the early years of the fight against AIDS in an articulate, but fierce, cry of anger
- Written by Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney
Larry Kramer – writer, playwright, activist, and author of the 1985 play The Normal Heart – has been a polarising figure in queer politics.
On the one hand, his activist energy in the early years of HIV/AIDS helped to galvanise community action, first in his own New York and later around the world. He co-founded two important organisations in the fight against AIDS: Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1981 and, in 1987, the much more activist and campaigning AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
On the other hand, the particular message that he brought to the founding of GMHC – of sexual continence, of monogamy, or even abstinence – was neither welcome at the time nor something new from Kramer. In his pre-AIDS writings, particularly his satirical 1978 novel, Faggots, he had already been rebuking the New York gay community.
The novel lambastes gay men for a lifestyle that Kramer saw as decadent and unloving, complacent and apolitical. If post-Stonewall gay life was centred on a joyous celebration of sexuality, then Kramer’s writings were out of step with those times.
And so, when he carried this message through to the early years of the 1980s, it fell on deaf, even hostile, ears. His message felt to many like a betrayal of the freedom for which a generation had fought.
In The Normal Heart, now playing in Sydney, Kramer does something remarkable. He wrote it in the midst of multiple conflicts, as well as overwhelming personal grief. Some conflicts were internal to the burgeoning AIDS activist movement. But his most insistent fight was against the brutal indifference of political and medical authorities to the deaths of gay men.
From this chaotic and frightening situation, he puts together a play that condenses the story of the early years of the GMHC into an articulate, but fierce, cry of anger.
The importance of loving openly
The play is a very thinly veiled autobiography and the central character of Ned Weeks (played by the perennially brilliant Mitchell Butel) is a cypher for Kramer himself. Butel brings a compelling energy to the part, capturing the dizzying collision of personal and political life experienced by Kramer and his friends, colleagues and lovers during these years.
Another stand-out performance in a terrific ensemble cast is that of Emma Jones as Emma Brooker. This character is a fictionalised version of the real-life doctor Linda Laubenstein, one of the few doctors who investigated and helped treat AIDS patients in the early 1980s.
Kramer provides the doctor with a slow build to an extraordinarily angry speech, targeting the callous homophobia of the medical profession, and Jones is just great.
Mark Saturno also turns in an absorbing performance as Weeks’ straight brother, a patrician lawyer who struggles into empathy with his brother’s experiences.
One of the strengths of Kramer’s text is that, despite his own (sometimes slightly too evident) biases, the play still manages to present alternative points of view.
While Weeks’ frustration with his fellow campaigners is obvious, the vehement attachment to sexual freedom articulated by other characters is not simply dismissed. Fellow activist, Mickey (an impassioned Evan Lever) has a galvanising speech in which he describes what might stand to be lost:
Can’t you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?
An urgent revival
Director Dean Bryant has put together a production which allows the story to unfold, its episodic scenes tied together by a composite set. The doctor’s consulting room is always present, even as we move into Weeks’ living room or his brother’s office. Short bursts of cello and piano music, filtering versions of New Order tunes, keep the action moving in what could feel like a very wordy play when read straight from the page.
Bryant first brought this production to the State Theatre Company of South Australia in 2022, in a world reeling from COVID. The contexts of this 2026 revival seem, if anything, more urgent.
Emma Jones gives a standout performance of Emma Brooker, a doctor who investigated and helped treat AIDS patients.
Neil Bennett/Sydney Theatre Company
Opening in a week where the United States federal government has ordered the removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall monument, the ACT UP cry of “Silence = Death” might bear repeating.
Despite medical advances, there is no cure for AIDS and the current US administration is rolling back support for research and treatment both at home and overseas, effectively withdrawing life-saving medication from those who need it.
The Normal Heart is a flawed but important play. It can sometimes feel that Kramer is trying to settle too many old scores in it and, ultimately, the message of sexual abstinence that he repeated throughout his life was replaced by the more effective sex-positive messages of safer sex.
This production, though, does a fantastic job at presenting this history for new audiences at the same time as giving us, in 2026, a compelling picture of what it takes to fight for your life and for the lives of your friends and lovers.
The Normal Heart is a State Theatre Company of South Australia production, at Sydney Opera House for Sydney Theatre Company, until March 14.
Authors: Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney
