The Normal Heart

http://www.thenormalheartbroadway.com





Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe's revival of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's impassioned look at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the U.S. and his frustrated efforts to shut it down, left me speechless and openly weeping. I can count on two hands the number of times art has made me teary, much less cry. Joe Mantello as the leading crusader was really great and made an overly showy role so real. But it's Ellen Barkin's (well-deserved) Tony-winning performance as a NYC doctor treating tons of gay men dying from a mysterious, (she suspects) sexually transmitted, illness that really stands out for me. (He was good, but I'm not convinced John Benjamin Hickey gave a Tony-worthy performance. I'd rather the award had gone to Mackenzie Crook for Jerusalem.)

I was a mess from the moment Barkin began her blistering speech railing against the CDC--or was it the NIH?--for ignoring her repeated reports of this exploding epidemic for several years, followed by them denying her funding to search for the cause and cure for the as-yet-unnamed plague. I wept from then until almost half an hour after the show ended. I even tear up thinking about it. Seriously, when is the last time you cried just thinking about a performance more than two weeks afterward?

The show is not without flaws. I loved him on Brothers and Sisters, but Luke Macfarlane was pretty disappointing here. And I'm curious about the writing for the character played by Lee Pace (whom I've loved in pretty much every other role, especially on the sadly missed TV show Pushing Daisies). I have a hard time believing an ex-Green Beret would be so nonthreateningly laid-back in the face of such a crisis (and, from a purely physical perspective, so reedy), even if he were so far in the closet. Speaking of the writing, the opening scene is so underwhelming that I wondered if I would like the play at all. The scene at the end in the hospital is predictable and flat to me, too. But the projections of the names of so many people lost to the disease ended the show on a strong note--a punch to the gut, really. The phrase is overused and generally hyperbolic, but in this case I think there truly was hardly a dry eye in the house (including among the cast).

I could go on about how cool David Rockwell's deceptively simple stark-white-walls set design is once David C. Weiner's lighting design reveals what's hiding there. Or how much I loved seeing The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons in a touchy-feely (handsy, really) role, aka decidedly un-Sheldon. Instead, I will tell you why this show hits me so hard every time I think of it.

The true brilliance of this production is that it makes me want to go out and change the world for the better. It makes me want to quit everything else in my life and take up a cause (it makes a very good case for AIDS activism--which 30 years later is, depressingly, still very needed--but there are plenty enough causes to go around). Really, when is the last time a play made you want to be a better person? (Ugh, here I am crying about it again.)

I love that at the beginning of the show's run, Kramer himself stood outside the theater and handed out this letter to make people think about the real-life events depicted in the play--to make sure they saw it as more than art, as the crisis it was and still is. I love that the show has had talk-backs and discounts for young theater-goers. I love that Ellen Barkin is such a fierce advocate for the message of the play. You should find video of her Tony acceptance speech and read this interview with her. Here's an excerpt:

What about this piece grabbed you?
I just think it’s too important not to do. It was very important that this play that was such a watershed theatrical moment finally be on Broadway, and to be a spear-carrier for Larry Kramer in the war he’s been fighting for a lifetime is an honor and a privilege for me. And the addition of [co-director] George Wolfe is like, well now we’re just in Geniusville, USA, as far as I’m concerned.

You were in New York acting off-Broadway in the early ‘80s; does the play bring back memories of that time for you?
Absolutely. You cannot help but completely relive the terror and horror of what was going on then. I look at the first 41 names of AIDS victims that come up [on the set of The Normal Heart], and I had a friend on that list. It is a real, visceral remembrance of that terror. There are maybe two generations of human brings who really don’t think AIDS is an issue anymore, and it’s bad. It's bad and that’s in part because of what happened at the beginning, that it was never identified as the plague it was and still is, and then it morphed into what it is now, a huge money-making machine for the pharmaceutical companies.

You seem like perfect casting for this crusader of a woman.
It’s true. When people ask me, “How do you get up the rage every night?” I say, well sometimes I just listen to the play and other times I wake up in the morning, turn on my TV and watch my president hand over his birth certificate. Where do I get my rage? It’s free-floating, it’s blowing in the wind, it’s everywhere. It’s the perfect climate for these words to be heard.

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