BENT, European Repertory Company. In his introduction to the forthcoming new edition of Heinz Heger’s The Men With the Pink Triangle, historian Klaus Muller points out that “a mere quarter of adults in the United States know that gays were victims of the Nazi Holocaust.” So any time a production of Bent reaches a new audience it’s worthwhile. Martin Sherman’s moving if manipulative drama recounts the experiences of a gay man in 1930s Germany: hunted by the gestapo after he picks up a storm trooper in a bar, promiscuous party boy Max ends up in the Dachau death camp, where his love for a fellow prisoner transforms him from a selfish, apolitical deal maker into a doomed but dignified man of conviction. Written in the late 70s and inspired in part by the Heger book, Bent is an eye-opening account of the brutal psychological and physical torture endured by homosexuals under Hitler.
