REVIEW: Savage at the White Bear Theatre 25 February – 15 March 2026
"Savage is one of those ever-important stories, just told in a slightly stagey and uninspiring kind of way"★★
In a semi-true story rich in history and topicality, Savage by Claudio Macor takes us to Nazi occupied Copenhagen, where we witness a love story torn apart by the worst kind of ideological horror.
Nikolai (Kerill Kelly) and Zack (Matthew Hartley) are secret lovers haunting the city's shadowy streets, frequenting the underground gay bars and stealing kisses under streetlamps. While homosexuality was decriminalised in Denmark in 1933, this is the reign of the Third Reich and "undesirables" are being removed from society to the camps.
When Nikolai is beaten and arrested one night, he's taken to the clinic of Dr Carl Peter Vaernet (Mark Kitto), an apparently well-meaning medical madman who claims to have discovered a "cure" for homosexuality. Kitto's demeanour of kindly authority is extremely well-suited to this role, which is one of the things that works well in the play. If we are to be put in the shoes of all the people that believed this nonsense, we need to fall for it too.
What follows is a harrowing, humiliating, and tortuous treatment regime involving the injection of monkey testosterone into the patient's testicles, under the ever-watchful evil-eye of Nazi official General Heinrich von Aeschelman (Tom Everatt). The General has a particularly sinister interest in the procedure as a closeted man himself: a monster that keeps his cabaret star boyfriend (of the non-consensual sort), Georg (Jonathon Nielsen-Keen), essentially captive at home.
As you can see, the story is ripe and rich and layered, while still being easy to follow, and grounded in the largely forgotten real-life work of Dr. Vaernet. For me though, the blocky scenes come across as dramatic, but emotionless, a bit unimaginative, with a tendency for over-acting. Their power and potential is often lost to toneless exchanges and rigid turn-taking dialogue. While there are some neat lines that are clearly supposed to shine, this does result in two-dimensional characters with whom you feel no affinity, though I appreciate some of the language and delivery is a stylistic choice to reflect the period.
Nevertheless, paired with functional, but quite ordinary, light and sound, and template direction that moves people around the stage with little heart, the sheer monstrousness of the actual action leaves mostly little shock or sadness, despite some brave moments; Georg and Nikolai being forced to stand naked opposite one another to prove their rehabilitation comes to mind. But the pedestrian theatricality of it all, occasionally suffocating in such a small space, undermines its power.
While it's not a new play, maybe it has too much ambition for smaller venues – its story too big and too grand for its setting. A more terrifying, atmospheric two-hander in the bowels of the doctor's purgatory-surgery might have had more potency. As it is, it spans a number of times, locations and characters, and it's unclear exactly whose story it is. The ending comes suddenly and in quite a different style, as if they weren't quite sure when and how to wrap it up.
But overall Savage is one of those ever-important stories, just told in a slightly stagey and uninspiring kind of way. However, the subject is as timeless as it is topical, and its reminder that conversion therapy is still legal in the UK is deeply sobering – making you wonder where, and whether, that savagery ever really ended.
Savage by Claudio Macor
Directed by Robert McWhir
Produced by Lambco Productions & Josephine Buchan
White Bear Theatre, 25 February - 15 March 2026
Box Office: https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/savage
Reviewed by Alix Owen
