"Indecent" takes us from the young Asch (Josh Krause) sharing the newly written Yiddish play with his wife Madje (Rachael Zientek), through decades of its performances in Europe, then to the United States, where a Broadway production in 1923 is shut down by an obscenity prosecution. MORE: A UWM scholar is lending his Yiddish expertise to the provocative drama 'Indecent' at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre But she has fallen in love with one of the prostitutes downstairs. The father even commissions a Torah scroll, which he places in the daughter's room as a form of protection. In Sholem Asch's 1907 play "God of Vengeance," a Polish Jewish father who makes a living from the brothel in his basement wants to marry his virgin daughter to a pious Jewish groom. "Indecent" tackles big questions: Is it wrong to show troubling behavior by one's own people onstage? Does that invite persecution? Who "owns" a play? Its writer? The people who perform it? Or the audience members who see it? (Supertitles are projected in both languages.) Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's powerful production, which opened Saturday, helps us understand why.Ī superb cast, directed by Brent Hazelton, delivers an emotionally moving performance in a theatrically complex show that requires not only frequent character changes but also shifts in speech from standard English to broken English to Yiddish. It was never a given that any of them would survive the Holocaust. It's tempting to see the fate of "God of Vengeance," the classic Yiddish play sampled frequently in Paula Vogel's "Indecent," as a metaphor for the Yiddish language and for the Ashkenazi Jewish people themselves. View Gallery: Photos from 'Indecent,' performed by Milwaukee Chamber Theatre
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