“Indecent” Tells a False Story about a Yiddish Drama

In 1906, the great Yiddish writer Sholem Asch wrote a play called God of Vengeance about the owner of a brothel and his attempt to preserve his family’s respectability despite his profession—an attempt that ultimately fails when his daughter falls in love with one of his employees. When the play was eventually performed in New York in English, it was banned and some of the cast members briefly jailed. The play Indecent, which recently had its Broadway debut, purports to tell the story of this play and the scandal around it. While praising Indecent’s artistic merits, Edward Rothstein finds it ultimately both unconvincing and unfaithful to the dramatic work it sets out to celebrate: