Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 13, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba ARETHA: A TRIBUTE Capathia Jenkins, vocalist T I C K E T S S T A R T A T $ 2 5 TICKETS & INFO wso.ca FRI & SAT, FEB 14 & 15, 2025 | 7:30 PM CELEBRATE THE QUEEN OF SOUL – ARETHA FRANKLIN MEDIA SPONSOR SPONSORED BY C O M I N G S O O N ! Read the Winter issue at: winnipegfreepress.com/fp-features Available in your Free Press (subscribers) on March 29 and at Manitoba Liquor Marts - while supplies last! DON’T MISS THE SPRING 2025 ISSUE B ARRING judicial overreach, director Kelly Thornton won’t be jailed on Thursday night when Indecent opens at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. But when God of Vengeance, the play’s source of inspiration, opened on Broadway just over a century ago, the threat of imprisonment lingered in the air at the historic Apollo Theater. Originally titled Der got fun nekome by the Polish-born author Sholem Asch, God of Vengeance — centred on a brothel owner, his daughter and their joint wrestling match with contempo- rary morality — first ran in Yiddish in 1907 at Max Reinhardt’s grand Deutsches Theatre in Berlin, where the drama was an undisputed success. In Europe, where the production was subsequently mounted in arthouses across the continent, Asch’s work was a sensation. In America, where Asch (1880-1957) settled after the outbreak of the First World War, it was mainly considered sensational in the negative sense. Asch’s plot — which openly dis- cussed sex work, lesbianism and God, often in the same sentence — rankled the more conservative echelons of the theatrical and religious establishments as soon as its first amateur productions touched down stateside. In a matter of weeks after the curtain fell at the Apollo, the cast, crew and theatre owner Harry Weinburger were staring down jail time on charges of im- morality, obscenity and, yes, indecency. The backstory of God of Vengeance inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) to revisit the circumstances as the basis of the Tony-winning backstage drama Indecent, an idea that felt especially relevant during the virulent wave of homophobia, transphobia, an- tisemitism and threats to civil liberties that coincided with the first election of U.S. President Donald Trump. Thornton, who in 2017 was still work- ing at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre, took notice, and planned to include Inde- cent in her first programmed season as the artistic director of RMTC in 2020. For reasons other than obscenity, the production was shelved, and now, five years later, Thornton says the show’s topicality has yet to diminish a smidgen. “We started rehearsals the day after Trump’s inauguration, and every day, it seems more relevant that we’re doing this play from its standpoints on homophobia, antisemitism, anti-immi- gration and censorship. It seems more pertinent to discuss now more than ever. But at the heart of it all is a love story and a question of how art can fight hate,” says Thornton. THEATRE PREVIEW INDECENT By Paula Vogel ● Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre ● Opens tonight, runs through March 8 ● Tickets $29.50-$111 at royalmtc.ca THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13, 2025 ● ARTS & LIFE EDITOR: JILL WILSON 204-697-7018 ● ARTS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ARTS ● LIFE SECTION C CONNECT WITH THE BEST ARTS AND LIFE COVERAGE IN MANITOBA ▼ Bad Company, Outkast, Joe Cocker are rock hall nominees LOS ANGELES — Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Outkast, Maná and the late Joe Cocker are among the acts nominated for the first time for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the organization announced Wednesday. Also on the ballot for the Class of 2025 are the Black Crowes, Billy Idol and Phish (all first-time nominees) as well as six acts that have previously been up for induction: Mariah Carey, Cyndi Lauper, Oasis, Soundgarden, the White Stripes and a combined entry for Joy Division and its later incarna- tion, New Order. The group of artists representing rock, pop, R&B, grunge, hip-hop, post-punk and rock en español reflects the increasing diversification of the hall, which after years of criticism that it overvalued the work of older white men has recently broadened its selection process along gender, race and style lines. “Continuing in the true spirit of rock ’n’ roll, these artists have created their own sounds that have impacted gener- ations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps,” John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. Last year’s inductees were Mary J. Blige, Cher, the Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest. An artist or band becomes eligible for induction into the hall 25 years after the release of their first commer- cial recording. Nominations, which are determined by a committee of music industry in- siders, are then voted on by more than 1,200 musicians, executives, historians and journalists. Several of this year’s nominees have been particularly visible of late, including Oasis, whose warring Gallagher brothers will come together this summer for a reunion tour, and Outkast, the influential Atlanta hip- hop duo whose André 3000 earned a surprise nod for album of the year at this month’s Grammy Awards with his experimental jazz LP, New Blue Sun. In the fall, Lauper launched what she’s calling a farewell tour, and Carey made headlines in October after she talked with the Los Angeles Times about not being voted into the hall on her previous nomination. “Everybody was calling me going, ‘I think you’re getting in,’ and I was so ex- cited about it. But then it didn’t happen. My lawyer got into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame before me,” she said, referring to Allen Grubman, the veteran enter- tainment attorney who received the hall’s Ahmet Ertegun Award in 2022. This year’s inductees will be an- nounced in late April, with a ceremony to take place in the fall in Los Angeles. The 2025 induction event will be the third since the hall’s co-founder, for- mer Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner, was ousted from the organization in the wake of disparaging comments he made about Black and female musi- cians in a 2023 interview with the New York Times. — Los Angeles Times MIKAEL WOOD EVAN AGOSTINI / GETTY IMAGES FILES Outkast’s Big Boi (left) and André 3000 SANDRO CAMPARDO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES British rock singer Joe Cocker in 2013 Backstage drama a timely revisiting of notorious 1907 play as ‘a love story and a question of how art can fight hate’ SHOCK OF THE OLD IS NEW AGAIN PHOTOS BY MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Scott Penner, set designer for the upcoming production of Indecent, got to build a theatre inside a theatre inside a theatre. BEN WALDMAN MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS A backstage and interior reminiscent of Berlin’s Deutsches Theatre ● CONTINUED ON C6 ;