Word: bent
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...BENT by Martin Sherman
...Bent may be regarded as pro-gay in that it displays no social or moral qualms about anyone's being gay. But Playwright Sherman is not proselytizing. He wants to show us the brute cost of survival, the deep need and sustaining force of human affection in dire adversity and the taxing journey to the root core of one's identity. The play at Manhattan's New Apollo Theater achieves these ends, thanks in part to an arresting performance by Film Actor Gere (Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Yanks). Even greater thanks are due David Dukes...
...Bent does not begin in the death camp, but on a hung-over morning after a dissolute evening of booze, cocaine and sadomasochistic pastimes. The apartment of Max and his dancer-lover Rudy (David Marshall Grant) is broken in on by Storm Troopers. The two flee but are subsequently captured. The Nazi goons begin beating Rudy viciously and order Max to do the same. He begins in utter dismay, recognizes what he has been degraded to, and in an orgy of self-loathing deals his lover the final fatal blow. To amuse themselves further, the guards then order...
Throughout the play, Gere handles the shadings of emotion superbly, especially in a scene in which he and Dukes stand several feet apart, not facing each other, and go through an explicit verbal depiction of oral sex all the way to its climax. Bent is not "entertainment" as the word is customarily used, but in its tensile strength and nervy risk taking, it is audacious theater.-T.E. Kalem
Khomeini did not create U.S. television's imbalance between self-restraint and rant, but he has profited from it. Once he seemed bent on expelling all foreign correspondents, but now more than 200 of them are "persona grata" in a land where American diplomats are not. Journalists walk the streets of Tehran encountering little hostility, despite Iran radio's constant and strident anti-American propaganda. In their on-the-air questioning of the student militants, however, they too seem inhibited by the fear of jeopardizing the hostages. When Khomeini gives televised interviews, he chooses which submitted questions...