#Paula Vogel

[officialpenisenvy]

How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel

[do-you-know-this-play]

[servilius]

Ana Guzmán Quintero and Majo Pérez in Cristian Magaloni's production of Paula Vogel's Indecent. Teatro Helénico, 2022. (Photo: Charly Duchanoy)

[droughtofapathy]

"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

Mother Play

April 26, 2024 | Broadway | Hayes Theater | Evening | Play | Original | 1H 30M

I am now deeply, and unsurprisingly, in love with Jessica Lange. After so many new and disappointing musicals this month, being able to sit third-row in a smart, well-written, expertly-acted play with no pomp and circumstance is a relief. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, the play examines her own childhood with a mother who should never have been a mother. Under Jessica Lange's masterful craft, Phyllis is part-Joan Crawford, part Mama Rose. Sympathetic and deplorable, enchanting and repulsive. A prime example of a woman who had motherhood forced on her, and tried to cope, but failed at every turn. Celia Keenan-Bolger, no stranger to embodying child roles as a grown woman, is the playwright's stand-in (here named Martha, not Paula) and carries the show's narrative with the same competence as the character has in packing up a house and moving out when the eviction notice comes. Jim Parsons, also a wonderful performer as Carl, the brother who doesn't survive. The three actors are so well-connected.

The show is comedy and tragedy. Morbid in the best way. The last scene, as a middle-aged Martha takes care of an elderly mother who no longer recognizes her, carried more power and nuance than the entirety of The Notebook's handling of the same disease. Vogel trusts her audience to still have an ounce of critical thought. The biggest example of this is in the play's subtle analysis of Phyllis's own sexuality. Her children, Martha and Carl, are very openly gay. Something that horrifies their mother, who slowly comes around (sort of) as the years pass, only to heartbreakingly not in the end. Martha, the narrator, never once comes out and says "I think my mother might've been a repressed lesbian," but that idea is woven into the entire piece. Phyllis, who is so tactile with her young son, but can't bear to touch her daughter, and who avoids any contact with women. In the end, old and senile, she is bathed by a daughter she thinks is just a nurse at the home. And as Martha drags a damp cloth over her mother's neck and collarbone, across her bare shoulder and down beneath the robe over her breasts, the relief and simple pleasure Phyllis gets out of this touch reveals more than any blatant statement. Jessica Lange's expressions in this moment are mesmerizing. And Celia Keenan-Bolger's just heartbreaking.

There's also something delightful in the way Phyllis, who starts the play at 37 and continues into her seventies, is allowed to visibly age. By the curtain call, Jessica Lange is onstage with her wrinkles and lines and bags visible for all to see, and I love a woman who is allowed to be old on stage.

Verdict: Why I Love the Theatre

A Note on Ratings

[power-chords]

PAULA VOGEL, the Pulitzer-prize winning dramatist of How I Learned to Drive, has again collaborated with director Rebecca Taichman in Indecent. Taichman, who just won the 2017 Tony for best direction of a play, is billed as “co-creator” of Indecent, having worked with Vogel to devise the play’s highly theatrical presentation. The play is at once a compressed history of a daring Yiddish play, God of Vengeance, written by the Polish novelist Sholem Asch in 1907, and a celebration of the stagecraft that makes theater distinct from film.

[...]

Scandalous in its time, God of Vengeance was nevertheless celebrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow and in other European capitals. On first hearing play, the founding father of Yiddish literature I. L Peretz advised Asch to “burn it.” Peretz and other naysayers were reacting as much to the implicit critique of Jewish life as to the idealistic yet carnal presentation of two young women in thrall to each other. Asch’s depiction of flawed, complex Jews and his willingness to approach lesbianism in his play may well have been the very ingredients that allowed sophisticated theater-goers before the Great War to find God of Vengeance worthy dramatic fare.

[...]

Sitting out World War I in New York, Asch visited Europe after the Great War and was deeply shaken by the depredations visited upon Jewish communities. Back in New York, his devoted wife was alarmed at his increasing depression and his quick temper. An English-language production in Greenwich Village in 1922 was another success, but the play’s move uptown to Broadway encouraged the producer to cut the crucial “rain scene” with its joyous lesbian kissing and embraces, and to shift the lesbian relation to one of female manipulation. The troupe protested this desecration of the text, but Asch yielded to the producer’s reading of the uptown audience. Even with the cuts, however, the entire cast and the producer were indicted for obscenity and found guilty at trial, although the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Living in America, Asch seemingly abandoned his play, refusing future performances of God of Vengeance in the wake of Nazi restrictions on Jewish life. However, Vogel shows a group of desperate Jews, confined to the Lodz ghetto, performing the Asch play under the leadership of the original stage manager, a character here called Lemml. Vogel uses Lemml as a distant echo of Thornton Wilder’s Stage Manager in Our Town, a “narrator” who breaks the fourth wall and introduces us to the world of the present drama and the past history of Asch’s play.

[...]

The world in which Asch came of age has almost disappeared by the time we see him in the early 1950s. This is toward the end of Vogel’s play; he is being interviewed by a young Jewish student from Yale. This prompts an embittered Asch to quip—I paraphrase—that it is easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a Jew to enter the sanctum of Yale.

[iphisesque]

How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel

[nebylitsa]

ASCH: Do you know what a minyan is? It's ten Jews in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism.

Indecent, Paula Vogel

[a-malady]

genuinely one of the most interesting openings to a play I have ever read, even though I don’t remember much about the play proper this imagery always stuck with me

[spacesapphist]

"How They Learned to Drive. And Why They're Driving Again." (New York Times, 2020)

I read this quote from Paula Vogel a while ago and it's stuck with me ever since!

Image description: A quote from Paula Vogel which reads, "Three things that I want to talk about. One was a promise to my mother, who read it. To say that her health was fragile is putting it mildly. She asked that I not say that it was autobiographical. The other thing is that whenever women write autobiographically, we are told that we are confessional. No one says that about Sam Shepard, or David Mamet, or Eugene O'Neill. Third thing was there's a myth, and it's I think a very perilous myth, that the reason that women become lesbians is because of sexual trauma, a fear and a hatred of men. The last thing I'm going to do is get put into that category. Now I'm 68, man; I'm in the grandmother category. So say whatever you will."

[peacesmith]

florida makes me want to kill myself

if you're unaware or curious; this school, douglas anderson, had a play that was gonna happen but got cancelled due to "inappropriate content" or some shit like that.

i use to go there, so this is important to me.

the play is called "Indecent" by Paula Vogel, and from what I know it includes a lesbian kiss and jewish representation.

but for some reason it's cancelled.

mostly because of the "don't say gay" bill. which is fucking insane. i absolutely can't believe this shit, but guess what, THAT'S FLORIDA FOR YOU

they're changing the play to something more "appropriate" to make it more "suitable for audiences".

they changed it because of "mature" content.

a lesbian kiss? sure.

it just infuriates me to see shit like this. i'm fucking pissed. please share, reblog, whatever just get the word out

[twoontheaisle]

"Indecent" at San Francisco Playhouse

Go. That would be my one word review. Because you don't want to miss this incredibly theatrical, moving, funny, heart-breaking, important play, currently staged in an equally incredible production directed by the very talented Susi Damilano.

My full review can be found at TalkinBroadway.

[wesley-de-cornualles]

Paula Vogel, How I learned to drive

[do-you-know-this-play]

[caroleditosti]

'Mother Play,' Stellar Performances by Celia Keenan-Bolger, Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons

The 'Mother Play' by Paula Vogel is a must-see for its profound themes and especially for its marvelous performances by Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons.

(L to R): Celia Kennan-Bolger, Jessica Lange in Mother Play (Joan Marcus) One of the keys to understanding Mother Play, A Play in Five Evictions by Paula Vogel is in the narration. Currently running in its premiere at 2NDSTAGE, directed by Tina Landau, Vogel’s play is has some elements of her own life, by is not naturalistic. It is stylized, quirky, humorous, imaginative and figurative, like…

[frontmezzjunkies]

2ST Broadway's "Mother Play" is Truly a Dynamic Daughter/Mother Unpacking

#frontmezzjunkies reviews: @2STNYC's #MotherPlay on #Broadway by #PaulaVogel d: #TinaLandau w/ #JessicaLange #CeliaKeenanBolger #JimParsons #MotherPlayBway #2STMotherPlay

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jessica Lange in 2ST Broadway’s Mother Play. Photo by Joan Marcus. The Broadway Theatre Review: 2ST’s Mother Play By Ross ‘A play in five evictions’, reads the subtitle of the new Broadway star-filled gem of a play, Mother Play, unpacking heartache, disappointment, and complicated attachments, literally, at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater. Its one compelling treasure trove…

[shelley-sackett]

ASP’s Not-to-Be-Missed “How I Learned to Drive��� Explores Abuse and Memory in a Tour de Force Production

Dennis Trainor, Jr. and Jennifer Rohn in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s ‘How I Learned to Drive’(Photo Credit: Nile Scott Studios) By Shelley A. Sackett “You and Driver Education — Safety First,”  a voice announces as the lights dim. A middle-aged woman steps onto a bare set, composing herself. She turns to face the audience, addressing them as though mid-conversation. “Sometimes, to tell a…