“Indecent” tells the story of the life of an early 20th-century play that traverses the intersections of art and history, censorship and prejudice, while bursting at the seams with music.
Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”) has woven the elements into a Tony-nominated work about a mostly forgotten moment in the history of theater. Now, it’s Pittsburgh Public Theater’s turn to be “Indecent,” with a production opening Thursday.
Where: Pittsburgh Public Theater at the O’Reilly Theater, Downtown.
When: April 18-May 19. 7 p.m. Tues, 8 p.m. Wed.-Fri. (except May 1), 2 and 8 p.m. Sat. and 2 and 7 p.m. Sun. (for more exceptions, visit ppt.org).
Tickets: Tickets: $30-$80 ($16.50 for students and ages 26 and younger), ppt.org or 412-316-1600.
Preshow events: For ticket-holders (all starting at 6:45 p.m., second floor of the O’Reilly): Live Klezmer music by Blacksea Klez (May 3), KleZlectic (May 10) and Tom Roberts’ playing Klezmer 78s on a classic Victrola (May 17).
At the center of the “Indecent” storm is “God of Vengeance,” a 1907 play by Polish writer Sholem Asch. It was considered beautiful and haunting, shocking and obscene as it traveled from Europe to America. Where it went, controversy followed.
The plot of “God of Vengeance” centers around a Jewish brothel owner who, in an attempt at respectability, commissions the creation of a Torah scroll and arranges a marriage for his daughter. The play includes prostitutes, a lesbian relationship and the sacrilege of hurling a Torah to the ground. It began as a Yiddish-language piece that was translated to English and made its way to Broadway in 1923 — where it ended in arrests for the acting troupe and management on obscenity charges.
Even today, to show the play as it was written, without the context provided in Vogel’s “Indecent,” might shock some audiences.
Risa Brainin, a Carnegie Mellon graduate and veteran director who takes on “Indecent” for the Public, notes that a character in the play asks Asch, “ ‘Why right now, in the midst of all this anti-Semitism, are you showing negative images of Jews? Why not show just the positive?’”
In the play, Asch counters that Jewish people should be depicted as human, with flaws as well as virtues.
In Pittsburgh, where “Indecent” arrives within months of the Tree of Life synagogue killings, a play that deals with anti-Semitism takes on new and urgent meaning.
“We have people in the company who are very close to the tragedy,” Brainin said. “I think it gives the play an immediacy, and it feels important that we are doing it here. I know Paula feels that way.”
Vogel’s play traces the path of “God of Vengeance,” from the moment Asch first shows the script to his wife, to its journey to America, spanning 50 years. It does so with most characters playing multiple roles, bare-bones staging, traditional klezmer music and a flow of movement and pace that doesn’t let up.
“The play itself, even if there were no issues around it, is very hard to put together.” With that, the director laughs and others join in.
“At the beginning, I said it takes a village to do this play, because of all the aspects — the span of time, the number of characters, and how do you differentiate those characters ... just the nuts and bolts putting it together, and add that this is a very volatile moment.”
We see the backstage drama unfold through the eyes of the one actor who plays a single role, Maury Ginsberg as the stage manager Lemml.
The character begins as an innocent who is drawn into the vortex of the play by chance and is swept up into what amounts to a love affair with a work of art.
“Lemml is a stage manager, and I think Paula Vogel was a stage manager, and this idea of being a caretaker for a play and protecting it, and protecting art, and championing art, that art matters, is very important and moving,” Ginsberg said. “That’s the strong throughline that pulls me through.”
The actors and musicians transition from scene to scene with occasional projections to ground the audience in time and place, but they are always on the move. Ginsberg dubbed the choreography “chair-ography,” to describe another way scene changes are accomplished.
Throughout, they are accompanied by klezmer music and often dance from scene to scene.
Point Park alumna Mariel Greenlee handles the movement, and Emmy and Grammy winner John McDaniel, a veteran of “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” eight Broadway productions and the 1995 Patti LuPone Live! concert tour, serves as music director.
Director Brainin described times in rehearsals when McDaniel and Greenlee and dialect coach John McManus were waiting for actors as they walked offstage to grab moments with them.
“You are dealing with another language, accents and on top of that, singing and then choreography. ... I’m letting it inform me and work for me,” Ginsberg said, “because I imagine when Lemml came to America, it was at times ungrounding and being unsure of what he was going to do next.”
Ginsberg, new to Pittsburgh, spoke of the chemistry of the cast in the most glowing terms — they have become that “village” Brainin spoke of, gathered from near and far. The cast includes Emily Daly, Laurie Klatscher, Meg Pryor, Robert Tendy, Ricardo Vila-Roger and Robert Zukerman.
Add to that a trio of musicians — Pittsburgh’s Janice Coppola, Erikka Walsh (“Once” on Broadway) and Spiff Wiegand — who play klezmer music, the traditional music of Easter European Jews, wandering in and out of the action on the O’Reilly’s thrust stage.
“We’ll have a clarinet solo here and a violin and accordion duet over there, and we are able to use the space in a really exciting way,” McDaniel said.
Brainin and her music director have known each other since high school days and continued their friendship at Carnegie Mellon University. They have been looking for a way to work together since their college days, and when she called McDaniel about doing “Indecent,” and in Pittsburgh, his response was, “Let’s do it!”
For McDaniel, who has many musicals, concerts and recordings to his credit, “Indecent” is a new experience in some ways and in others, well, “Let’s just say it: This is virtually a musical,” he said. “We call it a play with music, but we do have fully realized musical numbers. There’s a band that travels with the troupe throughout and is integral to the storytelling.”
The music and the movement of “Indecent” work in concert with the story of how “God of Vengeance” came to be and how it ended on Broadway one night in 1923, in the arrest of the entire company.
“For me this play is not only so meaningful, it’s so entertaining,” McDaniel said. “And that’s how we grab them. We make them laugh, we seduce them with the music, and then, it’s so incredibly moving.”
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg. Sign up for the PG performing arts newsletter Behind the Curtain at Newsletter Preferences.
First Published: April 17, 2019, 12:00 p.m.