matters. It is not surprising then that the first lesbian character and the cause of much commotion about gay theatre come to us from the Yiddish theatre.
             Sholom Asch's play Gott fun Nekoma was translated into English and produced at the Apollo Theatre on Broadway under the title The God of Vengeance. The play deals with a Jewish house of prostitution in Poland. The young daughter of the owner becomes romantically involved with, not one of the johns that visit the prostitutes, but with one of the other prostitutes who she runs away with. Her embittered father who places her with the other prostitutes and has her Torah taken away because it has not protected her against a vengeful God then brings her back. The play had been running for seventeen years in the Yiddish theatre circuits and had been translated into German in 1907 but when it finally appeared in English at the Apollo in 1923 (the English version was originally produced in an avant-guard theatre in Greenwich in 1922) it was examined by a grand jury. On a Tuesday night performance detectives appeared backstage to charge the theatre owner the producer and twelve actors for violating the law which "defines the crime of presenting an obscene, indecent, immoral and impure theatrical production"(36, Curtin). Those charged agreed to appear before a judge the next morning were they were promptly arrested pleaded 'not guilty' and each paid $300 bail and arrived at the theatre in time for the matinee. In two months, when they were called to trial, the show had closed and the press ignored the trial until the guilty verdict was announced. This production is the fist time a jury had found performers guilty of 'immoral public entertainment'. The Captive in 1926 roused much greater controversy because it was one of the hottest tickets on Broadway at the time despite its tale of lesbian romance. It was a smash hit haled as well written, however, many ...