Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin: The Time Keepers

Smock Alley Studio

There is a deeply moving and illuminating Holocaust drama about friendship, love, sacrifice and sexual identity, which counts as an important work in what we might call the gay theatre repertoire. That play is Martin Sherman's Bent, from 1979, a substantial drama that doesn't feature in this year's Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin, nor in the concurrent International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. (Not since the acrimonious split between The People's Front of Judea and The Judean People's Front in Monty Python's The Life of Brianhas there been a separation as confusing.) Written by American playwright Dan Clancy and here presented in a long-touring, trimmed down production from Israel's Ocean of Sugar Company, 2001's The Time Keeperscan't help but invite comparisons with Bent. Both plays share the significance of yellow stars and pink triangles sewn on to its characters' uniforms. They are each set in a world of toil, threat and barbarity. But where the earlier play shone a light into the shadows of history and psychology, Clancy inherits its context for a more gentle view of human nature in unbearable circumstances, offering few fresh insights.

If Roy Horovitz’s engagingly performed Hans is aware of the dangers of conspicuous sexuality within a culture of tyranny, it seems odd that he should appear so uninhibitedly camp. Paired with elderly Jewish horologist Benjamin (Pinhas Mittelman) and set to the task of mending watches, the couple feels more symbolic than real; two sides of a split personality.

Where Hans radiates passion, humour and optimism, Benjamin is guarded, taciturn and guilty, a point neatly underscored by their shared love of opera but clashing view of composers; pitting the excess of Puccini against the restraint of Verdi.

That the two become friends is a foregone conclusion, but Lee Gilat’s production does touch upon the harsh mechanisms of survival: Benjamin passes on his expertise reluctantly, Hans withholds information about Benjamin’s family until he does. Knowledge becomes a valuable commodity.

Elsewhere, the play hovers uneasily between reality and fantasy. We never see a Nazi guard, for instance, with all cruelty devolved to Omer Etzion’s Kapo, a criminal prisoner with elevated status. Meanwhile the significance of countless broken watches and the fates of their owners goes without comment, and similarly Clancy skirts the inescapable trajectory of tragedy, daring to end on notes of self- determination and optimism. An audience familiar with the horrors of Holocaust narratives may greet the ambiguity of its conclusion as a relief. The truth may be that the play retreats from a gravity it knows it has not earned.

Runs until May 10th