Review: "The Normal Heart" Still Beating Strong After All These Years

The cast of The Normal Heart

One of the problems with many political plays – or political pieces of any medium, really – is that the message often overpowers the story, and the characters become mere proxies for the writer. The Normal Heart, by playwright and activist Larry Kramer, is certainly a political play, and the message is loud and clear. But with Heart, now in previews at New York's Golden Theater, Kramer creates, or rather recreates, a moment in time so poignant, and characters so real and vivid, that the play succeeds tremendously, and by the end, the appreciation of Kramer's writing and the reception of his message merge together.

Heart, which takes place between 1981 and 1984, focuses on Ned (Joe Mantello), a bracing, in-your-face activist who rages against the world around him that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that they are in the midst of a plague. Ned's greatest ally is a doctor named Emma Brookner (a powerful Ellen Barkin), a wheelchair-bound, Polio-stricken woman who takes on literally hundreds of patients as she attempts to understand the nature of this new virus that is suddenly taking the lives of gay men in Manhattan.

The cast is led by the smooth hand of directors Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe, who intermittently project the names of the early AIDS victims onto the set, a chilling effect as the number of dead begin to grow exponentially throughout the course of the show.

Jim Parsons as Tommy and Lee Pace as Bruce

Ned and several of his friends, including handsome, "straight-acting" Bruce (Pushing Daisies' Lee Pace) and self-described “Southern bitch” Tommy (a scene-stealing Jim Parsons) put together an organization to fight the disease, (clearly a stand-in for the Gay Men's Health Crisis), but are met time and time again with the enraging insistence of the majority to ignore the issue.

Heart has a rapid pace, as quick scenes unfold and jump forward in time, and while we witness the nightmare of the AIDS crisis unravel in fast-forward, we also watch as Ned falls very deeply in love with Felix (superbly played by John Benjamin Hickey), a fashion reporter for the New York Times.

All around them, friends and former lovers die off at a terrifying speed, but at least they have each other … until Felix breaks down and shows Ned a dark spot on his foot that just keeps growing. When Felix is examined by Dr. Brookner, he asks her a barrage of questions about the disease, none of which she can answer. In a truly heart-breaking moment, he asks her if he can still kiss Ned without endangering him, to which she can only reply, not meeting his eyes, “We don't know.”

As Ned, Mantello brings a frenzied, incredulous energy to the role, portraying a man who is consistently shocked at how the world is so ready to ignore the travesties going on around it. Equaling his passion is Barkin, who brought the audience to applause in a scene where she thunderously takes on a government panel that refuses to fund her research, challenging them to explain how they can possibly justify their decision with science, an area in which they seem sorely lacking.

Joe Mantello as Ned and John Benjamin Hickey as Felix

Much of the play incites great anger in the audience, but sometimes it's the quietest moments that are the true calls to arms. And in this production, that moment belongs to Lee Pace, who recounts to Ned the horrifying and degrading story of what happened to his lover's body after he died in the hospital. A lesser actor would have tried to milk that monologue for all its worth, but Pace, with his soft, shell-shocked delivery, is pitch-perfect.

Obviously, with a play like Heart, there can be no happy endings, and a devastating final scene in which Ned says good-bye to Felix on his deathbed brings home the reality that while the fight against AIDS is often seen as a political battle, at the end of the day, it's about people losing their loved ones.

It's no secret that there are far too many revivals on Broadway these days, but with top-notch directors, a monumental script, and a stellar cast, this is without a doubt one revival you must see. As I was leaving the theater, I heard one audience member say to another, tears in her eyes, “That was life-changing.”

And I can't think of a better compliment than that.