Theater Review: The Normal Heart

Joe Mantello and John Benjamin Hickey. Photo credit Joan Marcus

After Almost Three Decades, the Message Still is Relevant
By Lauren Yarger
HIV continues to infect a growing numbers of people every year. There is no cure. Those statements, true in 2011, haven’t changed since we first heard them uttered three decades ago about a then new and mysterious disease.

The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer’s play about efforts to educate the gay community about the dangers of having sex and about trying to get governmental funding to study the disease is just as relevant in today’s Broadway production as it was when it was staged in New York back in 1985.

The play chronicles the efforts of Ned Weeks (Joe Mantello), urged by Dr. Emma Brookner (Ellen Barkin) to get the message out about the AIDS plague she is witnessing to those in his homosexual community and to the New York Times. The victim of another plague, polio, which has left her in a wheel chair, Bookner isn’t sure what she is dealing with, but she’s pretty sure the disease is being transmitted sexually and she wants to keep it from spreading.

No one is paying attention, however, since the disease only seems to be targeting gays – a term The Times won’t even use except in quoted text. Gays are a political hot potato too and the mayor’s office won’t meet with Ned or the members of the advocacy group he forms (in real life, Kramer founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis).

Ned is the most outspoken of the group, and the most willing to be identified with a gay cause, but board members Bruce Niles (Lee Pace), Tommy Boatright (Jim Parsons) and Mickey Marcus (Patrick Breen) feel he is too militant and offensive in his blunt speaking to serve as their president. Ned’s message that there is a need for abstinence doesn’t sit well with them either and it becomes even more personal when Ned finds himself falling in love with a fashion writer at the Times, Felix Turner (John Benjamin Hickey), who also contracts the disease.

Also unable to lend his full support to Ned’s cause is his brother, Ben (Mark Harelik), a high-powered attorney who loves his brother, but who is embarrassed by the lifestyle he has chosen. Some great dialogue between the two ensues when Ben can’t give Ned the personal validation of his lifestyle he so desires or even a statement that gays are just as “normal” as he.

“Please stop trying to ring an admission of guilt,” Ben pleads.

“You still think I am sick,” Ned counters. “And I can’t accept that any more.”

Sounds like a conversation two brothers could have today. In fact, a lot of the piece is very relevant – maybe even more so now, with its references to gay marriage which must have seemed almost an impossibility when the play was written.

When the disease first reared its head, and when Ned becomes aware of it in 1981, 41 people had died. Today, the number stands at more than 35 million worldwide. Drugs have slowed, but not defeated the disease. Names of those who have died are projected onto the white, phrase-chiseled walls (David Rockwell, scenic design) linking the past with the present. It’s a stark reminder that while a lot of time has passed, some of the most compelling issues around the disease still bring a lot of hurt, division and questions.

The Normal Heart plays through July 10, 2011 at the Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th St., NYC. Discounted tickets are available at http://www.givenik.com/show_info.php/Masterworks/313/individual.

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Show posts a MATURE advisory
Language
God’s name taken in vain
Homosexual activity
Sexual dialogue