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Peer Reviews Bent Reviewed by Sherry Deatrick Entire contents are copyright © 2009 Sherry Deatrick. All rights reserved.
"Holocaust" means literally a wholly burnt sacrificial offering to a god, as derived from ancient Greek. But what god demands such senseless cruelty? It's not a god, but the evil in mankind, that leads to such pointless destruction of fellow men. Martin Sherman wrote Bent in 1979, thirty years after the Berlin wall was erected, and memories of the Holocaust still burned brightly in our collective mind. Thirty years after the play was first produced, Bent stands as an important document to keep us from forgetting the dangers of totalitarianism and the insanity of mob rule. Bent is simply an essential play. Max, the protagonist, is an unlikeable lout estranged from his wealthy German industrialist family (they own a button factory). Unable to express love, he leads a debauched life in Berlin, getting drunk and stoned on cocaine, bringing home strange men to the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, Rudy (Alden Sowder), a gentle soul who talks to his houseplants and pampers Max. The play opens on the Night of the Long Knives, when the black-shirted SS slaughtered members of the brown-shirted SA and their affiliates, led by Eric Roehm, a homosexual. After this takeover, homosexuals were no longer safe. Max and Rudy flee to a tent city in the forest (Rudy calls it a "jungle") where they manage to survive for several years. Finally, the SS catches them, and they're on a train bound for a concentration camp. The realistic train whistles and chugging sounds are terrifying. Max betrays not only his lover, but his sexual orientation by pretending to be Jewish so he won't have to wear the pink triangle. He'd heard that Jews were treated better than homosexuals at the camp. Phil Howell's Max wears a perpetual frown, with his mouth downturned like a sad clown. Howell owns the stage and never loses the audience's attention, whether he's fending off the morning-after affection of the one-night stand, or moving rocks from one pile to another in the Nazis' scheme to drive prisoners insane. Howell expresses the existential angst of a Nazi death camp inmate who struggles mightily to understand why he's there and how he can survive. We may not like Max, but we empathize with him as he comes to realize that everything he thought was right is wrong, and that all his schemes were little more than fool's errands. It's a breathtaking and heartbreaking performance. As the audience streams back for the second act, Brent Gettlefinger, playing an SS captain, strides back and forth, glaring at the crowd. The stage has become a death camp, with a barbed wire fence all along the back wall, a huge pile of heavy rocks on one side, and a strange-looking pit on the other. It's rather unsettling. Before the show, director Michael Drury advised us to keep our "papers" with us at all times. I kept worrying that Gettlefinger was going to demand to see mine, and eject me if I didn't produce them quickly enough. We are now ready to experience the daily life at Dachau, where Max moves the heavy stones from one pile to another in an endless loop, a useless task designed to drive him crazy, he figures. To stay sane, he bribes a guard to let Horst (Corey Long) join him in his "job" so he'll have someone to talk to. The pink triangle shirted Horst had helped Max survive his initial encounter with the guards on the train. They get off to a rocky start, but through their shared suffering, Max learns to open his heart and take pride in his homosexuality. This is perhaps the finest production I've seen at Pandora, and undoubtedly the most moving. Costumes, by Donna Lawrence-Downs, are harrowingly accurate, both on the prisoners and the Nazis. If you look closely, you can even see the telltale tattoo on Max's and Horst's arms. The lighting design, by Theresa Bagan, highlights the harsh reality of the camp life, with its emphasis on the yellow tones. One thing I could do without, however, is the musical interludes between scene changes. The play is strong enough on its own to carry the audience into its world, and we don't need the heartstring-tugging music to tell us what to feel. And another thing — the program is a little confusing because it includes information on I Am My Own Wife, running in repertory with Bent. (An interesting paired choice, since both involve persecution of homosexuals during WWII.) Word to the wise — sit on the left side or center (as you face the stage), if you can manage. There are many actor entrances in front of the audience from the right, which can be distracting. Also, if you're sitting on the right side, you will not see the full-frontally nude Nazi (Tim Kitchen) parading out of Max and Rudy's bedroom in the first scene.
Bent Featuring Phil Howell, Corey Long, Alden Sowder, Dan Canon, James Butterfield, Brent Gettlefinger, Tim Kitchen, Adam Caperton, and JC Nixon.
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