BENT.
London.
BENT
by Martin Sherman.
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 1).
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm & 12 Jan 3pm.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6632/0870 534 4444 (£2.50 fee per transaction on both numbers).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 October.
Play and production come into full focus as the evening proceeds.
Max thinks he’s got problems when it’s painful sitting on his sofa. But he’ll soon be standing non-stop. And he’ll learn a lot more about himself, up to a final lesson about the gap between hedonism and love.
Martin Sherman’s 1979 play strikes home first as a piece about Nazi persecution of gays. In its second act, the back-breaking, soul-destroying concentration camp work is gruelling and ultimately horrifying in its calculated cruelty. The only answer to such purposefully malignity is unconditional love, and it’s this Max finds with fellow-prisoner Horst. Rather, it finds him, unawares.
The prisoners’ talk during stand-to-attention ‘rest breaks’ are 3 minute moments stretched to an intensity beyond chronology. The first is a pathway to pleasure, a kind of prequel to ‘phone sex; the second shows unselfish love.
Alan Cumming’s Max starts as a superficial creature of self-display in Berlin’s gay night-life, cabaret world. Always asserting he’s in control, holding to an ultimately fatal conviction he can always cut a deal, he pretends to be a Jew when arrested, since even they are less despised than “perverts”.
Finally, love brings a new stillness and intensity, contrasting his earlier betrayal of both his sexuality and another lover. Max’s public acknowledgment of his sexuality is a death sentence killing the (very slight – this is still the 1930s) chance of survival his Jewish guise gave.
The play’s political morality draws it near to an anti-beauty contest of who suffered most from Nazism. But as a play of love it’s forceful, helped by the contrast provided by Chris New’s self-contained Horst. Quiet, fearful, and finally terrified, he’s the opposite in character to Max. Yet New always matches the more flamboyant, starry-cast character in authority.
Horst is part of Max’s new life, as Kevin Trainor’s playful dancer Rudy was in the last hangover of decadent Berlin (Robin Don’s set, moving from cracked-wall apartment via stark cattle-truck to bare space marks the transition visually). Daniel Kramer’s production could do without the stylised SS grotesques, who become terrifying only in their final, realistic appearance. But Cumming and New ensure the grip finally tightens.
Max: Alan Cumming.
Rudy: Kevin Trainor.
Wolf: Benjamin Wilkin.
Lieutenant: Charles Mayer.
Greta: Richard Bremmer.
Freddie: Hugh Ross.
SS Officer: Matthew Spencer.
Horst: Chris New.
Corporal: Ricky Champ.
Captain: Laurence Spellman.
Director: Daniel Kramer.
Designer: Robin Don.
Lighting: Paul Anderson.
Sound: Paul Groothuis.
Movement: Ann Yee.
Costume: Mark Bouman.
Voice coach: Stewart Pearce.
Fights: Alison de Burgh.
Assistant director: Lloyd Wood.
2006-10-08 10:55:58