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BENT

Play by Martin Sherman, 1979

Martin Sherman's Bent, first produced in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1978, dramatizes the Third Reich's incarceration and extermination of gay men. Set in its later scenes in Dachau, the play initially depicts a hilarious domestic farce that could occur in 1979 London or New York. Only when the SS burst in and murder the boyfriend of an SA leader do we recognize the date as the Night of the Long Knives (28 June 1934) and the place as Berlin.

The gay slaughter that occurred from 28 June to 3 July rid the Nazi leadership of homosexuals and put Heinrich Himmler, the virulent homophobe who ran the SS, into the top position under Hitler. Himmler's obsession with eradicating gay men underlies Bent 's action, which occurs between mid-1934 and late 1936, when the Nazis systematically persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, and killed them.

Following the arrival of the SS in their apartment, Max and Rudy run, but Max refuses to leave the country alone. Because of his loyalty, he's apprehended with Rudy. Frightened while on the train to Dachau into betraying Rudy in order to survive, Max denies knowing him, even hits him, contributing to Rudy's death. At Dachau Max meets Horst, who advises him on how to stay alive. Max reacts to what he learns by obtaining a yellow star rather than a pink triangle on his prison clothing because in 1936—still early in the Holocaust—his odds of survival in a concentration camp were slightly higher posing as a Jew.

At Dachau Max works one of his deals to get Horst assigned to move rocks with him. When they first carry out their repetitive, pointless task together, they argue. Then they joke. Then, in a section of the play written in a minimalist style reminiscent of Beckett, they begin to fall in love and learn to have sex merely by talking to each other, since they cannot touch. Sherman daringly employs sex as rebellion against fascism and assertion of simple human dignity; this coup de théâtre challenges bigots who watch it to embrace the human right to "pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Horst acknowledges his love for Max, saying it gives him a reason to live. Max, consumed by guilt and self-contempt, tells Horst not to love him because he can't return Horst's love and "Queers aren't meant to love." Indeed, he insists Horst should hate him. But slowly Max begins to learn tenderness and selflessness, and he suggests he and Horst can one day have a life together in Berlin. Shortly after that birth of hope, the SS captain orders Horst to electrocute himself on the fence. Horst signals that he loves Max, then chooses to attack the captain and be shot. Rather than die passively, he resists.

When ordered to dispose of the corpse, Max holds Horst for the first time and also for the first time tells Horst he loves him. Few dramatic scenes pack such power, as Max continues to carry rocks, counts to 10 (as he did in the parallel scene in the first act), then jumps into the pit of bodies and comes out of the closet by removing Horst's jacket and donning it. Now, finally wearing a pink triangle, Max defies his captors by choosing to run onto the fence and die. Not a despairing suicide but an act of embracing his identity and asserting his courage, it shows his denials and deals put too high a price on survival. Max has grown enormously.

Bent dramatizes themes of cowardice and courage, betrayal and loyalty, deception and truth-telling, self-contempt and self-respect, love and hatred. Above all it indicts bigotry that demonizes outsiders, and it depicts the struggle by the persecuted to survive or to defy those who dehumanize others. The play proves universally moving and speaks to contemporary atrocities against the "other"—whether it be slaughter in Kosovo or the devastation wrought by extremists pursuing an Islamic jihad against the United States.

Theaters in such world capitals as Tokyo, Paris, Athens, and London have repeatedly presented Sherman's Holocaust masterpiece. Productions have occurred in some 40 countries around the globe; everywhere it has sent spectators home crying. London's Royal National Theatre named it an NT 2000 play—that is, one of the most important dramas of the twentieth century. The 1997 film version, financed largely by Japanese investors, had its world premiere in Tokyo after winning the coveted Prix de Jeunesse at Cannes. Sir Ian McKellan, who starred as Max in London in 1979 and 1990, recalls Jewish Holocaust survivors stopping him to display numbers burned onto their arms, share their memories, and praise this harrowing play. Sherman's iconic work brought to public consciousness the Nazis' oppression and murder of gay men and made the pink triangle a universal gay symbol.