STAGE REVIEW : Studio Theatre’s Conservative ‘Bent’ Lacks Fire : * In Juan A Mas’ tame production in Long Beach, the lead character Max is a jerk, not an amoral beast. This blunts the ending.

The power of Martin Sherman’s 1979 tragedy, “Bent,” wasn’t so much that it revealed to many for the first time that gays were tortured and gassed right alongside Jews in Hitler’s death camps, but that it obliterated the trendy notion that a gay playwright’s job is to portray “positive” images of gays.

This activist-generated scourge of good writing, of course, is sweeping over the movies, which remain terrified of any gay characters. Theater is way ahead in this department, and “Bent” helped break down some barricades.

It remains a very fine play, full of small and large surprises--beginning with what a jerk Sherman’s seemingly nice central character is when confronted with moral choices. Actually, in a strong production of “Bent,” Sherman’s Max is an amoral beast. In Juan A Mas’ tame staging at the Studio Theatre in Long Beach, Max is just a jerk.

This, of course, makes his heroic-tragic transformation at the end--when he can no longer bear how his survival instinct in the camps has caused the death of his lover, Rudy (Laurence Joseph Ruffo) and his new friend, Horst (Eric B. Gerleman)--several miles short of the Saul-to-Paul change it should be. When everything that Sherman has been building up to for more than two hours is continually blunted, climax is virtually anti-climax (symptomatically, Sherman’s searing closing image is technically botched here).

Even more seriously, because Mas’ production and Michael Warga’s performance as Max lack an inner fire, this “Bent” feels empty of the play’s metaphorical intent: That Max himself is 20th-Century man, moving from effete, tranquil domesticity to facing off against the epoch’s moral monsters.

Sherman’s precise dialogue ensures that the flabbiest of readings won’t indulge in melodrama, but it can’t prevent an uninspired reading from being nothing more than what’s in front of us. Mas pulls off the dubious trick of turning “Bent” into a period piece, thus making it a very safe evening in the theater.

Part of this trick stems from bits of added business, such as actors as Nazis training flashlights on us and demanding identity papers during a blackout. An elaborate Nazi “street scene” is played out in the theater’s plaza-like lobby during intermission, supposedly to add color. But I caught several people simply smiling at the device; it’s only a short hop from this to turning Nazis into amusement-park figures, like Universal Studio Tours uses cowboys. Besides, this mini-drama involving the SS and resisters has nothing to do with Sherman’s subject, which is the silent conformist who devours himself.

Perhaps Mas himself felt that his show needed something more, but “Bent” has more than enough to stand on its own. Only Ruffo’s fey Rudy gets to the heart of his character--a hapless innocent completely out of his depth--but it is mostly Max’s and Horst’s play, and Warga and Gerleman only go through the motions. Aaron Osborne’s awkward set and those scene changes don’t even manage that: It’s hard to take seriously a production which has actors in SS uniforms carting cabaret scenery on and off stage.

‘Bent’

A Long Beach Studio Theatre production of Martin Sherman’s drama. Directed by Juan A Mas. With Michael Warga, Eric B. Gerleman, Laurence Joseph Ruffo, Mark Devine, Michael Loprete, Das Nugent, Stephen Thorne, Tom Hurd, Rowland Kerr, Jonathan Breakstone, Louie Zambrano, Ken Miller, Jeff Jonen. Set design: Aaron Osborn. Lighting design: Michael Wojciechowski. Sound design: Ken Regan. At the Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Through May 30. Performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Matinees at 2 p.m. on Sunday and May 24. $9 to $10. (310) 494-1616. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.