“Indecent”: Taut, Touching New Play
I echo my colleagues’ sentiments about “Indecent,” a new play written by Paula Vogel and co-created by Vogel and Rebecca Taichman, who directed, which has just opened at the Vineyard Theater off-Broadway. The play tells the story of Sholom Asch’s drama “The God of Vengeance,” and how it was butchered after moving uptown, in 1922, from a more integral production in the Village. There are many Brechtian touches in Taichman’s staging — titles, dissolves, left-wing politics. The humanity of the actors presenting “God,” and especially the two women who inhabit the lesbian roles in Asch’s play (scandalous to some people at the time), is remarkable.
