[In the following, Kroll emphasizes the universality of The Normal Heart. "Like the best social playwrights, " he states, "Kramer produces not a series of debates but a cross fire of life-and-death energies that illuminate the many issues and create a fierce and moving human drama. "]

With As Is and The Normal Heart, reality returns to the theater season with a vengeance. The two most powerful and disturbing plays of the year both deal with the crisis generated by AIDS—acquired immune deficiency syndrome—the mysterious, virulent and lethal disease that has reached epidemic status, especially among homosexuals. There was a time when such issues were the stuff of theater—Ibsen's Ghosts pivoted around syphilis, Galsworthy's Justice dealt with exactly that and in America during the 1930s the stage seethed with drama in which social problems seemed to be enacting themselves with savage realism. The AIDS crisis is such an issue, raising questions not only of public health but of sexuality, life-style, morality and culture. William M. Hoffman's As Is and Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart are not the only dramas about AIDS that have appeared this season, but these two have achieved instant critical and popular success. Initially produced by the Circle Repertory Company, As Is moved to Broadway last week, and the same move is being contemplated for The Normal Heart, currently at Joseph Papp's Public Theater.

Luckily for theatergoers, the two works represent totally different approaches to their explosive and tragic theme, the physical and psychological havoc wrought among homosexual men by the insidious disease that has already killed nearly 5,000 people. These plays, however, are not "homosexual" plays; they enact situations and raise questions of universal concern for everyone, straight or gay, male or female. As Is focuses on the intimate relationship between Rich (Jonathan Hogan), who has contracted AIDS, and Saul (Jonathan Hadary), the lover whom Rich has left but who returns to care for him. …

The Normal Heart has a broader, more public scope than As Is. The play comes from author Kramer's experience as a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC).

His theatrical surrogate is Ned Weeks (Brad Davis), the angriest young man seen on a stage since John Osborne's Jimmy Porter. Weeks's ferocious accusations skewer a mind-boggling variety of targets, including New York's Mayor Ed Koch, the New York Times, the United States government, the medical establishment and assorted gays and straights, all of whom, in the view of Kramer/Weeks, have behaved with timidity, bad faith or cowardice in the face of the AIDS catastrophe. Like the best social playwrights, Kramer produces not a series of debates but a cross fire of life-and-death energies that illuminate the many issues and create a fierce and moving human drama. It is bracing and exciting to hear so much passionate and intelligent noise on a stage again.

Kramer does not ignore the intimate aspect of his subject. The relation between Ned Weeks and Felix Turner (D. W. Moffett), a journalist who challenges Ned's abrasiveness and becomes his lover, is searching and moving, rising to a brutal climax when Felix contracts the disease. Kramer creates a riveting mixture of private and public events, resoundingly staged by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and acted, like As Is, by a powerfully committed cast. The subtle understatement of Moffett is marvelously balanced by Brad Davis, who makes you hear the anguish and intelligence in his machine-gun outbursts.

Both of these extraordinary plays were written out of deep personal feeling. Kramer and Hoffman knew people who died of AIDS. "At one point," says Hoffman, "I put on my bulletin board, 'God will protect me if I write about this.' I started the play as therapy for myself: What happens if I come down with it? How do I behave? It was my attempt to bring myself back to sanity. But both gays and straights have reacted with gratitude. I think a lot of straight people looked at AIDS as a punishment for homosexuals. My play has helped to humanize this attitude."

"I did not make up anything in this play," says Larry Kramer. Like Ned Weeks, he was forced out of the gay organization he had helped to found for being too intransigent. He's fiercely critical of promiscuity as a homosexual life-style. "There's still no gay organization that's taken the responsibility of saying, 'Cool it.' I'm not worried so much about New York as I am about the people in Dubuque and Omaha, where the cases are still minimal. That's where they've got to be educated. This is wartime, and you must get out of the way of the bombs."