meant to challenge society does exactly that, with society pushing back.
Indecent continues at the Yale University Theater, 222 York St., through Oct. 24. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Oct. 14, 17 & 24. (203) 432‑1234.
