Savage

In the late 1930s, Danish doctor Carl Peter Værnet discovered what he believed to be “the cure for homosexuality”: injecting testosterone into the testicles of live human subjects without anaesthetic. Dr Værnet was given a prominent post at the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, where he experimented on 17 inmates.

After the liberation by Allied forces, Dr Værnet was arrested as a Nazi war criminal. However, the British major who interrogated him was intrigued by his “cure”, and the doctor was allowed to flee. He then escaped to South America, where he continued to experiment on thousands of live subjects, with the full knowledge of both the British and Danish authorities. He died in 1965.

In Claudio Macor’s new drama, we meet two young men directly affected by Dr Værnet’s experiments – their glamorous, hedonistic life in 1930s Copenhagen as well as the tragic treatment of one of them by the Nazis.

Confirmed cast include Alexander Huetson (Phil Willmott’s Encounter, Above the Stag), Gary Fannin (The Reduced Shakespeare Company; Spectre; 24: Live Another Day) and Nic Kyle (The Grand Tour, Finborough Theatre; Closer to Heaven, Union Theatre)