'The Normal Heart' at the National Theatre

My last theatre play before the pandemic was 'The Visit' on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre and my return to plays was 'The Normal Heart', also on the Olivier stage. 'The Normal Heart' is an odd play in some ways, very autobiographical by Larry Kramer about the AIDS crisis in early '80s New York and written in 1985 while the crisis was still raging and turning into a world-wide epidemic. 

The play starts with the characters assembling on stage, lights go down and the 'thump, thump, thump' sound of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' blasts out into the auditorium for a few seconds  and we see the characters pull their shirts off and dance in spotlights before it all vanishes and we're in a doctor's waiting room meeting the first casualty of the epidemic. The hedonism before the tragic results. I's quite a powerful move.

The play and the arguments start with endless words, words, words, shouting and confrontation. It's not the easiest of plays to watch, especially if you're around my age and lived through it all. The strange cancer gradually comes to be associated with gay men and with sex and Ned Weeks, the lead character, feels the need to tell his community about it. But others who fought for equal rights feel that you can't tell men how to live their lives after finally finding (relative) freedom. That's the premise of the play, the results of the freedom to be out and enjoy life openly versus the emerging medical epidemic that calls for restraint.

There's a lot of polemic on both sides of the argument - 'it's my right to have lots of sex' versus 'be careful' - and I can't help but feel that this would've benefited from a good edit to make the play flow better rather than get stuck in a position every now and then. At the time it was written this was probably relevant but seems odd looking back when people were dying. It made me wonder when I first heard of AIDS and I can't remember, probably the mid-'80s but I probably didn't really understand it. In 1987 I worked in an unemployment benefit office and had quite a few AIDS/HIV men on my caseload so certainly knew about it by then and visited one of the main treatment hospitals in London to better understand it (as it was back then).

There's no happy ending to this play, it was written in 1985 after all. Ned's lover Felix catches the disease and dies - did he catch it from Ned or not? The best it can claim is that it reconciles Ned and his brother, a sub-plot in the play. I can't say I enjoyed the play but it did make me think and remember. The covid pandemic isn't the only one I've lived through (so far), there was an earlier one in my lifetime

Ben Daniels played Ned and Dino Fetscher played his lover. I liked seeing Liz Carr come on in her wheelchair, showing that just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't turn in a powerful performance. The play has now closed and, while I'm not sure I enjoyed it, I'm pleased I saw it.