[In the review below, Weales notes several "aesthetic weaknesses" in The Normal Heart and observes that the play is "as much agitprop and accusation as it is personal drama. "]

Theater has been generally tired and tepid this year. Yet, more and more often in the last few months, audiences have been responding noisily, whooping their approval, rising to their feet to applaud curtain calls. This has happened even at such embarrassing offerings as Grind and the Tony travesty Big River. Perhaps the response is simply one of desperation, born of deep need and short memories that cannot recall theatrical quality. The standing ovations in two instances—at William M. Hoffman's As Is and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart—grow out of much more complex responses. Neither work seems to me particularly distinguished as a play, but the enthusiastic and obviously moved audiences are not simply expressing their approval of the plays and the performances, which are fine in both cases. They are responding to the subject matter, showing their sympathy for the courage of AIDS victims offstage as well as on, and—particularly at The Normal Heart—their anger that more has not been done to discover the causes and stem the growth of so frightening a disease. Nor are these simply gay audiences responding to an epidemic that has hit the gay community hardest. The audiences are mixed; the response is not.

The curtain of ignorance that surrounds AIDS, the lack of information about how it is transmitted, and the presumption that the disease is necessarily fatal have created a climate of fear that has isolated many of the victims. Not only have health-care professionals turned their backs in some cases, but friends, lovers, acquaintances have abandoned the ill on the assumption that even casual contact can be dangerous. There have been many horror stories in the press and on television recounting this ostracizing process. As though to counteract such negation, both these plays, without ignoring the very real problem of AIDS-victim-as-pariah, seem designed to emphasize the supportive forces, professional and personal, that sometimes rally to the dying man. Both plays are about the acceptance of death, but although there are many similarities between them, they are very different in tone and intention.

In As Is, Hoffman uses a handful of performers. … The emotional center of the play is the relationship between the protagonist, a writer of great charm and wit, and his former lover, who takes him "as is" and gives him a context of warmth and affection in which to face his approaching death. …

In the similar plot of The Normal Heart, it is the lover rather than the AIDS victim who is the protagonist. Ned Weeks, whose character is presumably based on the celebratedly cantankerous author of the play, is an abrasively aggressive young man whose manner is in part a defense against the vulnerablity implicit in personal commitment. His armor is penetrated by Felix, who brings him the comfort of a love more gratifying than a one-night stand and who proves—as does Ned's straight brother and a crippled woman doctor who is his ally in the fight against AIDS—that Ned is a reasonably sweet fellow to anyone who can ignore his manner. Ned's brother and doctor are witnesses to the deathbed marriage of Ned and Felix, Larry Kramer's most obvious use of As Is sentimentalism. Brad Davis plays Ned as a cross between a cheeky small boy and Savonarola.

The latter is an appropriate approach to Ned because The Normal Heart is as much agitprop and accusation as it is personal drama. Just before he dies, Felix tells Ned never to cease being angry. It is obvious that Ned's anger is political, an insistence that confrontation is the only possible way to achieve public acknowledgement of the epidemic and public support for the necessary research to overcome it. Ned's—and Kramer's—targets in the play are the news media (particularly the New York Times), which were so slow in recognizing the gravity of the situation; the government of New York City (particularly Mayor Koch), which has been parsimonious—compared to San Francisco, say—in its support; the National Institutes of Health and other federal authorities, which have been dilatory in providing research funds; and his fellows in the Gay Men's Health Crisis, who have refused to see confrontation as the only approach to gay action. The latter include those whom Ned sees keeping a low profile to protect their positions in straight society, and those, with whom he sympathizes, who see his cry for preventive celibacy as a withdrawal from the hardwon battle to make gayness an acceptable sexual alternative in a society which once completely disapproved it.

There are several problems with The Normal Heart as a play. It wants to support Ned's stance as the proper one; yet, it makes him so self-righteous in his crusade the credibility of his position is undermined dramatically. Although the play makes a legitimate complaint about the early coverage of AIDS, the disease has been written about at length in recent years, and Kramer almost smothers his play by dropping great chunks of now unnecessary information on its opening section. Although society's slowness to deal with the AIDS problem may legitimately be traced to a still strong if less vocal prejudice against gays, the rhetoric of accusation begins to get silly when the foot-draggers, from Mayor Koch to the members of the NIH committees, are presumed to be acting out of their fear of being found out as closet gays.

There are built-in dangers in plays that deal realistically with disease, and the flaws of both As Is and The Normal Heart may be those of the genre. To the enthusiastic audiences at As Is and The Normal Heart, the aesthetic weaknesses may be beside the point. For some of the playgoers, those weaknesses—the softness of As Is, the harshness of The Normal Heart—may be strengths.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY