God of Vengeance
Opening Night: December 22, 2016
Closing: January 22, 2017
Theater: La MaMa E.T.C.
God of Vengeance tells the wrenching story of a brothel owner’s attempt to marry off his daughter to lead a dignified religious life, only to have her drawn back into the life of sin in which she grew up. In addition to being highly explosive for its conflicted view of Judaism, the show is credited with presenting the first lesbian kiss on Broadway when its English premiere was presented in 1923. It is the subject of Paula Vogel’s Indecent which enjoyed a critically acclaimed extended run last spring, and is being readied for Broadway transfer this season.
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January 2, 2017
Questions of guilt and retribution gnaw ceaselessly at the heart of Yankl (Shane Baker), the central character in Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, which is being given a timely revival by the New Yiddish Rep at LaMaMa. A pious Orthodox Jew, Yankl makes his living in what remains a highly unorthodox profession: He owns a brothel that sits below the apartment in which his family lives. Asch’s 1907 play, esteemed and widely produced in Europe, caused a scandal when it was staged in New York, ultimately opening on Broadway in 1923 and creating such a ruckus that the entire company was hauled into court on charges of indecency. The timeliness of this production — performed in Yiddish with English supertitles — has everything to do with the arrival on Broadway this spring of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, a powerful drama depicting the tumultuous history of the play and including some passages from it.
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