A GAY GROUND-BREAKER : By JANICE ARKATOV

Before “Cage aux Folles” or “The Normal Heart” or “March of the Falsettos” or “Torch Song Trilogy,” there was “Bent.”

Martin Sherman’s 1979 Tony Award-nominated play about two homosexual men falling in love at a German concentration camp not only broke ground thematically (who knew about the Nazi incarceration of gays?), but set the standard--a high one--for the gay theater that was to follow.

“I don’t think anybody knew what to expect from it,” offered the London-based playwright, who’s in town for Sunday’s premiere of “Bent” at the Coast Playhouse. “It was an openly gay play, the author was openly gay--and it was very positive. It was also very political.” For him, that atmosphere had as much to do with the climate surrounding gays in 1970s America as the one affecting gays in 1930s Germany.

“It was scary,” he said. “There were laws on the books in New York state that were very bad, yet there was no political action. “There’d been a gay rights bill before the city council year in and year out, but it was voted down every time. Gays were walking around dressed like outlaws, acting out this sort of exaggerated freedom. It was all very commercial, but it wasn’t legal . I knew that if something bad enough happened, (as) in Germany (their rights) could be taken away in two seconds.”

Sherman did not reach that historical parallel without a fair amount of research. Philadelphia-born and educated at Boston University, he was a resident playwright at New York’s Playwrights Horizons (where his “Passing By,” “Crack” and “Rio Grande” were done), before fulfilling a longtime dream of emigrating to England.

It was there that Sherman happened on the Gay Sweatshop production of “As Times Goes By,” which focused on three separate historical periods. “The middle section dealt with Nazi Germany,” he recalled, “and had maybe two lines about gay men being sent to concentration camps. It as like, ‘Oh, wow.’ A few months before I had read an article about it--but this really brought the subject to life. I don’t know why it hit me then, but it did. I was ready. I had to write it.

“The more I researched, the more contemporary it seemed,” he said with a sigh. Sherman discovered that the Nazi persecution of gays had begun with a dormant law, Proposition 175, outlawing homosexuality. “No one had ever paid any attention to it. At the same time, there was a very strong gay rights movement: There were marches, protests, petitions. But they never got it overturned.”

The catalyst was Ernst Roehm, head of the storm troopers and an early Hitler supporter, whose power plays ultimately ended in his arrest and execution--with the excuse charge of homosexuality. “Right after that the law got reactivated and they added a further thing. It said that you only needed to have had homosexual thoughts. In effect, they could arrest absolutely anybody. Dachau was created in 1934 and gay men were among the first people there.”

(At that time, Sherman emphasized that “these were detention camps, not concentration camps. People died of the conditions, but they weren’t being exterminated. It was more horrible than anything up till then--but much, much less so than what ultimately came.”)

Into this setting, the playwright introduces us to Max (played by Ian McKellen in the original London staging and by Richard Gere on Broadway), a rather disreputable fellow “who survives on his enormous charm and good looks”--and Horst, whom we meet prior to incarceration, living in Berlin with his lover Rudi (essayed on Broadway by David Marshall Grant, who, this time around, is playing Max and directing the production).

Upon its New York premiere, much was made over a graphic love scene, played out as a verbal exchange between Max and Horst.

“It was just logical,” Sherman shrugged. “They were two people who were not allowed to touch--who would’ve been shot if they did--who developed a very loving relationship. By expressing it, they’ll probably be saving their own lives. Because the psychology of the camps was to reduce the (prisoners) to children. If you take away their individuality, their personality, people automatically give up, become robots. So by trying to make this relationship live, they were making themselves live.

“It’s graphic because that’s what (sex) is; that’s the truth of what they’re imagining. But there’s nothing particularly shocking about it. Anyway, I think there are a lot more upsetting things in the play than that. I’ve seen ‘Bent’ done all over the world (36 countries), and the reaction wasn’t one of shock or being offended. It’s positive, uplifting--almost joyous.”

While Sherman acknowledges that some audiences may have been lured initially by the play’s salacious content, “once they sit down and watch it, that reason goes away.” Likewise, he’s philosophical about the specter of type-casting, the perception that he can only write about gay themes.

“There’s nothing you can do about that. When people see my other plays, they know it’s not true. Sure, it’s a problem I have to deal with--but a better problem than a lot of others. You’ve got to remember, there were years and years when I couldn’t get arrested. No matter what anybody says, success is far more pleasurable than failure. Failure is vastly overrated.”