IN GEAR! Richard Gere is ready for a departure from the usual screenstar-arrives business. (He will be everybody's leading man choice after "Yanks" is released.)

Gere starts rehearsing in just a few weeks for the U.S. version of the London hit "Bent," all about a homosexual who tries to outwit his Dachau concentration camp tormentors by "passing" as Jewish. (The thesis seems to be that gays fared even less well than Jews with the Nazis.)

The play's try-out will be in Hartford, Conn., about mid-October, with plans to move on to Broadway in November: Like Al Pacino, Gere is determined to remain an actor and not become just a "movie star.”