Given the context, there can be no doubt what this doomed sight portends: each person an hourglass. In the opening scene, the players stand in line and ash falls from their sleeves to the ground. David Dorfman’s choreography is similarly fresh, a hybrid partly inspired by Jewish ritual. There is a top-notch klezmer band trio: clarinet (Merlin Shepherd), accordion (Josh Middleton) and fiddle (Anna Lowenstein) and their music is by turns playful, melancholic and rapturous. Vogel’s drama nudges close to being a musical. The censored 1923 version, in English, was halted by the police and the cast and producer indicted for obscenity. His work thrilled many and offended some – Jews and non-Jews – and only fleetingly made it to Broadway. Asch was a Polish Jew and his play written in Yiddish. This is the story of a play: Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance, written in 1907, which contained a lesbian scene – a fearlessly outlandish inclusion at the time. I t is wonderful to see London’s Menier Chocolate Factory open again and on form with Indecent, by Pulitzer-winning American playwright Paula Vogel.
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