On the Boardwalk – 9781912620357

A memoir from the writer of BENT with a foreword by Ian McKellenSherman takes us on a journey through America in the mid twentieth century, starting in New Jersey – where he was born in the 1930s to a Jewish immigrant family – ending on Broadway with the premier of his seminal play Bent starring Richard Gere. On route, we encounter other famous performers including Meryl Streep, Bee Gees, Joan Baez, but the scene-stealing character is always his father – a charismatic narcissist who might have given Trump a run for his money. We stop off in Woodstock, Los Angeles and London – a city Martin would eventually make home; he relays his story with self-depreciating humour as he struggles to make it in theatre, with his sexuality, and under the shadow of the inheritable disease that killed his mother tragically early – a disease from which he finds himself finally free, as he turns forty in the book’s closing pages.

Editor Nathan Evans says, ‘It’s an honour to be working with Martin on his memoir: he’s such an important cultural figure, and a mentor for me, personally. I remember being nineteen, sat in the back of my parents’ car surrounded by boxes: I was on my way back to university, learning lines for a play I was in later that term. Mum turned around and asked what it was about; I didn’t need to answer: I simply showed her the cover, with those four bold letters.

Although it would take her some more months to ask the next question, she knew then; I am just one of the many, many young men – from 1979 right through to the present – who’ve been so emboldened by Bent. This is the story of the man who had the honesty, and the bravery to write it.’