Men who have sex with other men remain a key at-risk population, but they’re now less vulnerable than sex workers, intravenous drug users, and trans women. Over half of the people worldwide living with AIDS today are women and girls. But where does the energy of a polemic go when the crisis it seeks to stir up passion for no longer exists in the form it depicts? Larry Kramer, who died in 2020, was a controversial figure, and his play is as blunt and polemical as the man himself was said to be””as evidenced by its leading character, a thinly veiled take on Kramer named Ned Weeks. So I found myself wondering what, exactly, this play is for in 2021. There is no explanation””we don’t need one. The current production of The Normal Heart at the National Theatre opens with a moment’s silence around a flame that is ignited by the company, and then burns above the stage for the rest of the play. AIDS had only been known by that name for three years.
In the original off-Broadway production of The Normal Heart in New York City in 1985, the set was updated every night with new death and infection statistics, new headlines, new examples of coverage””or failures of coverage””of the burgeoning AIDS epidemic. Dino Fetscher and Ben Daniels in The Normal Heart at National Theatre.
0 kommentar(er)
