Chrsi New & Alan Cumming in Bent

Matt Wolf in his Theatre.com Review: “Daniel Kramer's impassioned production of Bent confirms the young American expatriate as a director to watch, but there will always be those divided about the merits of the career-making play by a rather longer-term American expat, Martin Sherman. Inevitably emotive given its subject matter, Bent in some ways is more rewarding for what it represents than for what it actually is—a clarion call for the power of love, in this case homosexual love as chronicled during the Nazi persecution of gay men…An aptly named newcomer, recent RADA graduate New acquits himself well if by no means definitively as Horst, his coiled strength as evident as the youthfulness that marks out Kramer's production. (Trainor looks impossibly boyish in a role more or less summed up by the bespectacled, high-energy Rudy's affection for his plants.) Likely to stir rather more debate is the return to the London theater of longtime New York resident Cumming, who, at 41, looks as if he could be this Rudy's father. (Then again, Ian McKellen was 40 when he originated the part in 1979, prior to reviving the play in 1990 after he had himself come out as gay.) Inhabiting terrain he will have examined from other perspectives in both Cabaret and The Threepenny Opera, the Scotsman sails through a flouncy opening scene to cut a quieter presence here than he traditionally has on Broadway—sometimes too quiet, given that he's not always audible. There are glimpses of more familiar shtick in some funny voices Cumming later tries on for size, as well as a tendency to overdo the tears: when performers cry, it's almost axiomatic that audiences won't. But there's no questioning his commitment to a work whose whole may be of greater value than its component parts. If Kramer's sure, very visually skilled hand—the production, framed by diaphanous drapery, looks perfect throughout—gives Bent a new lease on life, that's as it should be for a flawed play that gives a defiant, robust finger to death.”

Michael Billington of The Guardian: “Back in 1979 I praised Martin Sherman's Bent for its measured treatment of a then unfamiliar subject: the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. But, while I still admire the play, Daniel Kramer's revival has an aura of flamboyant excitability at odds with a movingly restrained play… Precisely because the content is so explosive, the play demands a certain restraint. In the first half, however, we get a heightened theatricality. The first sign of it comes when a Nazi stormtrooper, after the invasion of Max's flat, exits with a gratuitous wave that would not be out of place in The Producers. Thereafter we get ear-splitting volleys of Wagner, pillars of flame and gusts of smoke in an attempt to lend the play a factitious excitement. Fortunately the atmosphere calms down in the second half when we see Max and Horst engaged in the futile activity of hauling a pile of rocks from one side of the stage to the other… Like the production, Alan Cumming's Max also improves steadily as it goes along. At first, Cumming relies too heavily on his winsome charm. Even Max's crucial denial of his dancer-lover seems to be externally demonstrated rather than internally experienced. But Cumming is very good in the Dachau scenes where he acquires resilience and dignity through a steadfast abandonment of ego. He is also well-partnered by Chris New who lends Horst a prickly defensiveness that slowly turns to love.”

Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: “Martin Sherman's historic Bent, which fixes its unflinching gaze upon two gay men imprisoned in a Nazi death camp, left me scarcely less horrified, disturbed and revolted by its violence and cruelty than at its 1979 Royal Court premiere. Yet scenes of brutality, in which gay men are tortured, beaten to death and shot, scrupulously avoid the gruesome sensationalism of Jacobean playwrights or Tarantino's cinematic blood-baths. Daniel Kramer's under-powered production even misguidedly dons the velvet glove of restraint when the play turns nastiest, while Alan Cumming conspicuously fails to summon up serious emotion as the wily, anti-heroic survivor Max… Cumming's light, stiff, shuttered performance cracks no hearts even at the poignant finale, but New, fresh to the London stage, all haggard and harrowed, shattering in fear and anxiety, steals the show.”

Sheridan Morley of The Daily Express: “Two years after being carved from the old Whitehall Theatre, the Trafalgar Studios has its first blockbuster hit. Bent, written by Martin Sherman, is at times the most homosexually explicit and violent show in town. But it also happens to be, as was evident when first seen at the Royal Court in 1979, a brilliant play about persecution under the Nazis. Somehow that dramatic theme has returned:next week sees the revival of Cabaret. But even that has its lighter moments. This is Cabaret without the songs rewritten in blood and sudden death… Even if you saw the 1996 film, the immediate dramatic impact of the play shows a totally different experience, raw in its tragedy and almost unwatchable in its brutality… In a production of intense power by director Daniel Kramer, it is also brilliantly played.”

Quentin Letts of The Daily Mail: “Bent is a forthright, dignified play about the persecution of homosexuals in Hitler's Germany. When premiered in 1979, it must have had shocking novelty value. Today, its bold depiction of gay love may not be quite so surprising. This production has flair. The acting is intense yet often good-humoured… Some of the cruelties described here are almost beyond inhuman. This is not, not, not a play for children. But elsewhere, in its depiction of love flourishing in defiance of Gestapo bullying, of concentration camp inmates retaining a flicker of humanity thanks to their homosexuality, does Bent touch the heart? For me the answer was 'not quite'. I feel bad saying so. Many people in Tuesday night's crowd at the Trafalgar Studios (such a dismal venue) became swept up by it all and cheered loudly at the end. God, what awful swine the Nazis were. But my heterosexual heart, though brushed, was not entirely stirred by Bent’s love theme… The one thing that held back my sympathy, and here I tread on sensitive ground, was the suspicion that the suppression of homosexuality—even when it was this brutal, was not quite as bad as the agony suffered by Jewish people in Hitler's concentration camps. How can one measure such suffering? I suppose the answer is 'children'. Max and Horst are lone adults with the option of choice. Jewish parents had to see their children sent to their death. Messrs Cumming and New do fine work here. Bent, despite my quibbles, is a technically accomplished, artistically ambitious evening. It makes you wince. But it did not make me cry.”