The quality of the work at Fort Lauderdale's Rising Action Theatre has been a sometime thing -- sometimes good and engaging, sometimes woefully inadequate -- so hearing that the company would be staging Martin Sherman's challenging Bent is bound to stir a mixture of hope and fear.

The largely encouraging news is that the power of Sherman's play about Nazi persecution and extermination of homosexuals shines through in this uneven but ultimately moving production. Director and star Larry Buzzeo is working with a cast of mixed abilities (something that too often happens at Rising Action), and that does diminish what he's able to accomplish.

But when the blissful decadence of 1934 Berlin gives way to the peril of being on the run and the horror of incarceration at Dachau, Bent quickly becomes riveting.

In staging Sherman's drama, Buzzeo tries to establish a mood that begins before the play does. As you enter the theater, the actors are wandering about, exchanging longing looks, lighting cigarettes, getting saucy with the audience in what's meant to be the anything-goes club owned by a cross-dressing diva called Greta (Larry Brooks). Since that atmospheric opening bleeds into the play's first scene, with Max (Buzzeo) bringing a club conquest named Wolf (Richard Weinstock) home for a one-night romp, it works.

On the other hand, having the play's Nazi captain order the audience out of the theater at intermission -- or else? Bad idea.

Bent, which debuted in London 30 years ago with Ian McKellen as Max, makes the case that the Nazis' treatment of gays was as harsh as their genocidal persecution of Jews -- and that in a hierarchy of victims, gays were the most loathed.

In Bent, the unthinking escapism of sex, alcohol and cocaine swiftly gives way to the need for real escape, as German officers enter the flat Max shares with his dancer-boyfriend Rudy (Michael Perry) and murder Wolf by slitting his throat.

On the run, Max tries to get help from his Uncle Freddie (Ted Dvoracek), an older gay man who has pursued a more discreet, hidden path through life. But Max and Rudy get caught, and on the train to Dachau, Max learns from a prisoner named Horst (John McGlothlin) that having a pink triangle (the Nazis' way of identifying gay prisoners) sewn to a uniform guarantees the worst possible treatment. In a horrific act of self-preservation, Max gets himself the yellow Jewish star. And in a play with a number of dehumanizing scenes, this one -- not shown, but described graphically by a weeping Max -- is the worst.

The second act of Bent is set at Dachau, as Max and Horst are forced to spend 12-hour days moving rocks from one pile to another. There is no purpose to their labor, except to amuse their sadistic guards and drive them mad. Yet even in the depths of a hell on earth, the men find a way to connect, console and love one another.

Against a backdrop of images of some of the millions who lost their lives to the Nazis, the actors navigate their way through Sherman's devastating story. Some, notably Perry (who neither looks nor moves like a dancer) and Dvoracek, deliver performances you might find at a not-so-hot community theater. Buzzeo and Brooks are better, though nuance isn't their thing and Buzzeo doesn't seem to change much over months in a concentration camp. McGlothlin, however, is heartbreakingly believable as a man whose courage and humanity are transcendent.

Rising Action is already selling its new season, one that will include Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out (about a star baseball player who comes out) and the musicals Flora the Red Menace and Grey Gardens. Those are good titles, shows worth seeing. Here's hoping that the company keeps working to up its game.

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