Twenty-four years after its debut,
Martin Sherman's Bent retains much of its visceral power;
even when the script becomes predictable, the action manages
to stun.
The Hunger Artists production also reminds audiences
that Breckenridge's gain was Denver's loss. Jeremy Cole,
now the artistic director for Backstage Theatre just
off the ski slopes, came back to Denver to direct a
community theater production that bests many of the
area's so- called "semi-professional" outlets.
He takes the LIDA Project Theatre, a large warehouse
that has stymied many lesser directors, and reduces
its space to a size that intensifies the drama of this
tale of gay men in the Holocaust.
Like the current Holocaust film The Pianist, Sherman's
play reduces the enormity of history to a comprehensible
scale. In 1934, just after the fall of the Weimar Republic,
the decadent Max (William Hahn) is living with a dancer,
Rudy (Dennis Crowder), while he habituates nightclubs
and drags home one-night stands.
Max is nursing a hangover when a naked man (David Harms)
strolls through the living room, reminding him that
he's brought home yet another conquest.
Unfortunately, it's the Night of the Long Knives, in
which Hitler purged his staff, including Ernst Roehm,
who was gay and protected other homosexuals.
The good life is over, and hiding out in forests soon
leads to capture and deportation.
The horrors pile on thick, but because Dachau was at
this point a concentration camp, not a death camp, murders
were arbitrary and frequent but not the mass exterminations
of the Final Solution. Max, posing as a Jew because
he believes it's higher status, is given better than
starvation rations, tedious work and even occasional
postal deliveries.
Sherman's play provides multiple opportunities for
nervous laughter or melodrama, but Cole and his cast
are so sure-footed they consistently hit their targets.
Hahn moves from shallow playboy to empty shell in a
subtle trajectory, his only emotional nourishment coming
from a fellow prisoner (Joseph Norton, in a gentle and
moving performance). As Rudy, Crowder has a childlike
appeal, always falling in step behind his lover.
The Nazis depicted are less effective. Their violence
never seems real, and there's neither venality nor banality
in their voices. Only Andy Anderson approaches the tossed-
off sadism that was the norm.
Mike Herron does a fine job with the barbed-wire back
wall of the set and the moving rooms within. Anna R.
Kaltenbach's lighting does more than illuminate: It
carries the heart where the script wants it to go.
Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic. Bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com
or (303)892-5101
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