The Normal Heart

The Normal Heart is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer. It focuses on the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a prominent HIV advocacy group. The play's title comes from W. H. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939".^[1]

Quick Facts Written by, Date premiered ...

The Normal Heart
Cover of the paperback edition released by Plume in October 1985
Written by	Larry Kramer
Date premiered	April 21, 1985 April 19, 2011 (revival)
Place premiered	The Public Theater New York City, New York, United States
Original language	English
Subject	The rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City
Genre	Drama
Setting	New York City, New York, United States

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After a successful 1985 off-Broadway production at The Public Theater, the play was staged in Los Angeles and London. It was revived off-Broadway in 2004, and finally made its Broadway debut in 2011. The play was first published by Plume in the US, and by Drama Editor Nick Hern for Methuen in the UK to coincide with the 1986 British première at London's Royal Court Theatre. He then reissued it in his own imprint Nick Hern Books in 2011 when first staged on Broadway, and again in a tie-in edition alongside the National Theatre revival in 2021.

^[2]

• Craig Donner
• Mickey Marcus
• Ned Weeks
• Dr. Emma Brookner
• Bruce Niles
• Felix Turner
• Ben Weeks
• Tommy Boatwright
• Hiram Keebler

During the early 1980s, Jewish-American writer and gay activist Ned Weeks struggles to pull together an organization focused on raising awareness about the fact that an unidentified disease is killing off a specific group of people: gay men, largely in New York City. Dr. Emma Brookner, a physician and survivor of polio (as a consequence of which she is using a wheelchair), has the most experience with this strange new disease. She bemoans the lack of medical knowledge about the illness, and encourages gay men to practice abstinence for their own safety, since it is still unknown how the disease is spread. Ned, a patient and friend of Brookner's, calls upon his lawyer brother, Ben, to help fund his crisis organization; however, Ben's attitude toward his brother is one of merely passive support, which ultimately exposes his homophobia. For the first time in his life, meanwhile, Ned falls in love, beginning a relationship with New York Times writer Felix Turner.

The increasing death toll raises the unknown illness, by this time correctly believed to be caused by a virus, to the status of an epidemic, though the press remains largely silent on the issue. A sense of urgency guides Ned, who realizes that Ben is more interested in buying a two-million-dollar house than in backing Ned's activism. Ned explosively breaks off ties with his brother, not wanting further interaction until Ben can fully accept Ned's homosexuality. Ned next looks to Mayor Ed Koch's administration for help in financing research about the epidemic, which has now killed hundreds of gay men, including some of Ned's personal friends.

Ned's organization elects as its president Bruce Niles, who is described as the "good cop" of gay activism in implicit comparison to Ned: while Bruce is cautious, polite, deferential, and closeted, Ned is vociferous, confrontational, incendiary, openly gay, and supportive only of direct action. Tensions between the two are clear, though they must work together to effectively promote their organization. Felix, meanwhile, reveals to Ned his belief that he is now infected with the mysterious virus.

Although he continues to try to strengthen interactions with the mayor, Ned ruins his chances when his relentless and fiery personality appalls a representative sent by the mayor. Dr. Brookner gradually takes on the role of activist herself, and notes the epidemic's appearance in other countries and among heterosexuals. Although she desperately seeks government funding for further research, her request is denied; the rejection prompts her to unleash a passionate tirade against those who allow the persistence of an epidemic that is taking the lives of homosexuals, who are already marginalized by the government. In the meantime, Ned's conflict with Bruce comes to a head, and their organization's board of directors ultimately expels Ned from the group, believing his unstable vehemence to be a threat to the group's attempts to engage in calmer diplomacy.

As Felix's condition worsens, he visits Ben in order to make his will, and in the hope of effecting a reconciliation between Ben and his brother. All of them, along with Emma, meet at Felix's deathbed. Emma unofficially weds Felix and Ned, and Felix dies immediately after. Ned blames himself for his lover's death, lamenting that he did not fight hard enough to make his voice heard. The play ends with Ned and Ben embracing. As the stage fades to black, the rate of mortality from HIV/AIDS is shown to be continuing to increase.

After most performances of the 2011 revival of The Normal Heart, Kramer personally passed out a dramaturgical flyer detailing some of the real stories behind the play's characters.^[3] Kramer wrote that the character "Bruce" was based on Paul Popham, the president of the GMHC from 1981 until 1985; "Tommy" was based on Rodger McFarlane, who was executive director of GMHC and a founding member of ACT UP and Broadway Cares; and "Emma" was modeled after Dr. Linda Laubenstein,^[4] who treated some of the first New York cases of what later became known as AIDS. Like "Ned," Kramer himself helped to found several AIDS-activism groups, including Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), and indeed experienced personal conflict with his lawyer brother, Arthur.^{[citation needed]}

It has been suggested (though not by Kramer himself) that the model for 'Felix' was John Duka, a New York Times style reporter who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.^[5]

A Polish television adaptation débuted on the TVP channel on 4 May 1989, one month before the first free election in the country since 1928.^[26][27]

The American telefilm adaptation débuted on the HBO premium pay cable channel on Sunday, May 25, 2014.^{[citation needed]}

Kramer wrote a sequel about Ned Weeks in 1992, The Destiny of Me, which was performed at the Lucille Lortel Theater by the Circle Repertory Company in October of that year.^[28]

In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich observed, "In this fiercely polemical drama ... the playwright starts off angry, soon gets furious and then skyrockets into sheer rage. Although Mr. Kramer's theatrical talents are not always as highly developed as his conscience, there can be little doubt that The Normal Heart is the most outspoken play around – or that it speaks up about a subject that justifies its author's unflagging, at times even hysterical, sense of urgency. ... Mr. Kramer has few good words to say about Mayor Koch, various prominent medical organizations, The New York Times or, for that matter, most of the leadership of an unnamed organization apparently patterned after the Gay Men's Health Crisis. Some of the author's specific accusations are questionable, and, needless to say, we often hear only one side of inflammatory debates. But there are also occasions when the stage seethes with the conflict of impassioned, literally life-and-death argument. ... The writing's pamphleteering tone is accentuated by Mr. Kramer's insistence on repetition - nearly every scene seems to end twice - and on regurgitating facts and figures in lengthy tirades. Some of the supporting players ... are too flatly written to emerge as more than thematic or narrative pawns. The characters often speak in the same bland journalistic voice - so much so that lines could be reassigned from one to another without the audience detecting the difference. If these drawbacks ... blunt the play's effectiveness, there are still many powerful vignettes sprinkled throughout."^[29]

Jack Kroll of Newsweek called it "extraordinary" and added, "It is bracing and exciting to hear so much passion and intelligence. Kramer produces a cross fire of life-and-death energies that create a fierce and moving human drama."^[30] In the New York Daily News, Liz Smith said, "An astounding drama . . . a damning indictment of a nation in the middle of an epidemic with its head in the sand. It will make your hair stand on end even as the tears spurt from your eyes."^[30] Rex Reed stated, "No one who cares about the future of the human race can afford to miss The Normal Heart,"^[30] while director Harold Prince commented, "I haven't been this involved – upset – in too damn long. Kramer honors us with this stormy, articulate theatrical work."^[30]

On the day The Normal Heart opened, a spokesman for The New York Times addressed statements in the play about the newspaper's failure to give the disease adequate coverage. He said that as soon as The Times became aware of AIDS, it assigned a member of the science staff to cover the story, and his article appeared on July 3, 1981, making The Times "one of the first – if not the first – national news media to alert the public to the scientific recognition and spread of the disease." He also cited a later full-length report in The New York Times Magazine about recent discoveries made by researchers.^[29] When asked about his negative portrayal in The Normal Heart, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said through a spokesman, "I haven't seen the play. But I hope it's as good as As Is, which is superb."^[29]

In 2000, the Royal National Theatre named The Normal Heart one of the 100 greatest plays of the 20th century.^[30] In his 2004 book, How to Do the History of Homosexuality, David Halperin criticized the character of Ned Weeks for surrendering to "gay chauvinism" and "homosexual essentialism" through "various strategies of elitism and exclusion" when he lists renowned homosexuals he considers part of his culture.^[31]

Of the 2011 Broadway revival of the play, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times:^[32]

What this interpretation makes clear, though, is that Mr. Kramer is truly a playwright as well as a pamphleteer (and, some might add, a self-promoter). Seen some 25 years on, The Normal Heart turns out to be about much more than the one-man stand of Ned Weeks, the writer who takes it upon himself to warn gay men about AIDS (before it was even identified as such) and alienates virtually everyone he comes across. Ned Weeks — need I say? — is Larry Kramer, with a thoroughness that few onstage alter-egos can claim.

After the 2011 Broadway production, Patrick Healy from The New York Times interviewed young, gay men that had attended the show to see their reaction to the subject matter.^[33] Most of the young men that Healy interviewed talked about how the HIV/AIDS Epidemic is almost never brought up in textbooks or discussed in class by teachers.^[33] The Broadway revival became a "heart-tugging lesson",^[33] according to Healy's interviews, for those who weren’t alive during the events that unfolded in the gay community in the 1980s.

On June 12, 2011, Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey won the Tony Awards for Best Performance by a Featured Actress and Actor, respectively, for its Broadway debut, while the production won Best Revival of a Play.

In his review of the 2021 historic reading of the play presented by the One Archives Foundation, Los Angeles Times chief theatre critic Charles McNulty praised cast member Sterling K. Brown noting that he "captured so brilliantly" the role of Ned Weeks. He added: "the choice of Brown was inspired. Not only is he an exceptional, Emmy-winning actor, but his performance represented an act of coalition building, a recognition of shared struggle and a refusal to let the walls of identity serve as a prison."^[34]