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It’s been described as a love letter to the theatre, but in 2025, it’s hard not to see Indecent as a word of warning.
The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre opens its run of the play by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel on Thursday, February 13 on the John Hirsch Mainstage. The play is based on another play from the 1920’s, God of Vengeance, which saw its Broadway production shuttered, and its cast arrested on obscenity grounds.
The themes of arts censorship, anti-Semitism and homophobia make Indecent a difficult play for both audience and cast alike, but also a very immersive experience for everyone. "It makes you feel like you are a part of the show,” says Grace Hrabi, Indecent’s musical director on her first experience with the piece. “t felt like I was going into another world and then came out the other side having experienced the world.”
The fact that it isn’t much of a stretch to experience this world is partly due to the unfortunate timelessness of the bigotry that is still prevalent in society over a hundred years after God of Vengeance first took the stage. Hrabi notes that Indecent acknowledges that timelessness while also championing the perseverance of the arts and the community to rise above that intolerance. “Even though you reach these lows in the show, you reach these lows in history... we just continue on. All you can do is try and learn from the past as you continue forward.”
Even though Indecent is not a musical (Hrabi considers it a play with musical elements in it), the show relies on musical elements embedded in the drama to make the story come to life. Three musicians – clarinettist Myron Schultz, accordionist Orit Shimoni and violinist and mandolinist Shiloh Hiebert – are constant characters in the show playing music that was carefully selected by the production’s artistic team to highlight the timeline of the story and the changes that the characters experience in their on-stage lives.
“It’s been fascinating trying to figure out how to make the music feel like an underscore while they’re in the middle of all the action,” Hrabi says. “You have to leave space for everything, but at the same time, the music is so special and important, it gets a lot of moments where it’s brought to the front and really gets to shine.”
What ultimately shines through Indecent for Hrabi is the way that the art addresses a fractured society and highlights the humanity in each of us and that no one is better than anyone else. “You get a sense of a lot of characters feel like, ‘Well, that won’t happen to me,’ which is I think where humanity really struggles because anything can happen to anyone. When you start to believe that, you can see how things happening to other people don’t really mean anything about those people. They really are more of a reflection on society than the individuals who are affected.”
“Art in general lets us share our experiences and hopefully lets other people who have experienced those things feel less alone but also let people who have not experienced those things see you as a whole person.”
Audiences can see Indecent starting with the show’s opening night on February 11 on the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s John Hirsch Mainstage. The production runs until March 8. Tickets and more information can be found at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s website.