Last night Matt and I saw the revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart at the Public Theater. I’d never seen the play before, but just a few months ago I read Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On, a sweeping, absorbing history of the AIDS epidemic from its beginnings to 1985. Kramer looms large in Shilts’s book, and Kramer’s play and Shilts’s book cover much of the same territory — the founding of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, GMHC’s closeted president, the ignorance of the Reagan and Koch administrations. So although I’d never seen the play, I felt like I’d seen it before.
Raul Esparza is, as Matt put it, a force of nature as Ned Weeks, the fictional analog of Larry Kramer in the play. Given my past history of trying to see Raul Esparza in a show, I figured we’d be out of luck last night, since that’s what happened to me when I tried to see him in “Tick, Tick… Boom!” and “Taboo” (I saw his understudy each time). I’m glad I’ve finally seen him, though. Joanna Gleason as Dr. Emma Brookner was cold and reserved and played the part well.
The biggest treat for me, though, was seeing Billy Warlock play Felix, Ned’s lover. I’ve had a crush on him since I was 12; I met him back in 1988, when he was on “Days of our Lives” and I got to visit the studio. I still have his autograph from that visit. To see one of my crushes kiss a man — several times — made me swoon. Unfortunately, he’s apparently straight, although I’m shocked that he’s already 43 years old — he still looks like he’s about 25.
My eyes welled up with tears near the end, when Dr. Brookner married Ned and Felix as Felix was dying in his hospital bed. I was so overcome that I wanted to have a full-on cry, but I couldn’t seem to make it happen.
The show was an intense theater experience, with lots of yelling and screaming and crying. I’m of two minds about it. As a play, it’s flawed; it’s very preachy, and the anger is too unrelenting. But as theater, it’s terrific. At the end of the show, Matt and I were both drained.
Here’s a New Yorker profile of Larry Kramer. (Here it is as a PDF.)
really, you think it’s flawed? I’d say it’s less flawed than it is incredibly direct. It’s pretty classical (an idea heightened by the neo classical set design methinks) in that there’s very little subtext, people say what they mean and there’s very little psychology going on. Pure story. Maybe I’m biased, as I’d read the play many times before seeing it…
“Frankie’s” 43?! Say it ain’t so! Considering he was playing a high school kid (or dropout) my own age when Jennifer Horton, you and I all fell in love, I am alarmed a. that he’s actually got eight years on me, and b. that 43 is only eight years away.