‘Indecent’ opens the new season at American Stage

The purpose of art is one of the core issues at the heart of Paula Vogel’s Tony-winning Indecent, opening Friday (with previews tonight and Thursday) at American Stage. This multi-layered drama, the company’s season opener, is about freedom of expression, the freedom to love and to be loved and the value of community, friendship and solidarity.

It’s also a story of intolerance, censorship and antisemitism.

Indecent is the based-on-fact story of The God of Vengeance, a play written, in Yiddish, in 1906 by Sholem Asch, and first produced in his native Poland.

“He was a real firebrand,” explains director Helen R. Murray, “and he was trying to push the limits of how we thought about Jewish people, and the idea that all Jewish people should be portrayed as these extremely holy people, the chosen people.”

Asch’s script was based on a slightly different set of beliefs, according to Murray: “We are just like everybody else – we’re human, we’re flawed, we’re irreverent, we fall in love with people who are not socially acceptable. He wanted to write a play that showed Jews in the same light that everybody else gets to be portrayed in.”

Central to his story is a love affair between a prostitute and the daughter of a brothel owner. The lesbian kiss between Rifkele and Manke doesn’t disturb European audiences, but it’s not until the show is (badly) translated into English, and transported to the United States, that controversy erupts.

Indecent, therefore, includes a play-within-a-play.

“The troupe takes us through the evolution of a play from page one, and how it moves through the levels of its success, and grows in its ability to push buttons because its ideas are very controversial,” Murray says. “And so the bigger it becomes, the bigger the issues are surrounding it.

“It’s not just the same-sex kiss that is so controversial, it’s also the way Jews are portrayed in it. And the way that they deal with the holy scroll, the Torah. These things all become hot-button issues.”

The atmosphere is heightened in the American Stage production with the use of Eastern European klezmer music. Members of the cast even sing from time to time.

Murray, who was named producing artistic director a year ago, is making her St. Petersburg directorial debut. “The shape of the show, the way it’s made, is my favorite kind of theater to direct,” the stage veteran says. “It’s my favorite kind of theater to share with an audience. I love plays with music. I love plays that play with time and story in a really theatrical way, that sort of lift us out of full reality, into something that’s a little bit more magic. And I like plays with real moments of wonder.

“While the show is very funny, it also has very heartbreaking moments. I love that mix as well, that it can live in multiple places. And I love an ensemble show. That’s my favorite thing to work on.”

And in that way only theater can, Indecent will carry a certain ring of familiarity to modern audiences.

“There’s so many moments that feel like it’s a conversation that’s happening right now,” Murray adds. “And it doesn’t feel preachy in any way when it does it, because it is so based in reality. You don’t need to push an agenda in any way. It’s simply us telling how things went – and then it will ring so true to issues of today.”

For performance details and tickets, click here.

American Stage Producing Artistic Director Helen R. Murray is directing “Indecent.” File photo.