Photo By Ryan Blomquist Photography
The World’s Stage Theatre Company brings a powerful historical drama to the stage with Martin Sherman’s Bent. Kirk Thomsen plays Max, a man living in Nazi Germany. Though his sexuality marks him as a pervert in the eyes of the government, he’s a survivor with a will to escape the Nazis at any cost.
Much like Max himself, the drama seems to be faltering frantically as it begins. He’s in a relationship with a nice guy, but he’s not happy. An evening with an SS officer finds him on the run. Aside from a staggeringly brilliant and stunningly brief performance by Josh Perkins as a deeply conflicted German drag queen named Greta, the production continues in a listless saunter along with Max until both protagonist and production reach a prison camp where Max gets to know another gay man named Horst (played by Nate Press).
Press not only has a firm grasp of the drama—he is every bit as strong a survivor as Max—but he also has a crisp understanding of humor in the face of abject misery. Press delivers witty lines in the same achingly emotional exhaustion with which he hauls rocks across the stage. It’s an inspired performance. Thomsen has an excellent rapport with Press as the two characters try to scrape together some form of life in hellish 12-hour days where they are forced to move heavy rocks for no apparent reason. The drama’s final scenes are every bit as compellingly maddening as the barbwire fence through which some of the audience watches.
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World’s Stage’s production of Bent runs through July 19 at the Tenth Street Theatre, 628 N. 10th St. For tickets, visit bent.bpt.me.
