Birmingham Post-Herald from Birmingham, Alabama • 39

Kudra Mogoiin lirmingtion fwt-Hwold May April 13 1914 Pag 5 feel blessed because I have the best of both worlds I have commercial success and I've got "Hill Street Blues" which is first rate' Kiel Martin a little bit of JD in Hill Martin By SAM HODGES KUDZU Raportw BrMktaHMHMlH Rick Plummer left rear directs cast: Jack Cannon rear Kiel Martin left front and Bob Penny in rehearsal for Theater most of his lines From now until the show opens April 24 Martin will rehearse twice a day three or four hours a rehearsal and will spend most of his free time working independently on his part A gregarious sort he vows to become a recluse the final days before the show opens "There wool be any press then No interviews shut off the botel phone have to have that time for myself and if people understand that well For now Martin is far more cooperative and friendly than one might expect a television star to be He goes out of his way to greet strangers and to learn the names of "Bent" crew members During an Interview be Insisted on getting the Interviewer a cup of coffee and twice left the room to fill it up "Have some more he said got to get you Martin grew up outside of Miami and got started in theater with a high school production He got the lead but even as he wa auditioning he knew he had found his calling "From that day to this always known I wa meant to be an actor Midway through ui answer to a question about his part as a homosexual in the play Kiel Martin rose from his chair and sprinted to the window He wanted to scrutinise a coed from the University of Alabama in Birmingham who wu walking down the sidewalk Martin said nose against the window pane "Truly been here three days and she's the first truly gorgeous woman He sat back down and faced his interviewer "As you can Martin said easing into self-analysis a little bit of JD in me I play Martin plays non-virgin Detective JD La Rue on the award-winning television series "Hill Street JD is perhaps the baddest of the essentially good cops who occupy Hill Street Station JD bends and often breaks departmental rules He is not above blackmail He womanises vigorously But as with all the UAB plans forum on issues in Bent RICK PLUMMER pnrantea Theatre UAB1 production of fay Martin Sherman wont bore audiences going to be a powerful powerful play for us Rent' hu evocative language strong dramatic situations It does what (playwright) Tom Stoppard said about another (day It ambushes an audience It really shoots is about the penecution of homosexuals hi Nasi Germany The pbqr wu controversial even in New York home of any-thing-goes theater But some critics have applauded an excellently written May whose virtues have been obscured because of its subject Plummer director of the UAB production got a grant from the Committee for the Humanities in Alabama to fund public forums on issues raised tqr Leading the discussions will be journalist Richard Plant who has published in the Saturday Review The New Yorker and Christopher Street a publication for gays Jama Steakley author of Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany" and Marie Etovitz former rabbi of Temple Beth-E1 in Birmingham and author of "A Century of Jewish life in Dixie The Birmingham Experience" The forums win be at Bell Theatre at 7 pm (an hour before curtain) on April 27 28 and will continue after the show The play run April 24 thrush April 28 with all performances at 8 pm notices from the beginning but the early ratings were weak Martin said he prayed that the show would stay on the air Four years later the show still lives and hu in fact become a vital part of American popular culture People who claim not to watch much television brag about watching "Hill Street feel blessed because I have the best of both worlds" Martin said have commercial success and got Street which is really a damn good show first Martin along with almost everyone else in the cast wu lifted from semi-obscurity to fame by Street He said the others appreciate the show much he does and are clou personally their characters are on screen As for Martin wait I read it I went to pieces It is a powerful beautifully constructed piece of theater Just thrilled I can possibly be to be doing it and to be doing it here at Martin plays Max a handsome young homosexual estranged from his wealthy German family He lives openly with a male dancer He and the dancer get arrested by Nazis and taken to a concentration camp where their lives are a physical and emotional hell The play contain strong language a tone that is sympathetic to homosexuality an acceptable lifestyle scenes that deal frankly with gay sex life and other scenes that make plain the brutal often deadly treatment of gays by the Nazis Here is view of the play it about homosexuality? I think so Is it about the Holocaust? More than it is about homosexuality it about human relationships? More than anything else yes" main characters on the show he invariably proves himself to have a good heart though in his case the proof usually coma at the last instant is close to being the kind of person be Martin aid pulls back Just at the brink But a good cop smart He ha a sharp analytical deductive Martin 39 decided to use a one-month break from the show to do Ms first play in a decade and a half He wa eager to do which concern the persecution of homosexuals and Jews in Nasi Germany As it happened Theatre UAB intended to do and had asked a casting agency to help find a name actor for Max the leadingrole were up front with Martin aid "They aid they wanted someone from a hot show and Street' is the He arrived the morning of April 7 after flying most of the night from La Angeles He wanted to go to work at once That afternoon director Rick Plummer assembled the cast for their first read through with Martin who had already memorised never He spent roughly five years doing stage work 1967 he went to California under contract with Universal Studios and appeared in such television shows as and After a lengthy recuperation for injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in 1969 he became a free-lance actor He did films (among others "Panic in Needle and all forms of television drama including a year on Edge of His work on the TV shows and brought him to the attention of the "Hill Street producers They wrote the part of JD for him but the network insisted on a screen test Martin said his test consisted of a scene with an attractive woman who was waiting to see someone at the police station He was to ask her if she wanted coffee but he wu supposed to use the line for more than one purpose "My line was you like a little while I said it and that wu the end of the test They said I wu That was in 1980 The show got excellent.