A gripping and luminous account of the progress of a notorious Yiddish theatre sensation

From the moment the actors and musicians rose to their feet in joyous dance to the band’s plangent klezmer sound, I felt at one with an audience leaning in to share "the true story of a little Jewish play" – these words projected in English and Hebrew-charactered Yiddish. Six actors, three women and three men, play over 40 characters between them, each playing one type throughout, defined by age and experience – 'The Ingenue’, ‘The Middle’ and ‘The Elder’. They are introduced by the seventh actor, Finbar Lynch’s Lemml, more stage manager than MC, a warm and inclusive presence to guide you through the action, and an enthusiastic fan of the playwright Sholem Asch.

Asch wrote his ‘little Jewish play’ God of Vengeance in 1906, telling the story of wealthy brothelkeeper Yankl’s search for respectability and repentance by commissioning a new Torah scroll to mark his daughter’s engagement to a respectable young man. But her passionate love affair with one of the whores frustrates his plans and leads to a climax where he hurls her and the Torah into the brothel basement. Quite apart from the shock of this sacrilege, a graphic love scene between the two women embracing in a rainstorm caused its own storm of controversy.

Paula Vogel’s Indecent charts the progress of Asch’s drama, the notoriety and the success, starting with an uncomfortable 1907 table reading in the Warsaw home of IL Peretz (Peter Polycarpou’s wonderfully effective Elder), hailed as the ‘founding father of modern Yiddish literature’, who calls out Joseph Timm’s convincingly ‘Ingenue’ Asch for "pouring petrol on the flame of antisemitism" and advises him to burn his manuscript.

But Asch’s wife Madje (Molly Osbourne’s delightful Ingenue), unsurprisingly a passionate advocate of his play, calls Peretz "so 19th century". She has a point, for the play storms across Europe via St Petersburg and the cabaret and theatre scene of 1908 Berlin. It opens on Broadway in English translation in 1923, compromised by the cutting of the rain scene, only for the cast to find themselves on trial for obscenity.

Both in the writing and in Rebecca Taichman’s sublimely surefooted direction, the storytelling is non-naturalistic. The movement of the action to a new time and place is marked by the projected phrase "A blink in time" and the cast play each new set of characters with simple adjustments of costume (designed by Emily Rebholz).

Wearing the notorious yellow star for a performance in the Łódź Ghetto in 1943, they request their audience to show appreciation by throwing them bread. A line of concentration camp prisoners is an almost unbearably poignant echo of an earlier line of hopeful new immigrants to America.

The speaking of some text in Yiddish adds a fascinating authenticity, complemented by the glorious music from Merlin Shepherd, Anna Lowenstein and Josh Middleton. Beverley Klein’s feisty full-voiced Elder and Cory English’s versatile Middle complete the cast.

The play has real contemporary resonance, for those fleeing violent regimes and fighting for religious, racial and sexual equality. As Osbourne’s brothelkeeper’s daughter and Alexandra Silber’s warm and sexy whore finally get to play that passionately romantic rain-drenched love scene – complete with rain – you can feel the audience preparing to rise for a well-deserved standing ovation.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Johan Persson

Indecent runs until Saturday 27 November. 8pm, 3.30pm (Sat & Sun only). £37.50-£49.50. Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1 1RU. www.menierchocolatefactory.com

Listen to our interview with director Rebecca Taichman on JR OutLoud.