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The Men With the Pink Triangles

Bent, Martin Sherman’s searing, heartbreaking drama about the Nazis’ brutalization and murder of homosexuals, was first seen at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1979 with Ian McKellen in the central role of Max Berber. When the play came to Broadway later that year, Richard Gere led a cast that also included David Dukes and David Marshall Grant. There has been no Broadway revival to date but this doesn’t mean that the play has ever been absent from New York stages for long; I’ve seen five or more Off-Off-Broadway productions over the years, the latest of which is the current staging at the Schapiro Theater on West 115th Street.

“I first read the play when I was in college and I fell in love with the characters,” says director Aaron Rhyne, who credits producer Stephen J. Sosnowski as the moving force behind the production. In Sosnowski’s opinion, “Bent is particularly timely right now. A lot of the themes that it represents in a vivid, in-your-face way are very poignant in terms of what’s happening in America today with gay marriage and other gay rights issues.” Set in Berlin and at Dachau during the 1930s, Bent charts the dissipated wheeler-dealer Max’s moral redemption through his growing love for Horst, a fellow victim of the Nazis’ barbarism. What with the current President of the United States supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the play is invaluable in demonstrating how a government’s systematic denial of civil rights can ultimately lead to the mass murder of “undesirables.” It’s happened before — and it can happen again.

Disappointingly, Martin Sherman has turned out to be a one-hit wonder. None of his previous or subsequent plays is as noteworthy as Bent, and his latest work — a rewrite of Nick Enright’s book for the Broadway production of the Australian musical The Boy From Oz — was deservedly trounced by the critics. For that matter, I’ve always had the impression that Bent isn’t universally regarded as the profound masterpiece it is. In a review of a 2002 production by the Flatiron Theatre Company, I wrote that the play has at least two things working against its reputation: (1) its unsparing subject matter is not for the faint of heart, and (2) a 1997 film version, though well acted by a cast including Clive Owen as Max, Lothaire Bluteau as Horst, Mick Jagger as the drag queen Greta, and Ian McKellen as Max’s Uncle Freddie, was deplorably misdirected by Sean Mathias. I have no doubt that an excellent movie of Bent would create a sensation, so here’s hoping that there may someday be a remake.

If Bent will never be as popular among the general theatergoing public as La Cage aux Folles, it’s beloved of actors. According to Sosnowski, “We had two full days of auditions and we saw over 200 people. I’m always nervous about what the turnout is going to be for a small production like this; I guess I didn’t realize how well known a play Bent is.” Many thanks to Sosnowski, Rhyne, and all those involved for bringing this indispensable historical drama back to the New York stage. For more information, click here.

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Analyst, Heal Thyself!

Following a successful Off-Broadway production with Stephen Collins and Sigourney Weaver, Beyond Therapy was a big flop on Broadway in 1982 with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest, but I still rate it as of one of the most hilarious plays I’ve ever seen. So I was delighted to receive a press release announcing that this vastly underrated Christopher Durang comedy is now being revived at the Cabaret Theatre at Dillon’s in a production directed by Mark Cannistraro.

A screamingly funny satire of highly neurotic people and their even more neurotic therapists, the play opens with central characters Bruce and Prudence meeting in a restaurant through a personal ad. When the date goes horribly awry, they flee to their analysts for guidance. Durang mines lodes of priceless comedy from the fact that these “health care professionals” are in a position to help no one: Prudence’s therapist is a lecher with an embarrassing secret (he suffers from premature ejaculation) while Bruce’s therapist turns out to be a wacko with a word substitution problem — e.g., she’ll say “dirigible” when she means “secretary.” The play’s two other characters are the bisexual Bruce’s live-in boyfriend and the waiter whom he picks up in a snit of jealousy.

In addition to Lithgow and Wiest as Bruce and Prudence, the Broadway production of Beyond Therapy featured Kate McGregor Stewart and Peter Michael Goetz as their respective therapists, Jack Gilpin as Bruce’s boyfriend, and David Pierce (now David Hyde Pierce) as the waiter. Even with that cast under the direction of John Madden, the show lasted a mere 21 performances (plus 11 previews). Why it wasn’t embraced by critics and audiences is a mystery to me, but I love the script so much that I’m going out on a limb and urging you to catch the production at Dillon’s even though I’ve not yet seen it. Featured in the cast are Kurt Bauccio, Tom Daddario, Matt Fraley, Brad Letson, Forba Shepard, and Marlene Wallace.

“This is my fourth production of Beyond Therapy,” says Cannistraro. “There are certain plays that follow you around from place to place and this one seems to be mine. I did my first production when I was a freshman at Northeastern in Boston; I played Bob but the director didn’t really know what he was doing, so I helped out. Then, when I was a senior at the University of Connecticut, the theater department offered me a slot to direct the play in their mainstage season — not knowing that I had done it before. And in 1995, I was hired to direct a production in New York at the Trocadero cabaret theater in the Village. It was only supposed to be for a couple of weekends but we ended up running the whole summer. We weren’t reviewed so I guess it ran on word of mouth. We sold out every weekend. It was amazing!”

Beyond Therapy has been playing weekend performances at Dillon’s on West 54th Street since June; it continues there in Saturday evening performances through August 7. For more information, click here.

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Cole Comfort

I saw De-Lovely at a screening many weeks ago but I wanted to wait until after the opening to comment on it. So, have you all seen it — and did you hate it as much as I did? For me, the only real question about this misbegotten movie is whether the script is worse than the casting or vice-versa.

Kevin Kline is a great actor who doesn’t remotely resemble Cole Porter in terms of facial features, physique, voice, or manner. He’s arguably just as wrong for the role as was Cary Grant, who played the great composer-lyricist in the notorious 1946 “bio-pic” Night and Day. Who among today’s performers would have been better cast as Porter? Here’s a belated suggestion, although this person is now focusing on directing rather than acting: Joe Mantello. (Look at the photo below; don’t you agree?)

Appearing in De-Lovely as Porter’s wife Linda is Ashley Judd, who’s considerably younger than Kline. This is a big slap in the face of reality, since Linda was actually considerably older than Porter. But the movie’s miscasting doesn’t end there. The real Irving Berlin had a very thick, nasal, New York Jewish accent, but that iconic composer-lyricist is played here by Keith Allen, who looks and sounds British.

Jonathan Pryce brings his professionalism to the role of “Gabe,” an annoying symbolic figure who accompanies the dying Porter on a trip down memory lane. (Shades of All That Jazz!) This trite, fantastical framing device may have been used by writer Jay Cocks and director Irwin Winkler as license to play fast and loose with the facts of Porter’s life, which they shamelessly do. For example, several of the early party scenes feature songs that Porter wouldn’t write until years later. In an Anything Goes sequence, Caroline O’Connor as Ethel Merman looks much older than the Merm was when she starred in that hit. And having Lara Fabian as Patricia Morison belt “Another Op’nin, Another Show” from Kiss Me Kate is dead wrong on two counts: (1) Morison didn’t sing that song in the musical, and (2) she was a soprano, not a belter. (Have Cocks and Winkler never heard the original Broadway cast album? Sheesh!)

De-Lovely is also a mess from a musical standpoint. Kline’s live singing is awful both in terms of pitch and quality of tone; apparently, he was going for “realism,” and that turned out to be a huge mistake. As for the musical guest stars, some of them (Robbie Williams, Natalie Cole, Diana Krall) do an okay job with the Porter standards while others (Alanis Morissette, Lemar, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow) do not.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to purchase the soundtrack CD, so let me call your attention to another disc that’s definitely worthy of attention. New from Bluebird/BMG and called It’s De Lovely, it’s a compilation of expertly remastered, vintage recordings of great Porter songs by everyone from Lena Horne (“From This Moment On,” “Just One of Those Things”) to Frank Sinatra (“Night and Day”) to Roy Rogers (“Don’t Fence Me In”). But for me, the most captivating tracks are the first two, which consist of Porter’s 1934 piano and vocal performances of “Anything Goes” and “You’re the Top” backed by 2004 recordings of ’30s-style arrangements by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. BMG has gotten a lot of critical flack for synching modern digital stereo recordings of symphony orchestras with ancient recordings by Enrico Caruso but I find these hybrids fascinating; they’re also harmless, since the performances remain available in their original form.

Porter’s vocals are thrillingly revivified by the new accompaniments and yet these tracks are not at all gimmicky. I’ll admit that I first listened to the disc before reading the notes and I couldn’t understand why the sound quality was so good; I thought that perhaps BMG had discovered some stereo recordings that Porter had made towards the end of his life in the late 1950s with full-band backup, but no. These are seamless combinations of old and new elements. You won’t believe your ears.