Content Warning: This section discusses antisemitism and anti-gay bias.

Although the play is performed in English, the characters are usually assumed to be speaking Yiddish, unless otherwise specified. 

The play begins with an acting troupe onstage with their stage manager, Lemml. They all awaken and shake dust from their clothes. Lemml introduces the play, the musicians, and all the actors in the troupe: Vera Parnicki, Otto Godowsky, Halina Cygansky, Mendel Schultz, Chana Mandelbaum, and Avram Zederbaum. Each actor will portray multiple characters in the play. They are going to perform the same play that they put on every night, though Lemml cannot remember how it ends. He does remember the beginning, and prompts the troupe to begin. The actors sing in Yiddish, and the scene shifts to a bedroom in Warsaw in 1906. 

Madje Asch reads her husband Sholem’s first play, The God of Vengeance. Twenty-three-year-old Sholem is nervous, but Madje assures him that she loves it. The play is about a love affair between two women: a sex worker named Manke, and Rifkele, the virgin daughter of the brothel owner. Sholem has drawn from real conversations between Madje and himself when writing the romantic dialogue between the two women, which delights Madje.