In amongst the copious amounts of glitter, frivolity, and joy that FRINGE WORLD brings to Perth this time of year, there must always be space for far more serious pieces, such as The Pink List, a one-person musical making its Australian debut from UK-based Fabulett Productions and Michael Trauffer.

The Pink List explored the situation that queer survivors of the Nazi regime, unlike their political or religious peers, were not provided a clean slate in the post-war period. Indeed, Section 175 of the German Criminal Code, criminalising homosexuality, remained the exact same in the new Federal Republic, which led to new prosecutions, often administered by the same judicial officers as held the posts under the Third Reich.

A fictional retelling, based on an amalgam of three real people, the audience followed Karl from a court appearance in 1957, flashed back to the Weimar years as a country boy moved to Berlin, and then survived the Sachsenhausen KZ camp during the war. Friends and family were stripped away in all the ways a despotic regime can, all while Karl was persecuted himself.

This was a work tightly bound together with the dual purposes of outrage and survival. To exist in these circumstances was an act of resistance all in itself, and the Nazi-era law – Section 175 was not fully repealed until 1994, whilst the Bundestag didn’t apologise until 2002 – made an absolute mockery of any sense of justice.

Trauffer gave gravitas in spades in an extremely committed performance, at rare times lightened with youthful naivete or humour. With the erosion of minority rights accelerating globally this decade, The Pink List was very much both a piece of history and of our own times. A superb work about a very important topic.