The Show, October 15, 2012

l-r Jeff Miller and Jonathan Wilson (Photo credit: John Karastamatis)

When Larry Kramer came out with his play The Normal Heart in 1985, he was a well-known, Oscar-winning screen-writer (Women In Love) and, in the same way as Truman Capote, a pariah. Many saw his seminal novel, Faggots, as a case of telling tales out of school - exposing the sordid underbelly of the fuckorama that was Gay New York in the 70s. But what no one suspected when the book came out was that Faggots would become what can only be called Journal of a Plague Decade - Part I. For it was precisely the party-hardy madness that Kramer satirizes in Faggots that serves as the backdrop of his AIDS play, The Normal Heart. The Normal Heart (and Kramer) felt it was time to rein in the partying if only to get serious about the epidemic that was killing thousands. If Kramer had been an outcast before, the play only solidified opinion against him. But he persisted with his movement and soon he was equally despised and respected as the raging prophet of AIDS activism. Studio 180 is reviving its much-praised production of The Normal Heart. See it.