The ensemble (photo credit: John Karastamatis)
Fearless
by Christian Baines
@XtianBaines
As a writer and activist, Larry Kramer is nothing if not confronting. By cutting so fearlessly close to personal experience, he creates stories that are as real and enriching as they are unsettling. The Normal Heart has enjoyed something of a renewal in recent years, not just in the form of this superb production from Studio 180, but as a multi-Tony award winning revival staged last year on Broadway. The Studio 180 production returns as one of the most anticipated plays of the current Buddies season.
For the uninitiated, this not an easy night out at the theatre. The frustrations and challenges faced by Ned Weeks (a very thinly disguised manifestation of Kramer), in his attempts to unite and rouse the Gay community to action against AIDS, are lifted from actual events. His efforts fell on the largely deaf ears of both an American establishment that didn’t want to know, and a Gay community that was less terrified of AIDS than it was of being outed, or losing the liberties it had gained up to that point – two stuck wheels not greased by the fact that Weeks/Kramer is, by his own admission, an uncompromising, hot-tempered asshole.
And Kramer was not afraid to show his ugly side.
