Theater Review | ‘Indecent’
UC Santa Barbara’s Production Is 'Saturated with True Theater Artistry'
Rarely does a play reflect the devastation of censorship born from cultural disquiet so profoundly as Paula Vogel’s Indecent, a drama about the storied production life of Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance. Beautifully directed by Sara Rademacher in a striking reconfiguration of the Performing Arts Theatre at UCSB, Indecent delivers a solemn message about passion intense enough to threaten the status quo, and the people — the artists, activists, lovers, and believers — who risk everything to keep those ideals alive.
In The God of Vengeance, a brothel owner attempts to find his daughter a husband, only to discover she’s fallen in love with one of his working girls. He denounces family and religion, claiming his only virtue is the ability to make money. The play’s initial (more conservative, Jewish) audience calls the work blasphemous, but the production finds great success through Europe in the early 20th century, finally landing in New York City. After opening night on Broadway, the cast and producers are arrested by the vice squad for promoting lewd, homosexual material. By the 1950s, a broken Asch has seen his play destroy the lives of many who believed in its importance, yet his warnings fall on deaf ears as new generations of artists (including Paula Vogel in 2015) clamor to produce the show.
UCSB’s production is saturated with true theater artistry. The live music colors scenes with haunting melancholia, sprightly expressions of jubilance, and the pulsing heartbeat of tradition. The stage is stylishly (and functionally) dressed using trunks and fabric as moldable, stand-in scenery. The infamous “rain scene” — the physical embodiment of the love between the two women in God of Vengeance — concludes the play with a water-shed moment of stagecraft magic. Rademacher’s Indecent is a requiem to those who dare to thrive in the face of oppression, and it does the legacy of Sholem Asch’s work the justice it deserves.
See Indecent at the Performing Arts Theatre at UCSB through June 1. For more information, see theaterdance.ucsb.edu/news/event/1053.
