Bent (1979)

Written in the late 1970s by Martin Sherman, Bent is the story of Nazi Germany’s persecution of homosexuals told through the experience of Berliner Max Berber. The play focuses on the beginning stages of the systemic genocide of both homosexuals and Jews. The second act of the play takes place entirely in the Dachau concentration camp. Bent is one of the foremost pieces of art and literature on the queer experience during the Nazi regime. 

 

Bent premiered in London in 1979 at the Royal Court Theatre before transferring to the West End. The cast included Ian McKellen as Max, Tom Bell as Horst, and Jeff Rawle as Rudy. The show moved to Broadway the same year, staged at the New Apollo Theatre and directed by Robert Allan Ackerman. Richard Gere starred as Max, David Dukes as Horst, and David Marshall Grant as Rudy. Bent has been produced in several countries such as Belgium, Brazil, Poland, and Israel. The last major revival of Bent was in 2015 in Los Angeles and directed by Moises Kaufman.     

 

Plot:

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The play begins in 1934 Berlin at the house of Max Berber and his boyfriend Rudy Hennings as they discuss Max’s behaviour at the club the night before. They playfully bicker over Max’s memory loss due to his imbibing when a young man, Wolf, walks out of their bedroom. In his drunkenness, Max had taken Wolf, a Sturmabteilung officer, home, against Rudy’s wishes. They hear a knock at the door and assume it is their landlord coming to collect the rent they do not have. However, it is two Gestapo officers coming to arrest and then kill Wolf as part of the “Night of the Long Knives” operation. Rudy and Max run out of their apartment to the safety of the club Rudy works at as a dancer, only to find that his boss, a drag queen named Greta, had been the one to tell the Gestapo where to find Wolf, thereby endangering Rudy and Max. Rudy and Max, unable to return to their home as they have now been outed, have to leave Berlin and Greta gives them the money the Gestapo paid him for informing. They spend two years on the run until they are caught outside Cologne and put on a train to the Dachau concentration camp. On the train, Rudy is singled out by an officer for wearing “intelligentsia”  glasses and is beaten within an inch of his life. Another prisoner on the train cautions Max not to show any emotion, as it would only put Max in danger. Max watches as Rudy is beaten, even hitting him when the SS officer instructs him to, and remaining stoically silent as Rudy is murdered. The prisoner clues Max in on the patch system the Nazis use to differentiate between the types of prisoners (gold star for Jewish, pink triangle for homosexuals). He tells Max that the pink triangles are treated the worst in the camps and so in a moment of self preservation, Max strikes a deal with the SS to say he is a Jew. In order to prove he is also not queer, the officers make Max have sex with the corpse of a thirteen year old girl and he receives the gold star patch. Later, he admits this to the prisoner who introduces himself as Horst and they strike up a friendship inside the camp. Max begins a job moving stones from one point to another, a Sisyphean task designed to torture the prisoners. He bribes the SS to transfer Horst to his job, believing it is the best possible place to be in the camp “if you keep your head, if you have someone to talk to.”   The two men cling to each other as time goes by and become lovers through only their imagination, bringing each other to completion using just their words. Horst admits he has fallen in love with Max who rejects the notion, believing himself incapable of love after what he did to Rudy. Horst develops a cough which Max bribes an officer with fellatio to get Horst the medicine he needs. When the officer discovers it was Horst whom the medicine was for, he tells Horst to jump onto the electric fence encircling the camp. Horst instead defiantly lunges for the officer but is shot dead by a corporal. They command Max to carry Horst’s body into a pit with the other bodies. Max breaks down, admitting to himself that he was in love with Horst. Max goes back into the pit to retrieve Horst’s jacket with the pink triangle sewn on it and replaces his gold star jacket with Horst’s. Max commits suicide by touching the electric fence.