The first 20 minutes of “Bent” could easily be a scene — dialogue unchanged — from any gay-themed play set in contemporary Chelsea. Max (David Plunkett) is trying to quiet his chatterbox lover, Rudy (Andrew Phifer), after a night of hard partying. There’s even a naked hunk (Heath Billups) in Max’s bed, a trick he brought home because he was turned on by his leather uniform. Rudy gossips and complains about his boss at the drag club while Max comically tries to convince his boy-toy that he’s not a rich man, that the pounding on the front door is his landlord after this month’s rent.
Then the door opens, and three jack-booted Nazis storm in. Max and Rudy flee, and the trick is summarily executed. But this is not the East Village in 2008: It’s 1930s Berlin on the “Night of the Long Knives,” when Hitler’s gay second-in-command, Ernst Rohm, and his stormtroopers were butchered in a purge. Homosexuality suddenly becomes a crime against the Fatherland, and people like Max and Rudy — “fluffs” they’re called — aren’t safe.
There are many moments in “Bent,” enjoying a fine staging from Uptown Players, when you are tempted into hoping that things might end well, that Max’s plan to smuggle Rudy and himself into Holland will succeed. You allow yourself this fantasy even knowing by looking at the program that, in Act 2, they will end up in Dachau, the prototype for all Nazi concentration camps.
Ironic, then, that it’s when the audience’s false hope ends that the characters’ begins in earnest. Max, a weasely “playa” from a wealthy family who has always survived by cajoling and bargaining himself out of tight spots, thinks he can talk his way into comparative luxury in the camp. First he “proves” he’s straight by raping the corpse of a dead teenaged girl, thereby getting a yellow star on his uniform instead of the pink triangle worn by homosexuals, who are treated even worse than the Jews.
Max then bribes a guard so that another inmate, Horst (Kevin Moore) — who wears the pink triangle — can labor alongside him at the most pointless busywork imaginable: Methodically moving stones, Sisyphus-like, from one irrelevant pile to another.
Bruce Coleman’s direction and the performances are all highly stylized, but no less effective because of it. Coleman emphasized how the Nazis’ single-minded hatred accomplished nothing save silencing those who created art and dance and poetry. In the play, drag club owner Greta (Paul Taylor), more decadent than Sally Bowles, becomes a ghostly figure, blindly lip-synching to Marlene Dietrich torch songs — fiddling while Rome burns, until he, too, has become a prisoner and the music ceases.
Plunkett convincingly progresses from idle hedonisms to self-respect. And Phifer, injecting many of the unexpected comedic jolts into the play, is sweetly endearing. But the real revelation here is Moore, who’s never been more charismatic onstage.
Moore’s blend of confidence and hardness is jarring, made all the more remarkable in intimate moments. The play’s most celebrated scene — when Max and Horst engage in a kind of virtual sex, graphically describing their lovemaking to each other to the point of orgasm without ever touching — is voyeuristic, almost erotic, but also beautiful and sad. And in large part, it’s because of Moore. This is a not-to-be-missed performance.
In the waning months of the Bush idiocy… er, presidency, it’s difficult to see a show like this, to hear Max describe “Moslems” in the camp (near zombies with a death-wish), without thinking of Abu Ghraib and how leaders have always used fear to persecute the most vulnerable in society. That sobbing you hear at the end of “Bent” isn’t all for Max and Rudy and Horst; some of it is for us.
The Dallas Observer Review – Excerpt from Elaine Liner
….The repetitive action of men dressed in soiled striped pajamas, slowly toting big rocks back and forth across the stage does have a Beckett-like purity. It also serves as the perfect visual metaphor for this play. Bent is heavy lifting all the way around.
In Martin Sherman's drama, now onstage at Uptown Players, main characters Max and Horst are prisoners in Dachau. They work the rock pile under the gaze of SS guards who combine extreme physical punishment with exquisitely evil mind games. Max thinks he and Horst have "the best job in the camp," which says a lot about conditions there, but they clearly are suffering. Horst's pain is physical—he gets sicker as the play goes on. Max's wounds are psychological. Not only has he denied his homosexuality to pass as a Jew in the camp, he also has been forced by guards to prove himself by committing an unspeakable act on a young Jewish girl.
Speaking furtively as they work, Max and Horst, who is also gay but open about it, grow closer. Their shuffling around the rock pile becomes a sort of sad courtship dance. Knowing they could be shot for any reason at any moment, they try not to draw attention to their connection. Rarely do their eyes meet, even as they engage in the most intimate exchanges. ……
At Uptown Players, director Bruce R. Coleman has made one improvement on Sherman's script by increasing the stage time of "Greta," a drag character who sets a menacing tone in the first act. After singing in her dank gay nightclub, Greta warns Max and his whiny lover Rudy to get out of Berlin. Hitler's highest-ranking homosexual, Sturmabteilung leader Ernst Röhm, has been murdered and the SS are rounding up gay men. "Now you're like Jews, unloved, baby, unloved," says Greta.
Later Greta helps the pair escape the Gestapo temporarily, and that should be the last time she's seen. But Coleman reprises Greta, played with a beautiful snarl by Paul Taylor, for scene transitions. In a variety of lavish costumes (by Suzi Cranford), including a frilly Bo Peep number, Greta lip-syncs to Marlene Dietrich and Lotte Lenya. Gradually, we see the deconstruction of Greta's glamour, until he/she too is dressed in the striped uniform and cloth cap of the prison camp…….
……Kevin Moore makes a fine Horst. Moore, who's as handsome and flat-abbed as a calendar boy, has appeared at Uptown in some good comic leading roles—Valley of the Dolls, Valhalla—but Bent is his best work in a drama. If only he'd played Max.
Making his Uptown debut as Max's dancer-boyfriend Rudy, Andrew Phifer starts out shaky in the early scenes and gets more surefooted as his character starts to break down in the presence of the Gestapo. Stan Graner, Josh Hepola and Clayton Younkin get to strut around in shiny jackboots and throw fake punches as the Nazis. Ted Wold has a nice small role as Max's rich gay uncle, who's off to Amsterdam rather than face arrest for being a "fluff."
….Bent had its place in time by being ahead of its time, and that's more than most plays can claim….
Dallas Morning News Review – Excerpt from Lawson Taite
Martin Sherman's drama about the Nazi treatment of gays seemed radical in the late 1970s. Uptown Players' revival, which opened Friday, does its best to freshen it up….
…Bruce R. Coleman directed the show and designed the set. Visually and symbolically, the setting is one of this busy artist's outstanding efforts. In the opening scenes in decadent 1930s Berlin, things look suitably lush. Piece by piece this perfumed world is stripped until only weathered boards and metal leave us in Dachau. ...
Mr. Coleman has enlarged the function of a relatively minor character, Greta, a drag performer who has a wife and kids and claims not to be gay. Doubtless under the influence of Sam Mendes' production of Cabaret, the director has Paul Taylor cover every set change with a lip-synced Lotte Lenya or Marlene Dietrich song. These make a surprisingly strong commentary on the action and really keep the show rolling along. Mr. Taylor's new take on the role contrasts cunning femininity onstage with butch gruffness off….
Thank you for taking on such a wrenching production. It's wonderful when you make us laugh to tears over gay humor in so many plays. But it's important to keep aware that bigotry and hate is still out there and can quickly and easily spread when, like the good German people, evil is met with silence, a what-can-I-do complacency.
Kevin and David were so powerful, especially carrying the entire second act. It was fascinating how the exhaustion and frustration from constantly moving the rocks transferred to the audience. I was especially moved by the repeated line: I can't remember the dancer's name.
Congratulations on yet another success.
Bill Stoner, Jim Lovell
.....Bent is certainly not a frothy night at the theatre, but Uptown has presented a moving production of a wonderful work. I'm so glad I discovered Uptown because I really do think that it produces the best shows in the DFW area. I've yet to be disappointed.....
......My sincerest congratulations to cast and crew. "Bent" is a stunning evening of theatre. The entire cast is uniformly amazing. You took me places I don't often go in the theatre and it was an incredible journey. I have come to expect quality/top-notch productions from Uptown and this surpassed any evening I have had in a theatre in recent memory!!! .....
........just a quick note to tell you how much i enjoyed your work in last night's performance of BENT....i was so moved....blubbering like a baby through most of the evening......the acting, the direction, the set, the costumes, even the music selection was thrilling.....there was nothing short of brilliant in the entire evening......
thank you for an engrossing, moving, sublime evening in the theatre......
.....Well, much to my amazement, I was totally mesmerized by this play, literally on the edge of my seat through most of it. I consider it one of the best I have seen there.....
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