I wish I could see The Normal Heart

I don't get HBO, so I won't be one of the first to watch Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart tonight.  But rest assured I will be watching it as soon as it's available for non-HBO subscribers.  It is a powerful, messy piece of pain and I love every minute of it.  I saw the Public Theater's production that played about ten years ago and couldn't speak for fully an hour afterwards.  I went to the Actor's Fund benefit performance in 2010 and was again a weeping mess after.  And of course I was thrilled to see the show on Broadway.  As for the tv film, I'm a big fan of Mark Ruffalo and think he's a wonderful choice to play the charismatic, but difficult, Ned Weeks, and the rest of the actors seem perfectly cast.  I think it's great they cast Joe Mantello, who played Ned in that last revival of the play, in another role.  I'm just excited and think everyone should watch it.  Maybe it's not the best-written play known to man, but it's important and it's powerful.  Please.  Watch it.  Get those ratings sky high so we can see more of this kind of work.  And maybe someone will learn a little something, which can never be a bad thing.

I'm reprinting below my review of the recent Broadway production of The Normal Heart, which I saw in April, 2011.  I just thought it would be good to jog some memories and get this title out into the blogosphere, in case some of you are also non-HBO subscribers who may want to rent it eventually, too.  And tell all your friends...

**

4/26/11:  Soooo exciting--I won tickets to last night’s performance of The Normal Heart through Time Out NY—hoorah! Love winning stuff! I had to stand in line for a bit to get the actual tickets, but it wasn’t too bad. Our seats weren’t the best (about twelve rows back on the extreme left), but the house is small enough and the show is staged so that we didn’t miss much (or anything) at all.

Here’s a snippet from my review of the one-night benefit performance that got this production started: I went to the Actor’s Fund one-night-only reading of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” Monday night. It was spectacular. Joe Mantello, who hasn’t acted since the original “Angels in America,” was Ned Weeks and was really amazing. He caught so many layers in Ned. I thought he was great. Victor Garber was terrific as Ned’s older brother, John Benjamin Hickey was fantastic as Felix, Ned’s lover. My husband, Michael Cerveris, was of course terrific as the government official. Kramer’s play is part didactic mess and part passionate rage at the world. The two parts co-exist very well and the show is still so powerful. It’s amazing that this play, written over twenty years ago, is still so timely and angry. I laughed, I cried, I was a weeping puddle by the end.

All of the above is still completely true, except that Victor Garber and Michael Cerveris aren’t in this version of the show. Boo. But the gents who took their place are completely up to the challenge.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Joe Mantello has such a fine line to tread here—he’s described as a jerk and everyone is afraid of him, so we need to see that, but we also need to root for him and be curious about his journey. Too much of a jerk and we don’t care. Too little, and the plot could unravel. But he finds the right combination. I thought he was terrific, and although I LOVED Mark Rylance in La Bete, I think I’m rooting for Mantello to take the Tony.

He and John Benjamin Hickey have a wonderful chemistry and really play off each other beautifully. I also enjoyed how Mantello played off Ellen Barkin, as Dr. Brookner. She was fantastic, and omg, her monologue in the second act? Breathtaking. Mark Harelilk, who I loved as the father in Light in the Piazza, is terrific as Ned’s older brother.

Lee Pace, from Pushing Daisies fame, was really good as Bruce, the closeted friend who ends up as the first president of GMHC (or the thinly veiled version of GMHC). His monologue in the second act about the death of his lover was just shattering. I mean, the monologue itself is horrifying, but he delivered it beautifully. It’s so amazing—I know what’s coming, I try to prepare myself emotionally, and yet still I break down because it’s all so raw and so real. Patrick Breen’s second act monologue was also heartbreaking. Oh, and Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory) was also great as the young guy who ends up being the peacemaker of the group. He had wonderful comic timing, but also a lot of compassion and layers to his performance. I would definitely like to see him on stage again.

Joel Grey directed the reading last year, but since he was involved in rehearsals for Anything Goes during this rehearsal process, George C Wolfe came on as co-director. I definitely saw a lot of his touches during the evening, though, on the whole, the staging and set were identical to last fall’s reading. I liked many of George’s additions (I generally admire his directing work a great deal), though I do wonder at one thing. I was thinking about this on the way home last night—there was a change in the way the last scene was played from last fall to now. I don’t want to say exactly what happened, in case people are going to see the show and don’t want to be ‘spoiled,’ but I’m really curious about why it was done. I’d love to discuss with people after they’ve seen the show.

And I do hope everyone can try to see this production. It's amazing to me that all that rage and fury actually made it into a play. Usually there’s a filter, but there’s no filter here. And the rage and fury are STILL completely justified. As I said above, it’s amazing to me that so much of what is happening on that stage is still timely and current. And it was written over 20 years ago! But, oh, this play is just filled with pain and beauty. Thumbs way WAY up from me.