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Theatre review: The Normal Heart

This gripping revival about the 1980s Aids crisis has enormous relevance today says John Nathan

October 7, 2021 10:06
Ben Daniels and Dino Fetscher (2) in The Normal Heart (c) Helen Maybanks
2 min read

In the 1980s the Jewish activist and playwright Larry Kramer almost single handedly forced the United States government to recognise AIDS as a public health emergency. As people died around him Kramer took on official inertia, indifference and downright homophobia too.

He died last year at the age of 84 in the teeth of another health emergency, the Covid pandemic. The cause of death was reportedly pneumonia but he lived long enough to see the now famous head of the America’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr Anthony Fauci fight Trump’s reluctance to take Coronavirus seriously, just as Kramer fought Reagan who ignored HIV for years.

There was irony in this because in the 1980s Fauci was one of the health officials Kramer railed at. The became friendly later. But it was that capacity for mountain-moving fury, matched by a monumental humanity that drove Kramer’s campaign and was also the impulse behind his 1985 autobiographical play.

In Dominic Cooke’s gripping revival Ben Daniels terrifically embodies both qualities as Kramer’s alter ego Ned Weeks. Over a fast-moving two hours and 40 minutes the play charts the two-steps-forward-one-step- back process of getting the world to notice the emergency that was unfolding in plain sight.

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Theatre