Michael Trauffer in The Pink List at Orlando Fringe Credit: Courtesy Photo

From Martin Sherman’s Bent to the documentary Paragraph 175, there have been plenty of works of art depicting the suffering of homosexuals under the Third Reich, but relatively little creative attention has been paid to the gay community’s continued oppression under Nazi-era criminal codes, even decades after Germany’s liberation. Writer-performer Michael Trauffer has tried to correct that oversight with his dramatic solo musical The Pink List, in which he stars as the fictional figure of Karl Hellwig, a convicted queer recapping his journey from the bottom of a concentration camp’s pecking order, to yet another imprisonment. 

As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I couldn’t help feeling empathy for the heartbroken Karl when his boyhood crush joins the Hitler Youth, or when he’s separated from his camp capo sugar daddy. This play provides an important historical lesson on the deficiencies of denazification — something Americans may need to learn ourselves, following our next elections — and the thoroughly researched script recounts these atrocities with the ring of truth. 

However, I ultimately found The Pink List more effective as education than as entertainment. Trauffer is a deeply invested performer, but his charisma is muted by an unnecessary and inconsistent Germanic accent. More problematically, out of the 11 songs (including reprises) in the pop pastiche score, only the defiant 11th-hour anthem is a fully developed number with memorable musical hooks, and Trauffer is not a strong enough vocalist to elevate the uneven score. Perhaps music in a Kurt Weill/Weimar cabaret style might have felt more thematically appropriate; or maybe this would have been better off as a straight play (no pun intended). 

The Pink List’s climactic plea to look beyond prejudice and stop persecuting still resonates today as it did in 1957. Unfortunately, the kind of people who need to hear that message will never attend this kind of show.

Fabulett Production (London, U.K.)
Brown Venue, Lowndes Shakespeare Center
60 minutes; 18 and up
Tickets: $15

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This article appears in Orlando Fringe 2026.