Theatre

When the American playwright Martin Sherman finished ‘Bent’ in the late ’70s, he immediately sent a copy to Gay Sweatshop, the small, radical theatre company that had been set up in 1975. He was hopeful that they would be keen to stage it, particularly since it had been partly inspired by an earlier Gay Sweatshop production ‘As Time Goes By’, which referred to the persecution of gays by the Nazis. But, instead of an acceptance letter, Drew Griffiths, one of the founder members of the company, sent the script back saying ‘You can’t let us do this. You have to send it out into the larger world.’ He couldn’t have been more right. When I meet Sherman just before a new revival with Alan Cumming opens at the Trafalgar Studios, he tells me that since the first production at the Royal Court in 1979, there has hardly ever been a time when it has not been playing somewhere in the world. ‘What Drew did was astonishing. It was the most generous thing anyone has ever done for me professionally.’ Feature continues

Before ‘Bent’, few people realised that gays were forced to wear a pink triangle similar to the yellow one worn by the Jews. Sherman, who is Jewish and gay, believes that those gays who survived never told their stories even after WWII was over because homosexuality remained illegal in Germany. Ignorance was compounded by confusion as films like ‘The Damned’ linked the Nazis with homosexuality. ‘The SA under Ernest Röhm,’ explains Sherman, ‘were primarily homosexual and they led a fairly outrageous, gay lifestyle. All the other main organisations within the Nazi system were actually heterosexual. It became a myth that they were gay. The other thing that added to the myth was that there was a Nazi aesthetic of the golden Aryan male that was homoerotic. But homoeroticism is a very different thing from homosexuality.’

Sherman’s play falls very much into two halves. Set in 1934, the first depicts the twilight world of Berlin, of nightclubs, drag artists and gay couples openly pursuing an active sex life. But it is the misfortune of Horst, the main character, to pick up one of Röhm’s followers on the night of Hitler’s purge. In the powerful second act in which Horst is taken to a deportation camp – extermination camps had yet to be established – the mood is more Beckettian as Horst strives to maintain his individuality in spite of the dehumanising tactics of the guards. Most famously, Horst and a fellow inmate make love to each other without touching while observed by the guards.

Not everyone shared Drew Griffiths’ initial enthusiasm: others were equally passionate in their loathing. Hampstead Theatre sought to find a distinguished gay director prepared to direct it. ‘They all unanimously hated the play,’ says Sherman. ‘It came from a different way of thinking. It was against the way they lived their lives.’ Once Hampstead fell by the wayside, Robert Chetwyn came to Sherman saying not only that he would like to direct it but also that Ian McKellen might play Horst. This was before McKellen came out publicly and Sherman remains hugely appreciative: ‘Doing “Bent” was an incredible act of bravery. He was a major star at the RSC. He didn’t have to take on a play like this, which was so exposing.’

The play finally opened at the Royal Court (‘They loathed it there too but were too skint to turn down Eddie Kulukundis’s money and a star like Ian McKellen!’). Reviews were mixed but the public liked it and Kulukundis transfered the production to the Criterion in the West End where it had a successful run before crossing to Broadway with Richard Gere. Success in New York meant that Sherman could finally move permanently to London without feeling he was running away from failure.

Given the popularity of Nazi programmes on TV, you would think that everyone knew about the pink triangle today and that the whole theme of the Nazis had been over-worked to the point of being desensitised. In fact, Sherman discovered during auditions that there were plenty of young people who knew little about the history. He hardly has to justify telling a story that had not been told before, but equally he has no problem with people continuing to write about the Holocaust. ‘Whenever you talk to people who survived or read accounts of people who died, they all say the same thing “Don’t forget this”. The only way you don’t forget is if you keep telling the stories. A collective social memory doesn’t last that long. I don’t agree at all with people who say you shouldn’t do it.’

‘Bent’ is playing at the Trafalgar Studios.