Tonight, I cried over spilled milk. Thrown milk, really. And after that milk was splashed across the floor, I didn’t stop crying until I was standing on line for the bathroom.
Allow me to present a scenario to you: There is a play on Broadway. It is about the founding of GMHC and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in America. When presented with this scenario, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided that I should probably go to this play by myself. As in, not in the company of anybody that I call friends or family. Here’s why that was incredibly faulty logic: there was no one to peel me from my seat at the end and no one to carry my limp, broken, cried-out body home.
The Normal Heart, originally produced in 1985 at the Public Theater in New York City, is the story of Ned Weeks (based largely on Larry Kramer, the playwright), a gay man in NYC who wants someone to pay attention to the fact that all of his friends are dying. He wants the Times to write about it, he wants the mayor (Koch, remember him?) to help him, he wants his brother to lend his lofty lawyer name to the cause, and he wants his friends who are still alive to come out of the closet and fight.
Ned, played with tenderness and fragility by Joe Mantello, is a loud, neurotic, fiercely opinionated Jewish man with a volcanic temper that works against him, as hard as he fights to make it work for him. He loves a good argument, as well as a bad one. Weakness is unforgivable in his eyes, but his weaknesses are all too visible to the audience.
Ellen Barkin, my beautiful Ellen Barkin, makes her Broadway debut as Dr. Emma Brookner, a Polio-stricken wheelchair-bound doctor who seeks desperately for answers. She diagnoses many many men with an unnamed disease, a cureless disease, and helplessly watches them die. During the second act, she has a scene that is so powerful and stunning, so full of anger and pain, I stopped breathing. She unleashes the fury of Hell at a government goon, spewing venom at the President (Reagan, who, let’s recall, is NOT actually the saint he’s been made to look like recently), and all the while, is unable to use her whole body AND is facing straight at the audience. Balls, ladies and gentlemen. Balls.
The cast here is so good that it’s almost silly, as well as being pretty surprising. Jim Parsons, of The Big Bang Theory (CBS sitcom) fame, is a highlight as a supporting character, Jimmy Boatwright, a self-proclaimed Southern bitch and quiet activist. Lee Pace, from Pushing Daisies (super fun series, Netflix) is Bruce, a handsome banker who remains in the closet but does his damndest to get the message out. His last big speech is outrageous, and elicited gasps from the audience. And John Benjamin Hickey, who I know hardly at all, is brilliant as Felix, Ned’s closeted partner, who one day finds a purple bruise on his foot.
Though the play was written in and was about the 1980’s, there is so much in it that rings true now. Though the virus has been isolated and there are now medications to slow the effects, there is still no cure. There are still people who oppose handing out condoms or educating children and adults about the disease and prevention. There are now tens of millions of people living with HIV and AIDS across the world. There is still not enough funding, there are not enough doctors, and not enough help.
Why did I cry at this show? Why did so many others? Was it because I hate death? Because the prospect of losing love in such a manner is horrifying to me? Because though I was very young at the time, I remember that my mother’s friends kept dying? If you do not get a chance to see this amazing show, which is open until July 10th, buy the book. I am out of a job right now, but was determined to see this play any way I could. I came out of it with a fire in my belly. It awoke something in me that I didn’t realize I was missing.
