ROUNDABOUT BLOG

Around 1890, the Lord Chamberlain of England banned Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts from public performance due to its unconventional and offensive subject matter. When an illicit performance of the play went up anyway at the Royalty Theatre in 1891, audience members were appalled by the “indecency” of a story about venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia; critics went so far as to call the show “a dirty deed done in public.” Just over 30 years later, the entire cast of the American production of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance was arrested on obscenity charges after staging the first-ever kiss between two women on Broadway -- a story recently brought into the spotlight by Paula Vogel’s Indecent. In 1937, the cast of Marc Blitzstein’s pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, defying a government command to cancel production, performed in the audience during the first preview rather than on the stage and, on this technicality, avoided shutdown. And in 1965, the Lord Chamberlain prosecuted the producers of Edward Bond’s play Saved for staging the show after it had been refused its license for depictions of violence and barbarism.

These are far from the only instances in recent history in which the performance of a play or musical has itself served as a form of political protest. Theatre might not normally have a reputation for transgression, yet some of our fiercest sociopolitical battles in fact play out on stages across the world, sometimes finding creators and producers at odds with the law. Our Constitution, of course, protects the right to free speech, but attempts at censorship take many forms, some of which have made national headlines as recently as this past summer.

When The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar opened this past June, a few major funders of The Public were displeased that the character of Julius Caesar in this production quite overtly resembled President Donald Trump. Unhappy that the show seemed to be depicting the assassination of the acting President, Delta Airlines and Bank of America -- longtime sponsors of the New York Shakespeare Festival -- pulled their support of the production, saying that The Public’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s play “crossed the line on the standards of good taste.” Despite these setbacks, the show continued as scheduled.

Julius Caesar may only be the beginning of a season both on and off-Broadway marked by a theme of protest and political resistance. The stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 has been running on Broadway since May; it follows a duo who fights their authoritarian regime by daring to fall in love. Also running on Broadway is documentarian Michael Moore’s solo show The Terms of My Surrender, which pushes audiences to confront political differences. And earlier this spring, Robert Schenkkan’s off-Broadway play Building the Wall imagined an America in the midst of Trump-instituted martial law.

Too Heavy for Your Pocket, though set over fifty years in the past, finds good company in a season of New York theatre that draws on traditions of protest and social critique. If the current Broadway and Off-Broadway scene is any indication, the battles against censorship that were being waged a century ago are still being fought today -- and there is much progress to be made. Too Heavy for Your Pocket reminds us of the value and power of political protest, and though we may feel distanced from the kind of pushback levied against Ghosts or God of Vengeance, it is a reminder worth heeding now more than ever.

Too Heavy for Your Pocket runs through November 26 in the Black Box Theatre. For tickets and information, please visit our website.