A STUNNING INDECENT REMINDS US
THAT FREE SPEECH IS ALWAYS ON TRIAL

The triumphs and travails of an itinerant Yiddish theater troupe get a full examination in Paula Vogel’s acclaimed hit play Indecent. A stunning and nearly all-Equity production of the award-winner is now playing at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.

Kina Kantor and Adam KuveNiemann

Actually a play about a play, Indecent spans more than forty years in the life of The God of Vengeance, written in 1905 by Polish playwright Sholem Asch, a role expertly embodied by Adam KuveNiemann. Asch’s play was an epiphany for a young tailor named Lemml (Vincent Randazzo), who made it his life’s work as stage manager and promoter.

The cast

The God of Vengeance was well received in European capitals throughout the early years of the last century. We are treated to several scenes as performed in Warsaw, Berlin, Moscow, and Paris, among other locations. The play’s several controversial themes include delving into pious hypocrisy with a depiction of a Jewish elder (Michael Champlin) whose prized possession is an ancient and very valuable Torah scroll, but who runs a brothel in the basement of his home, and threatens his daughter with involuntary servitude there.

Kina Kantor and Michael Champlin

Another controversy was a lightweight love affair between two young women, Halina Michelle Drexler) and Chana (Kina Kantor), including an embrace-and-kiss in a rainstorm in the play’s closing scene. This wouldn’t raise an eyebrow today, and wasn’t a problem in Europe, nor in New York when The God of Vengeance arrived in 1923 — until the play moved uptown to Broadway, where it outraged some moralists, including a Rabbi (Joel Roster, who also appears as a NYC cop tasked with shutting down the production).

Michelle Drexler and Kina Kantor

Apparently, America’s Roaring Twenties prompted tolerant attitudes for everything other than same-sex relationships. The Broadway production of The God of Vengeance closed. After an obscenity trial, where Asch did not testify due to his poor English, the troupe returned without him to Poland, roiled by anti-Semitism like most of central Europe in the lead-up to the Second World War.

Lemml never lost his loyalty for Asch’s work and clung to copies of the script. We see a final production of the play as performed in an attic in the Lodz ghetto, with an implication that the two young lovers escape the fates of their comrades.

The cast

Vogel did a fantastic job wrestling with difficult material. Director Elizabeth Carter honors the playwright of Indecent, the author of The God of Vengeance, and the dedicated theater troupe that performed the play a century ago. CenterREP’s seven-member cast are superb in multiple roles, many differentiated only by a change of name or a note in the superscript above Christopher Fitzer’s somber, almost monochromatic set.

Christina Walton on violin with cast

The band at stage right (directed by Timothy Fletcher) is wonderful delivering a smorgasbord of klezmer music, especially violinist Christina Walton, who appears with the cast in a few scenes. Continually shifting characters and languages may be confusing for some in the audience, but the story is heartfelt and beautifully presented. A co-production with the Yiddish Theatre Ensemble, Indecent is a master class in professional theater. It’s among the most poignant shows to be presented on Bay Area stages this year.

***

Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

photos courtesy of CenterREP

Indecent
Center Repertory Company
Margaret Lesher Theatre, Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Dr in Walnut Creek
Wed-Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2:30 & 7:30; Sun at 2:30 & 7
ends on September 28, 2025
for tickets ($81-$85), call 925.943.7469 Wed-Sun, 12-6pm, or visit Lesher Arts