The Normal Heart at Redtwist Can Still Be Read as a Call to Action

In an interview conducted when he was 78, in poor health and reflecting on his life, playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer sounded resigned and dissatisfied.  Speaking with the New York Times, his former nemesis, he confided that “seeing things that are wrong” inspires him.  He then immediately went on to explain that “it’s wrong to be treated with such inequality”.  He was referring to the treatment of gay men in the beginning days of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s New York. The people being felled by the disease made up his community.  They were his friends and chosen family.  He watched as an unknown phenomenon crept into that population and quickly blanket it with death.

Kramer’s outrage that no government entity would even acknowledge the crisis as it unfolded and grew caused him to form a movement.  It also propelled him to write The Normal Heart, a quasi-autobiographical play about his efforts as an activist and the carnage wreaked by a contagion with no known origin or treatment.  Currently being staged in Edgewater at the newly renovated Redtwist Theatre, this production of The Normal Heart returns to those devastating days when death stalked the young and no one came to their to their aid.

The drama opens in the earliest days of the epidemic, when it’s fingers were just sliding into the gay community.  People were just beginning to fall ill and then die from something being dubbed a cancer; chiefly because its ramifications were so bleak. 

At first dumbfounded by it, Ned Weeks (Peter Ferneding) and his friends don’t know how to respond when the disease initially surfaced.  The medical community could confirm whether or not you were infected with it, but they had nothing to offer if you were.  As was so often repeated during those bleak years, a diagnosis became a death sentence.  Many people would simply go into seclusion and die.  Others walked the streets with the rashes and wasted frames that signified its presence.

Deep into the play, Ned declares his father was a weak man and that he made a promise to himself that he would never be like his him.  That will and drive for strength and action become the driving force of The Normal Heart and Ned is its embodiment.  It fuels his will to attack inequity with such rabid indignation.  When he and his friends organize to demand the media and government recognize this growing catastrophe, they agree he shouldn’t be its face or spokesperson.  He’s too abrasive. Too recklessly confrontational. Too difficult.  Instead they choose Bruce (Phillip C. Matthews), a closeted banker who’d play by conventional rules.  A person who would request and not demand.

The tension their differences would inevitably manifest is a major thread running through the  play and effectively reveals the complex dynamics of human interactions when survival is under siege. 

An ally of sorts, a doctor who’s been treating many of his stricken friends, shares Ned’s anger. But much more coolly.   Dr. Brookner’s dispassionate eye sees both the hypocrisy of her profession and of those in the seats of political power.  She’s also eyewitness to the toll unbridled promiscuity is taking on gay men.  Placed In a wheelchair by polio as a child, Brookner (Tammy Rozosky), knows what it’s like to be othered.  The battle to earn her medical career despite her disability shows how she turned pragmatism into a suit of armor.  Still, it was perhaps naïve of her to want to see gay men apply the same kind of discipline to their private lives.

That determination might not have been found when it came to reining in their sexual habits, but in people like Tommy (Cameron Austin Brown), it was certainly evident in their tireless zeal to help others.  A key figure in establishing and running the outreach arm of the group, Tommy’s personality allowed him to occupy two personas.  The inveterate flirt and the dogged organizer. Watching Brown alternate so smoothly between the two was one of the highlight’s of the production.

Observing the blossoming and maturation of Ned’s relationship with Felix (Zachary Linnert) counts as another.  He finally sets aside his reflexive combativeness long enough to let love flower.  The gesture opens the door to the intimacy of honesty; when both men eventually reveal their truths.  One of them involves Felix showing Ned a sore on the bottom of his foot that isn’t healing.

By this time as familiar as it is irrevocable, the trajectory of Felix’s fate becomes all the more poignant because Linnert makes his character feel known.  Later we come to admire him for the courage he musters despite his fear. 

No producer would touch The Normal Heart when Kramer completed it in the early 80s.  The subject matter was too radioactive.  Even the gay monied elite shied away from both his consciousness raising organization and his ground shifting play.  Forty years later and The Normal Heart is not only recognized as an undisputed triumph, it continues to be performed around the world as a battle cry against injustice.

With a talented and resourceful creative team, director Ted Hoerl presents a world where chaos is met with purpose.  Challenging set requirements are mastered by clever innovation and fervid acting establish memorable connections.

Late in life, Kramer would acknowledge the progress the gay community has made within the culture since those furtive days. He would also continue to lament how much further it needed to go.  The Normal Heart acts as a blueprint on how to get there.  

The Normal Heart

Through September 29^th, 2024

Redtwist Theatre

1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.

Chicago, IL   60660

https://www.redtwisttheatre.org/the-normal-heart