After he and his boyfriend are arrested and deported to a concentration camp during the Holocaust, the main character of “Bent” says one line over and over: “This can’t be happening.”

The events of “Bent,” showing at the Loeb Ex through Oct. 15, are rooted in historical fact. Yet protagonist Max, played by Joseph “Jack” Cutmore-Scott ’10, is powerful largely because of his sense of disbelief and his desire not to acknowledge what is happening, especially during the play’s wrenching second act.

Directed by Rachel E. Flynn ’09 and produced by Alison H. Rich ’09, “Bent” is playwright Martin Sherman’s best-known work, chronicling the story of three homosexual men who begin the play in Berlin. By the end of the first act, they are in Dachau.

As “Bent” opens, Max and his boyfriend Rudy, played by Harvard graduate student Aaron G. Schmidt, attempt to get papers to travel to Amsterdam after a man Max brings home with them from a nightclub is arrested at their apartment.

Though its characters’ lives are clearly affected and perhaps dominated by the political persecution taking place, Flynn’s “Bent” still manages to communicate a great deal through daily routines, as Rudy waters his plants and Max recovers from a hangover.

The second half of the play consists entirely of Max and Horst (Peter C. Shields ’09) carrying cinderblock “rocks” back and forth from one side of the stage to the other with no apparent purpose.

This mundane and continuous task contrasts strikingly with the emotional heaviness of the setting and the constant threat of a sudden end to Max and Horst’s lives.

The cast of “Bent” do a marvelous job of creating realistic and believable characters; for instance, it is impossible not to root for Schmidt’s dorky but endearing Rudy. The intensity and range of emotions the actors convey makes the show almost as tiring to watch as it must be to perform.

As Horst, Shields in particular maintains a witty, sarcastic outlook on the dire situation. His quips—the only moments of comedy in the second act—provide an effective counterpoint to the more lighthearted humor of the play’s beginning.

The initial comic element of “Bent” also contrasts forcefully with a lament sung by David J. Andersson ’09 between scenes of the first act. The song’s haunting melody has a foreboding quality that resonates even after its close.

Flynn uses the available space masterfully to portray the main characters’ journey from their apartment to a tent city and ultimately Dachau. One particularly effective moment comes during the first half of the play, as Max and Rudy sit in the center of the stage—physically close to their apartment, but clearly feeling displaced from home.

The set, designed by Benjamin T. Clark ’09, provides an excellent physical parallel for the mental transition between the two acts, its eventual bareness reflecting the emotional nakedness that characterizes the entire play.

For most of the second act, the words “I see everything”—words that the voice of a bodiless German guard repeats to Max and Horst—remain projected onto a black screen elevated above the back of the stage. This phrase and its staging are a fitting choice for a scene in which the two characters bare themselves psychologically, both to the audience and to each other.

When it was originally produced in 1979, Sherman’s play initiated a long-overdue look into the experience of gays in the Holocaust, a topic that was hardly broached for decades after World War II.

Though “Bent” no longer needs to serve this function, it still succeeds as an incredibly valuable piece of historical fiction, with its timeless theme of self-interest competing with the need for others and its humor in the face of tragedy.

—Reviewer Victoria B. Kabak can be reached at vkabak@fas.harvard.edu.