{"id":84855,"date":"2022-10-31T11:39:50","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T15:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=84855"},"modified":"2022-10-31T11:39:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T15:39:50","slug":"scrutiny-paula-vogels-indecent-unsettling-thats-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2022\/10\/31\/scrutiny-paula-vogels-indecent-unsettling-thats-point\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Paula Vogel\u2019s Indecent Is Unsettling \u2014 And That\u2019s The Point"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Off-Mirvish
Off-Mirvish & Studio 180\/Indecent, by Paula Vogel, directed by Joel Greenberg (Image courtesy of Mirvish)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Off-Mirvish & Studio 180\/Indecent, by Paula Vogel, directed by Joel Greenberg, CAA Theatre, Oct. 14 to Nov. 6. Tickets here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Joel Greenberg\u2019s Studio 180 has come up with another hard-hitting play, and you could hear a pin drop in the theatre as the respectful audience took in the production. Witnessing a troubled history can be an intense experience.<\/p>\n

Indecent<\/em> (2015), by acclaimed American playwright Paula Vogel, is a play within a play, and is anchored in real life. As the subtitle for Indecent<\/em> states, \u201cThe true story of a little Jewish play\u201d.<\/p>\n

On one hand, we follow Sholem Asch (Jonathan Gould) as he writes his play God of Vengeance<\/em> at the age of just 21. Polish-born Asch (1880-1957), was a prolific novelist, short story writer, dramatist and essayist, who is regarded as one of the greatest Yiddish writers of all time within the Jewish literary canon.<\/p>\n

We not only learn about the contentious history of Asch\u2019s play; Vogel also provides us with scenes from God of Vengeance<\/em> itself.<\/p>\n

The controversy surrounding God of Vengeance<\/em> is that it shows the lead character in a bad light. Yekel (Nicholas Rice) is a Jewish brothel owner who attempts to become respectable by commissioning a Torah scroll and contracting a marriage between his virginal daughter (Jessica Greenberg) and a yeshiva student. His plans are foiled when his daughter falls in love with one of the Jewish prostitutes (Tracy Michailidis). For Asch, this lesbian relationship is a beautiful love story.<\/p>\n

Also key to what unfolds is Lemml, the stage manager for God of Vengeance<\/em> (Matt Baram), who is an early champion of the play, with Sarah Orenstein and Dov Mickelson performing several different roles (as do the other cast members).<\/p>\n

Indecent<\/em> is regarded as Vogel\u2019s first play with music, and Laetitia Francoz-L\u00e9vesque (violin), Emilyn Stam (accordion) and John David Williams (clarinet) are skilfully woven into the production by Greenberg.<\/p>\n

From the very first reading of God of Vengeance<\/em> at a salon evening in Warsaw in 1906, where Asch\u2019s mentor, the famous writer I.L. Peretz tells him to \u201cBurn it, Asch, burn it!\u201d, to its 1923 Broadway run that is shut down by the morality squad with the cast and producer arrested on obscenity charges, it is Jewish resistance to the play that is at the heart of the matter, and this despite the fact that Asch made key changes in God of Vengeance to render it more palatable to American audiences.<\/p>\n

In fact, it was a certain Rabbi Joseph Silberman who denounced God of Vengeance<\/em> in New York, and told one of the Yiddish newspapers, \u201cThis play libels the Jewish religion. Even the greatest antisemite could not have written such a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a troubling issue, among many that Vogel raises. With antisemitism rampant throughout society \u2014 and let\u2019s face it, no matter what the era, it is always there \u2014 does showing Jews in a bad light feed into this prejudice, and contribute to existing negative stereotypes? Clearly, that is what both Peretz and Silberman thought.<\/p>\n

\"Off-Mirvish
Off-Mirvish & Studio 180\/Indecent, by Paula Vogel, directed by Joel Greenberg (Image courtesy of Mirvish)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019d like to digress for a minute. Many, many years ago, Toronto Workshop Productions (where Buddies is now), mounted a play about a kapo. Kapos were Jews who were put in charge of fellow Jews by the SS in the Nazi concentration camps.<\/p>\n

It was how these kapos elected to survive, even if it meant choosing fellow prisoners for back-breaking work details, or worse, selecting those who would go to the gas chambers. I still remember that searing play to this day, but so vitriolic were outcries from the Jewish community, that TWP shut down the production.<\/p>\n

So, whether it is a play about a Jewish brothel owner and a lesbian relationship, or a Jewish kapo, has antisemitism, a plague that Jews have had to endure for centuries, made it impossible to show a darker side of the Jewish experience?<\/p>\n

Asch himself explained in a letter to the New York court, that he only wanted to write, \u201can artistic play and a true one\u2026.there are good and bad in every race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, because Asch had to make changes for Broadway, which Vogel details in Indecent<\/em>, art and creativity were compromised.<\/p>\n

There is a further troubling takeaway from God of Vengeance<\/em>. The play was a wild success in Europe, being translated into a dozen different languages, where it played in countries where there were both many Jews (Poland) and few Jews (Norway).<\/p>\n

Nowhere, it would seem, was God of Vengeance<\/em> accused of making the Jews look bad. Apparently, the play was accepted, as Asch had hoped, as a universal theme.<\/p>\n

Yet, it is in New York where God of Vengeance<\/em> encountered its most resistance. I look at our neighbours to the south today, and the swing to the religious right, and the ban on abortions and the rise of antisemitism to its greatest height in years, (the latter in Canada as well), and I wonder how would God of Vengeance<\/em> fare on Broadway today? Would some Jewish groups worry about the play feeding into antisemitism and enhancing already prurient stereotypes?<\/p>\n

While Indecent<\/em>\u2019s main stream is following the journey that is taken by God of Vengeance<\/em> from Warsaw to New York, Vogel has also included fascinating scenes from Asch\u2019s life, and so presents us with a complicated, sensitive and fragile man whose early courage became blunted over time.<\/p>\n

As for this production of Indecent, the acting is strong, Greenberg\u2019s direction is adroit, and Ken Mackenzie\u2019s set, Kimberly Purtell\u2019s lighting, and Michelle Tracey\u2019s costumes are evocative, with the entire experience made all the more poignant by the haunting klezmer music score from Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, my apologies to the cast and creative team for making such short shrift of the theatrical values, but I found the play to be so unsettling that that is where my focus in this review had to lie.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Vogel best sums up the impact of Indecent on me with this statement she once told an interviewer: \u201cIf people get upset, it\u2019s because the play is working\u201d.<\/p>\n

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You could hear a pin drop in the theatre \u2014 witnessing the troubled history depicted in Paula Vogel’s Indecent can be an intense experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":84859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[39907,52,62,63],"tags":[39854,20677,40328],"yst_prominent_words":[11181],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/10\/Indecent-REVIEW.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-m4D","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84855"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84861,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84855\/revisions\/84861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84855"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=84855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}