"Indecent" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival ensemble photo by Jenny Graham

Spoiler alert: this is a really good play.

Paula Vogel's play Indecent was originally commissioned as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's American Revolutions program. It has since played and won awards on Broadway and elsewhere, and is just now returning to its roots in Ashland. And it's quite a remarkable play.

The Play

Indecent tells the story of another play and playwright, set in the historical Yiddish theaters of Europe and the United States. Focusing on Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance, written in 1906 and produced with much controversy from the outset. The substance of Asch's play was tricky all along, dealing with a Jewish man who runs a brothel who commissions a Torah scroll as a way to gain respectability and a suitor for his daughter. The combination of prostitution, religion, and lesbianism added up to a lot of controversy, but the show was produced all over Europe in Yiddish theaters, finally coming to New York City. After much success in Jewish theaters downtown, the play was translated into English and moved to Broadway in 1923, albeit with some substantive changes (themselves controversial among the company). The Broadway show was eventually closed down by the vice squad for being indecent, and the actors and producer put on trial.

The play follows the acting company, the playwright, and the play through the whole first half of the 20th century. Let's just say World War II and related matters play a big role, too.

But Indecent is really, really well written, fascinating for its portrayals of the Yiddish theater (and presenting scenes and songs in Yiddish) as well as for telling the convoluted and difficulty-riddled tale. There is a lot to like on a lot of levels.

The Production

The OSF production is also quite spectacular, with a relatively small cast portraying all the roles over time, with only one actor (Benjamin Pelteson as Lemml, the stage manager) remaining constant throughout. The acting, singing, and dancing are all excellent, and the rather simple stage design works very well. The projected supertexts are a bit distracting (or at least were a little difficult from our seats fairly close to the stage), but very helpful when one doesn't understand Yiddish songs or dialogue.

There was a little discussion within our group about the casting, as some members of the cast didn't really look convincingly like Polish Jews. I didn't find that troubling, and after the first few minutes didn't notice it at all, but others felt it was somewhere between inappropriate and distracting. That said, I'm pretty impressed that anyone could handle the difficult text and music in multiple languages at all, so I wasn't troubled by appearances.

Director Shana Cooper has pulled together a really difficult project into a very crisp production. The performance we saw yesterday was either the first or second full performance after previews, so one might expect a few glitches. But no, it was really smoothly done.

Bottom Line

I really can't say enough about this show. I didn't know much about it going in, and was blown away by both the material and the quality of the design and presentation. I would say this was hands-down the best show we saw (out of seven) this weekend in Ashland.

The show runs through October 27 in the Bowmer Theatre, and there appear to be plenty of tickets available, so that's a great excuse to get yourself up to Ashland this fall!