'Normal Heart' recalls '80s days of disco, death

If we had known then what we know now, would there have been fewer deaths? Had our leaders not been blind to the risks, would so many people have been left in harm's way? And who gets the blame? Questions apt for a discussion about our current war in Iraq? Yes, but also true for another war that took place 20 years ago when the medical marauder, AIDS, first appeared on our doorstep. Then apathy overruled compassion and guilt by association replaced scientific inquiry. Not love in the age of cholera, but death in the age of disco. Gay activist Larry Kramer's "The Normal Heart," one of the most political plays written in the 20th century, is receiving its first major New York revival at the Public Theater in New York City. It is as powerful and riveting as it was when it premiered to a stunned, reeling, audience many of whom had already lost friends and lovers to the disease. The revival, directed by David Esbjornson, opened Wednesday night, 19 years to the date it opened in that same theater. In those wrenching, finger-pointing days when the plague was initially identified as "gay cancer," one could not have anticipated how the perception of the disease would evolve, nor that it would sweep across the world infecting men, women and children. A fine ensemble cast headed by the brilliant Raul Esparza in the role of Ned Weeks, a stand-in for Kramer, rekindles the rage of those times. The always wonderful Joanna Gleason is on hand as Dr. Emma Brookner, a character based on Dr. Laura Laubenstein of New York University Medical Center, who led the charge for research. Brookner challenges Weeks and his group to put out the word to gays to stop having sex until there is an explanation for the disease. Ned: "I can't expect an entire world to suddenly stop making love." Emma: "I don't consider going to the baths and promiscuous sex making love. I consider it the equivalent of eating junk food and you can lay off it for a while!" Esparza and Gleason are given excellent support from seven passionate actors. Mark Dobies is outstanding as the handsome, conservative Bruce Niles who bests Weeks for president of the activists' group. Fred Berman impresses as another member who finds the prejudice against him - a Jewish, gay man with AIDS - more than he can take, and Mccaleb Burnett is amusing as a Southern, sweetly bitchy, volunteer. Others in the fine cast include Paul Whittorne and Jay Russell who play multiple roles. Kramer was one of the five original founders of the Gay Men's Health Crisis and later ACT UP. He was part of a group of gay men who early on recognized the threat of AIDS to the gay community. As part of this group he helped mount an offensive to force New York City and the U.S. government to issue warnings about the disease, and to begin a medical offensive to identity the virus and develop a vaccine that might prevent or cure it. Their demands were ignored or rebuffed at every turn and Kramer documented those frustrations with slashing fury, naming names and assigning blame. Particularly guilty in his eyes were Mayor Ed Koch, President Reagan and the New York Times. Koch, whose sexual preferences were always fodder for rumors, has admitted he made a mistake in not meeting with Kramer (Weeks) whom he considered an extremist. Emma: "You have a Mayor who's a bachelor and I assume afraid of being perceived as too friendly to anyone gay... he's not going to tell the world there's an epidemic menacing his city. Is the Mayor gay?" Ned: "If he is, like J. Edgar Hoover, who would want him?" As for President Reagan, he refused to address the issue of AIDS for fear he would lend encouragement to homosexuals. So his lip was zipped, stitched shut by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. As for the venerable New York Times: Ned: "Have you been following this Tylenol scare? In three months there have been seven deaths and the Times has written fifty-four articles. The month of October, alone, they ran one article every single day. Four of them were on the front page. For us - in seventeen months they've written seven puny inside articles. And we have a thousand cases!" The play focuses not only on those aspects of the crisis, but also how Weeks' unyielding activism cost him his place in the GMHC (he was thought to be too polarizing), his tragic love affair with Felix (handsome Billy Warlock), a reporter from the New York Times, and his relationship with his brother Ben (played with great heart by Richard Bekins.) The final moments when Ned crawls onto the bed with the dying Felix and they are joined in marriage by Dr. Brookner, may have seemed too sentimental in 1985, but is now a prophetic vision of the continuing gay revolution. With Kramer sitting behind me at the opening, and my guest, an old friend whose lover died of AIDS in 1987, the evening was a balance of heartbreak and hope.

"The Normal Heart" is playing in the Anspacher Theater at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, Astor Place, New York City. Performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7, and matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Tickets are $55. Call Telecharge at (212) 239-6200.