A translation that takes liberties to which Lemmel and the cast object, but Asch ignores “why should I bother with a play I wrote when I was in short pants” facilitates a debut at Broadway’s Apollo Theater. Audiences appreciate the playwright’s ability to bring Jewish themes to secular subjects. Asch continues to write in Yiddish.Īdina Verson and Katrina Lenk Katrina Lenk and Adina Verson Many take English names and endeavor to learn the language. “Even Jews looks like Goys in America,” they sing and dance. Peyos (long, hanging sidelocks) are dispensed with. Asch pulls strings to insure Lemmel joins them. We see excerpts with the use of actors freezing while “a blink in time” appears on the translation screen – a method to fast forward. Lemmel shows up (it’s not clear how) and becomes the production’s stage manager, a position he’ll hold for the rest of his life. (The other is played by Verson.) We watch as these two discover one another. “I assume I will be the butch and you the feminine, but how do I play a Jew?” the more experienced actress (Katrina Lenk) reflects. There the piece is produced in a German version by Max Reinhardt with Rudolph Shildkraut (Nellis) in the lead. In search of creative freedom, Shalom and his wife Mathilde (Adina Verson) move to Berlin as initially depicted here by a Weimar Cabaret act. When she falls in love with a prostitute, her furious father throws down the Torah and banishes the girl and her mother to earn their keep “on your backs.” The God of Vengeance features a hypocritically pious, Jewish brothel owner who commissions an expensive Torah scroll intending to marry his daughter off to a yeshiva student to secure respectability. “A minion,” Asch comments darkly in response, “is ten Jews in a circle accusing each other of Antisemitism.” Only a tailor named Lemmel, invited by his cousin, is enthusiastic. The piece is condemned by those gathered for showing Jewish people in poor light. Peretz spearheads a renaissance of Yiddish writing, Asch’s mother tongue.

Peretz (Tom Nellis, also in a roster of vibrantly realized roles). Polish/Jewish author Sholem Asch, 1880-1957 (the entirely credible Max Gordon Moore) is excited about reading his play at the writers’ salon of cultural figurehead Y.L.

We’re all brothers and sing happy songs/We stick together like nobody else does…the company sings in Yiddish. (Inspired) “We have a story about a play that changed my life…” Stage Manager Lemmel (a splendidly empathetic Richard Topol) introduces his thespians and musicians – ingénues, middle aged actors, and those who play the elderly.

The now established Asch, living and working on Staten Island, doesn’t show up to defend the company. productions, a translated version reaches Broadway, its cast is arrested, then convicted on obscenity charges.

Despite accompanying scandal, Europe applauds. In Sholem Asch’s 1907 play, The God of Vengeance (Got fun nekome), a lesbian virgin and a prostitute make love in the rain.

Indecent by Paula Vogel