God of Vengeance: A Play

“Diabolical ingenuity and rueful tenderness…a playwright with a particularly pungent and intelligent vision.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times

“A vivid panorama of a Lower East Side street scene crammed with grimy tenements, riotous store fronts and packed pushcarts…epic theatre…a fascinating new adaptation of Sholom Asch’s 1906 drama.” –Malcolm Johnson, Hartford Courant

Jack Chapman runs a brothel on the first floor of his tenement and while he is prosperous, he is not virtuous. For his daughter Rivkele, however, Jack aspires for something more—respectability through her marriage to a religious scholar. But Rivkele’s tender love affair with Manke, one of Jack’s prostitutes, threatens to destroy the upcoming marriage, and with it, Jack’s dream of redemption. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donald Margulies transforms Sholom Asch’s classic mortality tale into a work of spellbinding power.

Donald Margulies received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. The play received numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, the Dramatists Guild/Hull-Warriner Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk nomination, and has been produced all over the United States and around the world. In addition to his adaptation of God of Vengeance, his many plays include Collected Stories, The Country House, Sight Unseen, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong with This Picture? and Time Stands Still. Mr. Margulies currently lives with his wife and their son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University.