The theatre was raided, the show’s producer and 12-member cast were arrested and convicted on charges of obscenity, and the production was shut down. The play proved too scandalous and “ethnic” for upscale audiences who embraced newly restrictive immigration laws. But when an English translation was attempted at Broadway’s Apollo Theatre, local Orthodox rabbis complained that its warts-and-all depiction of Jewish life was fanning the flames of growing antisemitism. The kiss was never meant to be scandalous just an eleventh-hour expression of passion between two people. But Rivke falls in love with Manke, one of the prostitutes, who returns her affections. He and his wife are determined to keep their young daughter Rivke virginal, and thus marriageable. In 2017, as the centerpiece of Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning Indecent, it became something more.Īsch’s largely forgotten three-act masterwork – which at the turn of the 20th century achieved great success on the stages of Europe and in the Yiddish theatre scene of New York City’s Lower East Side – revolves around a Jewish owner of a brothel in Poland. In 1923, Sholem Asch’s play God of Vengeance served up Broadway’s first queer kiss and became a landmark work of lesbian dramatic literature. (l-r) Sarah Fleming Walker, Michael Ferstenfeld, Huck Huckaby, and Babs George in Austin Playhouse’s Indecent (Photo by Steve Rogers Photography)
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