Victory Gardens Theatre Presents INDECENT Review

The stage is nigh but bare, a simple open warehouse with a few European archways on either side. The title on the wall tells the audience it is opening night in Berlin. Under stark lighting, a man dressed in flamboyant yet regal robes grabs his daughter by the hair and tosses her into the cellar offstage, calling her a whore. He is elderly, tufts of grey and wisps of white sprouting from his indignant expression. The man then takes a powerful, sacrilegious stance in front of holy scrolls on a pedestal. In a moment of pure fear, the mother, also on stage, yells out “Help! He’s going crazy!”, and in response, the man lifts up the scripture, the Torah, and bellows “And take the Holy Scroll with you! I don’t need it anymore!”. Before he can throw down the scrolls in a blasphemy, the lights flash, and the actors reposition 180 degrees, with the title showing St. Petersburg. The scene repeats, here, and then in Constantinople and Bratislava. Controversy on tour.

Victory Gardens Theater Treats Your Ear

Music plays a sizeable part in Victory Garden’s production of Indecent. The beginning of the show features members of the cast performing as a four-piece Yiddish folk band, immersing the audience in the culture that the play is rooted in right from the get-go. Two of the actors, Matt Deitchman and Elleon Dobias, spend the entirety of the show playing accordion and violin, respectively, for this humble viewer providing a usually mellifluous, but sometimes jarring underscoring and soul to the plot. Anyone familiar with the Tony-winning musical Once, where the cast doubles as the orchestra, will find themselves at home, as will any Chicago theatre-goer who was able to catch Haymarket at the Den Theatre or Theatre Wit this summer. For this audience member, these were passionate musicians creating for the sake of creation, which is aligns very well with the spirit of the play itself.

A Struggle Towards History, With Vogelistic Subtext

Indecent is a celebration, an ode of sorts to the 1923 Broadway show The God of Vengeance, which was originally performed in Yiddish before being translated on the Great White Way. The tragedy was that the entire cast of the show was arrested for obscenity, due to the play’s referendum on religion and its portrayal of a young girl falling in love with one of her father’s prostitutes (not to mention the first lesbian kiss on Broadway). Paula Vogel, who most will know from her Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, creates dialogue that yearns for these players to be heard. Everyone in the ensemble plays different characters, but something about the spirit of each remains with the actors individually. For this playwright, there were times where it was not clear if Catherine LeFrere and Kiah Stern were their actor characters in performance, or simply backstage, and that was fantastic. Vogel’s words and the ensemble’s clear passion for the story transcend the characters and circumstances, which, for more literal viewers, may very well garner some confusion.

Blinks in Time

For those viewers, however, who thrive in the symbolic, the dreamlike, and the reverence and idolism of universal humanity, this is the show for you. Ashes spill from the sleeves of weary immigrants as they step forward from their past. Feather boas and pure sin explode out of suitcases in a choreographed romp by Katie Spelman. Some particularly stunning weather effects are of course the obvious nod to the entire production team, but to this humble actor, and to Benjamin Magnuson’s stage manager character, the true heart of the show lies in the heart of those who create it.

About the Author

Nate is an actor/composer/playwright currently based in Chicago, and originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He is the first graduate of Texas Tech's BFA Musical Theatre program, and has been acting for over six years, performing in the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival and Santa Fe Musical Festival, among others. His plays have been featured in one act/ten-minute play festivals, and his musical Fade Out had it's first reading in December 2017.

See his current work at actornatehall.wordpress.com or on Facebook