Local Theater Review of Bent

On Saturday, October 4, Brüka Productions (99 N. Virginia St., Reno) presented the final of eight performances of Bent, Martin Sherman’s two-act drama set in Nazi Germany 1934-1936. Max (Michael Grimm) lives a wild night life of alcohol abuse and cocaine deals, while his partner Rudy (Scott Dundas) is a struggling dancer in a Berlin nightclub. After one night of blackout drinking, Max brings home Wolf (Scott Lambert), an ex-lover of a highly ranked official killed by Hitler in his rise to power. After the SS arrive and shoot Wolf for "resisting arrest," Max and Rudy escape into a yearlong ordeal of running from Nazi agents and seeking ways to flee the country. Despite opportunities to escape separately and abandon one another, both men remain faithful in their aims to escape together. After their capture in a tent city, they are placed upon a transport to Dachau, and Max is coerced into beating Rudy to death and later desecrating a corpse to "prove" his heterosexuality. Consequently, Max wears the Jewish yellow star instead of the pink triangle for homosexuals. His badge of identity is contested by Horst (Todd Woodard), a fellow prisoner Max eventually learns to understand, respect, and love. Directed by Tom Plunkett, Bent conveys the dehumanization and mental anguish experienced by captives under Nazi rule, and more specifically, Max’s emotional odyssey as he is forced into a succession of "deals" that involve compromising his morals, ethics, and perception of self. From his ordeal, Max gathers enough strength in himself and his humanity to act out of free will, rather than the compromising terms of Faustian bargains. We welcome the Brüka theater to our community of creative efforts to enhance awareness and understanding through art.

Brad Lucas

Perspective on Bent

As a Retired Ambassador to the Social Economic Council of the United Nations who represented a world-wide group of people who perished in the Nazi Holocaust, I attended the Brüka production of Bent with cautious expectations of seeing a local theatrical production sensitively produce a noble show on the Holocaust. At the same time, I was hesitant to anticipate an enjoyable experience in the theatre since, as a teacher, I was taking fifteen culturally disadvantaged adolescents from JobCorps (who had never viewed a theatrical performance) to see a program with a story line on heartfelt relationships between people of the same gender. And finally, being a life-long theatre participant, both as a creator and as a viewer in the creative arenas of New York City, London, and Los Angeles, I was dubious as to the quality of theatre a local production could mount with this play, an evoking production of which I had seen on Broadway with Richard Gere. As I have shared in a letter to the director and cast of the Brüka Theatre’s production of Bent, I was not ashamed that my 15 JobCorps students wept profusely throughout the production. I was not ashamed that I, too, did not feel it necessary to stifle my expressions of emotions created by the powerful staging and artistic performances of the actors. The production captured and conveyed nuances of the mental, emotional, and spiritual tensions a man is burdened with by the beauty of love, the power of survival, the evils of bigotry, the joys of companionship, and the nobility of identity.The Brüka Theatre’s production of Bent should be performed in middle and high schools, colleges, and at all religious and civic and political organizations in the state of Nevada for all to receive worthwhile education, inspiration, and entertainment.

Joseph Andrejchak Galata