Paula Vogel’s Indecent, now on Broadway after completing a run at the Vineyard Theatre, does something extraordinarily unique. While there have been plays dating back to Aristophanes that have celebrated the power of the theatre, this is the first play that I can recall where a play (in this case God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch) is the main character. Vogel’s play follows Asch’s as it is conceived in Warsaw, crisscrosses Europe on tour, comes to the United States where it encounters overwhelming resistance when it opens on Broadway, and returns yet again to Europe. Along the way, God of Vengeance intersects with the history of the Jewish diaspora and Western theatre.

Vogel created Indecent with Rebecca Taichman, the director, and the collaboration between the two has forged a compelling, indelible work of theatre. Working with a cast of seven (that feels much larger) and three musicians, Taichman gives the play an epic feel as it moves from continent to continent, and historical calamity to historical calamity. Asch’s play came out of the Yiddish Theater; Vogel and Taichman honor its heritage and avoid the hegemony of English. Utilizing a storytelling tool that Brian Friel developed for his Translations, Taichman depicts the trials and tribulations of characters trying to communicate across linguistic barriers. Asch’s achievement is only further highlighted by the challenges of language.

The heart of God of Vengeance is how an impossible love is found in the most trying of circumstances; the daughter of a brothel owner falls in love with one of the prostitutes. That love – that impossible love – brings down the wrath of, well, everyone else in the world. Vogel’s wonderful conceit is that just as that love is the hope of the world of God of Vengeance, so too is God of Vengeance the hope of the world of Indecent. It is the love of the play that drives stage manager Lemml (an excellent Richard Topol) to fight for the play even when the forces arrayed against it are overwhelming. Two poignant scenes – for vastly different reasons – stand out. First, after the company is arrested for indecency during the production’s Broadway opening night, Lemml has a conversation with Eugene O’Neill. The godfather of American playwriting bestows his artistic blessing on God of Vengeance; that endorsement speaks volumes to the power of Asch’s work. The second occurs after Lemml has returned to Europe, to Poland. Under the radar of the Nazi occupiers, he mounts a production of the play in an attic in the Lodz Ghetto. Vogel and Taichman have crafted a stunning moment in understatement here. The power and beauty of the play, the essential hope represented by the play in the face of adversity, becomes necessity. I am not ashamed to say that, after decades of theatre-going and developing the cynical persona of the New York theater-goer, I shed tears during this scene.

Taichman deploys the techniques of the Yiddish theater to tell Indecent’s story: music, dance, bare-bones sets, and tight ensemble work. The play moves seamlessly across the years and miles. There is not much in the way of star-turns for the cast of chameleons for together they bring God of Vengeance to life. Nonetheless, Tom Nelis (who has a mad number of skills including the ability to an Irish jig) and Katrina Lenk (whose character would go to prison for the play as written not for its watered-down commercial version) are stand-outs. If Indecent has a weakness, then it would be that it has three endings. The scene in Lodz, emotionally, feels like a fitting conclusion, but there are two codas that simply do not rise in power to the aforementioned moment.

One final thought: God of Vengeance, before it moved to Broadway, played at the Provincetown Playhouse following O’Neill’s Hairy Ape. This innovative and fertile time in theatrical history is currently being played out for New York audiences with Hairy Ape’s revival at the Park Avenue Armory. How fortunate we are to have that lighting caught in a bottle and given a second life here in 2017.