A gut-punching, all-too relevant look at Antisemitism, censorship, homophobia, anti-immigration hysteria, the Holocaust, and McCarthyism during the first half of the 20th Century, Paula Vogel’s Indecent is also a thought-provoking demonstration of the power of live theater to both inspire and inflame, and for Los Angeles theatergoers, a chance to see the production that scored director Rebecca Taichman a Tony win two years ago.

Richard Topol reprises his magnificent Outer Critics Circle Award-nominated star turn as Lemml, a tailor from a tiny Polish shetl who somehow finds himself hired to stage-manage a production that Broadway history tells us got its entire cast arrested on charges of obscenity back in 1923.

Topol’s fellow actors (two of them from Indecent’s original Broadway cast) play multiple roles each, most notably cast addition Joby Earle as Polish-Jewish playwright Sholem Asch, who had the chutzpah to write about his fellow Jews, warts and all, at a time when anything other than role-model characters were an anathema to a persecuted community.

The Asch play in question is God Of Vengeance, a 1906 drama about a Jewish brothel owner whose virginal daughter falls in love with one of Papa’s whores, just one reason Sholem’s fellow theater artists caution him against staging this indecent work.

To their surprise, however God Of Vengeance proves an audience-pleasing hit, not only in Berlin but in places as diverse as St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Bratislava, and even Greenwich Village.

Unfortunately, Broadway turns out to be not so welcoming as New York’s bohemian downtown, landing its cast in the clinker, but curiously not its playwright, who in any case has other things (like pogroms) on his increasingly troubled mind.

If all this sounds like it would make a riveting, fact-based end-of-year Oscar candidate, it would, and still might some day.

In the meantime, director Taichman and her Broadway design team*, all of whom have been imported from New York for Indecent’s Ahmanson run, have created as supremely theatrical an experience as you’ll see any time soon.

From the moment cast members rise from a row of straight-back chairs and shake dust from their sleeves to signify a return from the ashes of Auschwitz, you know you’re in for the opposite of a Hollywood flick.

No movie, for example, could have just three pairs of actors (Elizabeth A. Davis, Earle, Harry Groener, Mimi Lieber, Steven Rattazzi, Topol, and Adina Verson, all absolutely superb) bring to life dozens of fathers and mothers, vamps and schemers, and brides and grooms, or achieve the wonder of the Indecent’s final recreation of the aforementioned lesbian love scene that I will leave you to discover.

No movie could transition as effortlessly from unaccented English when characters converse in their native tongue to Polish-accented English As A Second Language and back.

And last but not least, no movie could integrate song and dance so seamlessly, cast members joined in their multilingual harmonizing by onstage musicians Matt Darriau, Patrick Farrell, and Lisa Gutkin (under Gutkin’s expert music supervision) while executing choreographer David Dorfman’s multi-genre dance moves, including some ingenious suitcase-ography. (Gutkin and Aaron Halva composed Indecent’s score and original klezmer-style music.)

No wonder Center Theatre Group opted to recreate Indecent’s original Broadway production on the Ahmanson stage.

Ashley Brooke Monroe is associate director. Rick Sordelet is fight director. Sara Gibbons is associate choreographer.

Amanda Spooner is production stage manager and Emily F. McMullen is stage manager. Lindsay Allbaugh is associate producer.

Indecent is a co-production with Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company. Casting is by Alaine Alldaffer (Boston casting) and Michael Donovan (Los Angeles casting). Tara Rubin was original casting director. Ben Cherry, Lisa Ermel, and Valerie Perri are understudies.

A spectacularly performed, directed, designed hour and forty-five minutes of live theater at its most innovative, Indecent is guaranteed to have you up on your feet and cheering its multitude of theatrical wonders.

*scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez, costume design by Emily Rebholz, lighting design by Christopher Akerlind, sound design by Matt Hubbs, projection design by Tal Yarden, and hair and wig design by J. Jared Janas and Dave Bova

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N Grand Ave, Los Angeles.
www.CenterTheatreGroup.org

–Steven Stanley
June 9, 2019
Photos: T. Charles Erickson

.

Tags: Ahmanson Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles Theater Review, Paula Vogel, Sholem Ash