(Photo by Richard Hall/Silverline Images.)

(Photo by Richard Hall/Silverline Images.)

 

Really GOOD and less good–my assessment of two plays now onstage in Boston. Let’s begin with the really “GOOD”– in capital letters– production of BENT at Zeitgeist Stage Company. It’s a tremendously moving production, keenly directed by David Miller, and much more affecting than the original Broadway production which I saw starring Richard Gere as a homosexual cavorting through Nazi Germany, until one night– the infamous “Night of the Long Knives”– the SS crashes the party and drags him and his lover off to Dachau. Martin Sherman’s play charts the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, those so-called “bent,” and marked with pink triangles as the lowest of the low in the concentration camps.

Victor L. Shopov does a magnificent job of making me forget Richard Gere. Shopov as Max is louche and careless at the beginning of ACT I, and Mikey Di Loreto as his lover Rudy is funny and flamboyant.  Gradually, as the Nazi persecution of homosexuals gains terrifying momentum, Rudy and Max run for their lives, and the mournful undercurrent Shopov always seems to exude, finds a perfect outlet here; his creeping fear turns to fearsome resolve, and then to haunting transcendence. It’s a great performance.

Ben Lewin looks decadent enough in drag as Greta, a Dietrich-esque chanteuse, but the voice and the tuneless tunes were too much of a drag. Diego Buscaglia is fine as the pretty naked plaything “Wolf” who’s destroyed in ACT I, a portent of the ugliness to come. Robert Bonotto  is excellent as nervous gay Uncle Freddie, meeting his nephew Max clandestinely on a park bench; I was on the edge of MY seat.

ACT II is set in a concentration camp where Max (disguised as a JEW!) meets another gay prisoner– Horst– subtly played by Brooks Reeves. Together, they spend the entire second act  moving a pile of rocks from one side of the stage to another. That’s it–and the power of this repetitive action is extraordinary. The monotony and pointlessness are maddening, but together, they miraculously figure out a way to hang onto their humanity and transcend the corrosive effects of their brutal physical circumstances. Not only that, but Max finally embraces his identity as a homosexual in an extraordinarily courageous act of self-determination.  As we view them through barbed wire on a darkened, barren set, in a very close space, we are completely absorbed by their concentration and focus, until somehow, we feel they have triumphed over history itself.  See BENT at Zeitgeist Stage Company through October 11!


Less good, is the new musical now onstage at SpeakEasy: FAR FROM HEAVEN. It is. But I also disliked the Todd Haynes film on which it is based and which pays homage to 50’s movie director Douglas Sirk’s melodramas. The play and film have the same problems. What was only hinted at in Sirk’s films and those of the period–and therefore made for great tension and interest–has now become obvious, irrelevant and silly– especially as a musical!

FAR FROM HEAVEN is set in 1957 in the bucolic suburbs of Hartford, Connecticut  where a husband harbors a scandalous secret, and a wife  looks for love in all the “wrong” places. To make matters less heavenly, it’s all set to MUSIC. Monotonous, meandering, tuneless music. The sets are spare and attractive, the costumes fine– except for the stockings which would not have been worn “seamed” by this stylish set in the late 50’s. I did enjoy the porcelain-complexioned Jennifer Ellis as the lovely, lonely Mrs. Whitaker; she has an ache in her  voice, and absolutely looks the part. But most of this corny show is a slow slog through boringsville, with none of the dangerous, forbidden undertow of the genuinely  uptight, paranoid 1950’s. FAR FROM HEAVEN at SpeakEasy Stage through October 11.