For everyone who wondered what happened next after Cabaret, there is Bent,
set during the Nazi's 'solution' to the 'homosexual problem' - a fact
Chimera Productions are careful to introduce in an interesting programme
that gives some of the history of Hitler's persecution, and eventual attempt
to eliminate, Germany's homosexual population, often relegated to a mere
footnote to the Holocaust.

The young actors (personal, natural,heart-rending) perform on a almost bare stage,
with just the minimumnecessary props, and build a cruel, empty world
where friends always cometoo late and love will more likely end your life than save it.
Harry Lloydplays eternally-young shyster Max, at his best scrapping with beautiful
doomed beanpole boyfriend Rudy, played touchingly graceless by the
improbably-named Basher Savage, or trying to wheel and deal his way to
escape for both of them.

Solid support comes from James Sadler in drag as
Greta, whose rather excellent torch song is a bit let down by an
unflattering wig, a superbly slimy Peter Harness as Uncle Freddie, pursing
and panicking through one of Max's endless schemes, and the usual complement
of brutal Nazi guards and cowed concentration camp victims. For the second
half the stage-hands put on gloves for the barbed wire and rocks, but Max
and Horst (Richard Power) approach the horror of internment with bare hands
and no hope. But though the drunken escapades of the early scenes are long
gone, the final scenes are not just one long miserable slog, though that
aspect is certainly important.

There is still light in the story, still love, even laughs, albeit laughter soured by bitterness,
despair andcrippling fear. For all that Bent is harrowing watching, it is, bizarrely,
perfect Valentine's viewing; serious but sweet, terrible yet uplifting,
a story of love against (literally) insurmountable odds.

Jeremy Dennis 12/02/03