Indecent - A Blink In Time

set of ‘Indecent’ at the bagley stage from the seattle rep theater

Indecent is the first performance of the 2019/2020 season at the Seattle Repertory Theater and what a great way to start the season with an emotional heavy story about a controversial play written by famous playwright, Sholem Asch. The structure of the performance is a sort of ‘play within a play’ that kind of breaks the fourth wall with actors occasionally speaking to no one in particular out into the audience. The play within a play is the story “The God of Vengeance” that was written by Jewish novelist Sholem Asch in 1904. The play tells the tale of two Jewish women from different backgrounds who fall in love despite the social repercussions from their family and faith. Because of the controversial material, Asch initially gets a lot of resistance and at multiple times was told to burn the play because of its ‘dangerous’ story line. Asch eventually gets enough support from fellow actors, stagehands and producers to fund the play and has a lengthy tour across Europe and eventually America. It’s only when the play is performed in front of American audiences does the push back reach a critical level and the play struggles to fight for its existence from then on. 

The acting was fantastic with notable performances by Bradford Farwell & Ron Orbach who played multiple characters throughout the show but the entire cast had great chemistry with each other that gave their roles even greater depth when on stage. There were moments I was pulled out of the story whenever an actor transitions to a different character depending on the scene but was quickly drawn back in because of how gracefully the actors were able to morph into their new role. 

The set design was wonderful as well with stark grays and browns that gave the environment a damaged feel like the play itself has been at war for its existence since the beginning. The Bagley theater at the Seattle Rep is extremely versatile and this play took full advantage of the room with one scene where the stagecraft designers were able to make it rain without the front row getting wet. There were a couple literal snags with some of the fabrics being used as a curtain getting caught on a nail that disrupted the scene a bit but nothing too terrible. The most notable use of the stage was moments of exposition being projected onto the scene that informs the audience of when a character is speaking a different language or snippets of context regarding the scene like what year it was or what country the characters are currently in. 

An interesting note about the narration that was projected onto the stage throughout the play - towards the end of the performance, the play mentions that ever since the holocaust, very little pieces of literature have been written in Yiddish. However throughout the entire play, the written narration projected onto the stage curtains were in two languages - English and Yiddish. I thought that was a lovely gesture and nod towards the ever increasing endangered language of the Jewish people. 

Bradford Farwell who played the stage manager, Lemml

Overall this play is like an onion - a dense, thick and extremely fragrant onion. There were so many layers that kept unveiling a new emotion Mr. Mustang and I would feel when watching the show. I really enjoyed how the story sheds light on the journey the play has endured over the course of 100+ years since its conception involving prejudice against the Jewish faith, white christian American ideals of the 1930s leading all the way to the holocaust. This was the first play in a while where we felt a series of complex emotions and even at times confusion on what we should be feeling. Sadness? Hope? Shame? Love? When peeling the layers down to its core, the emotion I felt the most was an optimistic one. Despite all the battles the play “The God of Vengeance” had to fight for in order to stay alive, all the negative influences that tried to burn the story from history, the play is still here and lives on to this day. 

In the end, I think the message the play Indecent is trying to tell the audience is that in the entire history of humankind, despite all the horrors and negative setbacks generations have faced, in the end positive change has always succeeded. No one wants to experience moments of hardship or struggle but it is only a blink in time of human history towards something better for the next generation to carry on.

Rating: 9/10