How much does an actor need to resemble the character he plays? Talent can go a long way toward covering up a temperamental difference between performers and the roles they're playing, but sometimes you still notice the discrepancy.
Uptown Players' beautifully modulated revival of The Normal Heart offers a couple of prime examples.
Larry Kramer's drama about public indifference to the onset of the AIDS crisis broke new ground when first produced in 1985. Mr. Kramer, already known as a scriptwriter and novelist, became a public gadfly, often irritating people inside the gay community as well as those outside in his desire to create urgent awareness of what was going on.
He didn't just write about what was happening; he was one of the five founders of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, still a leading service organization. The Normal Heart , seen at Sunday's matinee performance, is so autobiographical that it sometimes feels shapeless. But the play's emotional power remains as strong as ever.
Paul Taylor plays Ned Weeks, the character Mr. Kramer based on himself. Emily Scott Banks is Dr. Emma Brookner, the physician who has seen more patients with the syndrome that eventually becomes known as AIDS than any other.
Both these performers are plenty capable of conveying the anger, even rage, their characters feel once they get worked up. But neither feels as naturally tough and combative as the people they play. Ms. Banks captures the doctor's Earth Mother solidity but not her gruffness. During the course of the play, Ned's choleric anger ticks off nearly everyone in his life; as played by Mr. Taylor, he seems more emotionally injured than naturally irascible.
That said, all the members of director Regan Adair's cast make us care about a group of characters that could feel too much like types and symbols in less competent hands. Mark Shum as Ned's dilettante boyfriend, Elias Taylorson as the gay businessman who worries too hard about coming out, Bob Hess as the loving family member who still can't quite accept his gay brother as an equal are all too alive to be considered caricatures. Jack Birdwell, especially, gives his strongest performance to date as a young activist who loses it because of the pressures in his life.
The design team has made a virtue of the necessity to stage the play at the El Centro Performance Hall after the recent fire at Uptown's usual home, the Trinity River Arts Center. Wade Giampa's setting makes great use of sweeping vertical lines and the presence of a stage turntable, and the photographic projections convey a historical dimension that adds immeasurably to the effect of the piece.
Perhaps The Normal Heart could be seen as something of a self-serving portrait of an important era on Mr. Kramer's part, but in this new Uptown production it doesn't come off that way. It feels both timeless and politically relevant – and guaranteed to touch anyone who sees it.
MARK LOWRY- STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Talk about overcoming obstacles. A fire at the Trinity River Arts Center forced Uptown Players to postpone one show and move its current title -- The Normal Heart , Larry Kramer's agitprop play about the earliest years of AIDS in New York -- to the auditorium at El Centro College in downtown Dallas.
But still, the group didn't burn out.
Director Regan Adair, the designers and the actors merge their first-rate work into a hauntingly magnificent production. The Normal Heart is not only Uptown's best show in its five-year history, it's the finest local stage production so far this year.
Heart is about Kramer's experience fighting for attention for a mysterious disease that was killing thousands of gay men, a story all but ignored by The New York Times and politicians, including New York Mayor Ed Koch and commander-in-chief Ronald Reagan.
The play unfolds in conversations and crisis situations among a group of men (including the character based on Kramer, Ned, who is stunningly essayed by Paul Taylor) and a disabled doctor (Emily Scott Banks in an equally powerful turn), all struggling to understand a disease about which nothing was known -- not the cause or how to test for or prevent it.
In chronicling Ned's evolution with the group he helped start, the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the play also confronts organizational politics and the question of militant activism vs. rules-playing.
Adair's unhurried and confident staging captures this time effectively. Wade Giampa's simple set is clinical without being cold, making nice use of El Centro's turntable stage. Costumes for relatively recent eras aren't often talked about, but designer Suzi Shankle's research results in sublimely character-appropriate attire that goes beyond slapping on period styles..
As for the cast, give them the "ensemble of the year" award, right now. There are nicely controlled and realized portraits by Jack Birdwell, Bob Hess, Cedric Neal and Mark Shum. Taylor manages to add humanity to a controversial character.
GRADE: A+
Elaine Liner- Dallas Observer
Perhaps the saddest aspect of The Normal Heart , Larry Kramer's autobiographical 1985 play about the first wave of AIDS deaths, is that it doesn't feel like a museum piece. If only it did. Two and a half decades into the epidemic that has claimed millions of lives worldwide, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has dropped out of the headlines. There is no cure and little public or political outcry to find one. People are still dying of AIDS, though thanks to new treatments more slowly than they did in the 1980s, but when's the last time a celebrity wore a little red ribbon at the Oscars?
Maybe it's just the right time to rediscover Kramer's play, imperfect though it is, and to find new reasons to be inspired and educated by its fierce debate over who's really to blame for the spread of AIDS. This is a play that seethes with anger--at the disease itself, at politicians, at doctors, at gays who refuse to alter risky behavior, at gays who won't come out of the closet and at straights who would prefer that they didn't. In every line there's a powerful sense of urgency that something needs to be done now --an urgency we haven't heard in discussions of AIDS in a long, long time.
Among the smart choices made by director Regan Adair and his fine ensemble of nine actors in Uptown Players ' beautiful production of The Normal Heart is the one not to spit out every speech as urgently and as angrily as Kramer may have intended. In 1985, this play was a new brand of gay agit-prop theater, meant to be noisy and unsettling. Now, in these noisier and more unsettled times, a gentler approach gets Kramer's message across. Something needed to be done in the now of 1985. Watching this play, it becomes clear that something still needs to be done in the now of now.
Instead of yelling and screaming, Uptown takes a different tack. Their take on the play feels intimate, almost reverent. The big emotions are there, but there's a graceful elegance to the languid pacing of the scenes (without making the evening overlong). Even on the wide, tall stage of the El Centro College Performance Hall (Uptown's temporary home following an electrical fire earlier this summer at the Trinity River Arts Center), the actors seem to speak barely above a whisper, though that may just be the impression given by the restraint of the performances.
The subtlety of the acting serves to balance Kramer's many furious rants. Each actor, particularly Paul Taylor and Mark Shum in the leads, finds the soft spot in his or her character. It's their believable humanity and sincere vulnerability that touch us most, not the crescendo of the noisy confrontations Kramer's so fond of. The assault now isn't to the ears, it's to the conscience.
The hero of The Normal Heart is a gay activist and writer named Ned Weeks, played with lovely openness by Taylor. It is the summer of 1981 when the play begins and the first reports of a mysterious "gay cancer" are starting to surface. In New York's gay circles, there's talk of young men coming down with ugly purple lesions and dying of a rare pneumonia. Dr. Emma Brookner, played by Emily Banks, sees a clear pattern in the deaths. The victims all are gay and promiscuous. Stop having sex, she advises, and the illness will stop spreading.
But gay men, according to Kramer's view of history, believe they've earned their right to enjoy the post-Stonewall sexual revolution. It may be the Reagan years, but nobody's ready to just say no to a night at the baths or a romp with a good-looking stranger. "Do you realize," asks the Weeks character, "that you are talking about millions of men who have singled out promiscuity to be their principal political agenda, the one they'd die before abandoning? How do you deal with that?"
Weeks' way of dealing with it is to start talking and organizing. He founds a gay men's health hotline (in real life, Kramer co-founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT-UP), and he badgers the media and political leaders to bring more attention to the new plague. He's especially tough on then-New York mayor Ed Koch, who won't discuss anything to do with AIDS with gay community leaders, and on the editors and reporters at The New York Times . Kramer compares the Times ' scant coverage of AIDS in the early 1980s to the paper's lack of reporting on Hitler's Final Solution in the 1930s. Neither earned page one status, says Kramer, until it was too late to stop the tragic outcomes.
Among Weeks' friends in the play are men who too conveniently fit some gay stereotypes: Tommy, the swishy "Southern bitch," played with a light comic touch at Uptown by Cedric Neal; Bruce (Elias Taylorson), a closeted Citibank exec who kicks Weeks out of the AIDS organization for "making sex dirty again"; and Mickey (Jack Birdwell), a self-hating Jewish city employee who considers jumping off the Empire State Building rather than give up his right to "love openly."
Again and again Ned Weeks implores his heterosexual brother Ben (Bob Hess), a wealthy attorney, to use his money and connections for the cause. Ben refuses and rejects Ned's requests to be treated as an equal rather than a head case (there's stuff early in the play about Ned being forced by Ben into psychiatric treatment to "cure" his homosexuality).
The love interest is handsome Felix (Mark Shum), who's conflicted about coming out and, even worse, works as a reporter at the Times . His and Ned's romance is an unlikely one, but Uptown's actors save what on the page is a pretty soppy soap-opera scenario. We know Felix will fall ill--how else will Ned Weeks justify his commitment to the campaign?--but when he does, it's a surprise how delicately it's handled by Uptown's Taylor and Shum. There is real passion in their final scenes together. But there is also the same sort of sweet, wrenching sadness of the "let go" scene in the film Longtime Companion .
The Normal Heart is a play loaded with dramatic landmines. Kramer makes Ned Weeks (his alter ego) into a bristling cipher who speaks long stretches of facts and figures. Every character is awarded a too-long soliloquy--or two. And scenes seem to come to multiple denouements. There are also a lot of spurious "facts" and conspiracy theories put forth, including the assertion that AIDS could have come from government experiments meant to eradicate gay men altogether.
Kramer hasn't moved away from radical ideas. In a speech in 2004, he told a standing room-only crowd at Manhattan's Cooper Union that gays still were ignorant about and indifferent to their own demise and that a country filled with homophobes was happy to see them self-destruct. "I do not see us, don't you see? They are killing us," said Kramer. "They are eradicating us from this earth. Little by little by little we are disappearing. I do not see us, and I am beginning to see us less and less."
How prescient that The Normal Heart ends with two gay men repeating marriage vows to each other just before one of them dies. The relevance of this play lies right there in a reminder that, in so many ways, it's still 1985.
John Garcia's- THE COLUMN
Larry Kramer's angry play takes us back to the origins of the first
wave of the plague. Kramer was a founding member of the Gay Men's
Health Crisis. His "in your face" tactics to get his voice and cause
heard was not only clamorous, but turned many away from him and his
fight. When the GMHC fired him as a board member, Kramer did not
disappear, instead he helped create one of the most vocal, political
organizations that at times had guerrilla tactics to fight the AIDS
war- that organization was called ACT UP.
Where AIDS was first being talked about, it was just mentioned as a
rare form of gay cancer on page 20 of the New York Times. Watching the
play (currently produced by Uptown Players) vividly reminds us of that
era in all its ugly, piercing, cathartic honesty.
I sincerely wished though that Kramer's play had stayed more within
the confines of the heart, love, passion, and arcs of his characters,
instead of trying to also explain all the facts, figures, & statistics
of the disease. At times within the play, characters spoke endless
theories, charts, & numbers right in the middle of raw, naked emotion.
Honestly in real life when we fight from the very core of our hearts,
do we bring up facts and clippings from TIME or NEWSWEEK? We don't.
Kramer's piece works so much better when the focus stays within the
relationships and the lives of his characters.
However I will say that the facts and startling figures are alarming
& does surprise you, but that was back in the 1980s, so it is fright-
ening to think how much those facts and numbers have changed since
then. It's enough to put a cold chill down your spine.
Physically the production looks superior. Wade Giampa's minimalist set
is painted in blinding white with cascading sheets of white linen on
either side of the proscenium. The couch, chairs, table, even the
props are all white. There is though a great visual of subtext of only
having the phones painted blood red (Amy Fisher is responsible for the
props for this production).
Jason Foster bathes the white set in neutral earth tones with a slight
hint of color here and there. Suzi Shankle's costumes are right on
the money in tone, period, and color. Special kudos goes to Multi-
media designer Chris Robinson who created an array of images for the
massive video screen upstage center. While the scene changes, Robinson
flashes on screen clips from newspaper articles, photographs, and at
times graphic pictures of AIDS patients. Oddly enough when Ronald
Reagan's face appeared, you literally saw many in the audience shift
in their seats-I even heard behind me a soft whisper of "boo" from an
audience member. Even almost twenty some odd years later, the anger is
still there for many who despised Reagan's neglect of the AIDS war.
Speaking of scene changes, director Regan Adair has worked the turn-
table at El Centro College to his advantage. When the scene ends, the
stage turns softly with the actors still in the moment, all done in
silhouette. This gave the production a seamless flow that never once
was broken. Even the stagehands were dressed in apropos costuming to
adjust furniture or to remove props. As an audience member I love this
kind of detailed direction because it keeps the emotion and the piece
flowing, thereby not snapping us back into reality and reminding us
we're at a play.
Regan Adair's direction is sublime to say the least. The blocking and
staging is very organic, with honesty moving the actors-not because we
had to go downstage because there is empty space that needs to be
filled. The pace is crisp and direct. Adair wisely keeps his actors
firmly encased in truthful performances and not swallowing themselves
into melodramatics. The only problem with Adair's direction was his
decision to use music constantly in the scene changes. Some of the
underscore was fine, however during the dramatic scenes it cheated
the audience just a little in keeping within the moment. After a
harsh, graphic, ripping of the human heart with searing emotion scene
had reached its crescendo, the scene changed. But then soft, orchest-
ration music played, which the scene really does not need. The amazing
performances alone achieve the goal without forcing the audience to
tear up with underscore.
The entire cast is superb, with Paul Taylor heading up the cast as
"Ned Weeks", who really is Larry Kramer. Taylor is phenomenal and
gives his best performance of his career. You sense Kramer is right
behind Taylor to feel every emotion that is written on the page. But
where Taylor truly is marvelous is that he gives Ned a warm, loving
glow-which helps so much more in understanding his boisterous, almost
Machiavellian anger.
His finest work comes in the extremely difficult emotional scenes of
Act Two. It is raw, honest, gut wrenching, & so real you almost want
to leave the theater so that you can leave all that tension and simply
breathe. It's that organically honest. Taylor is also a very giving
and supportive actor-he connects with effulgent honesty with everyone
on stage. When others take over the stage, he reacts with soft,
internal emotions-but just enough to show the horrific pain he must
feel. Mr. Taylor in my opinion gives one of the best performances I've
seen on the Dallas stage this season.
As the lone female in the company, Emily Scott Banks provides an
exhilarating, controlled, and bold performance as Dr. Emma Brookner.
She is a doctor who is seeing case after case of men becoming ill so
fast with no assistance from her colleagues, the mayor, or the federal
government. She pushes Ned (Taylor) to become the voice for this dying
society, which he finally does.
Banks has one of the most compassionate, noble monologues in the
second act at a medical hearing that left the audience speechless.
You unequivocally want to give her a standing ovation at the end of
this intense, savage attack on her fellow doctors for not wanting to
help her or her cause. The harsh glow of the spotlight captures Banks'
tears well up in her eyes as she finally allows herself to feel for
all those that have died in her care. I must divulge here that I was
an emotional mess at the end of that scene, thanks to Ms. Banks
powerful work.
Bob Hess as "Ben Weeks" is another excellent performance on a crowded
stage of transcendent work done by his fellow thespians. Ben is Ned's
straight, married, rich lawyer. Some of the finest duet scene work
comes from Hess and Taylor as they peel the layers of a loving, yet
very conflicted relationship between siblings. Hess is affable, kind,
& endearing, but when pushed finally against the wall by his brother,
Hess lets out the inner, conflicted beast within him, shredding
Taylor's heart in the process. Hess goes deep into the subtext and
reveals blinding, uncomfortable truth that forces the audience to turn
away in pain, that's how damn good Hess is in this performance.
Oddly enough I thought the best monologue of the evening belonged to
Jack Birdwell as "Mickey Marcus". Kramer's combination of actual facts
and theories with the human approach of his own life flows with such
merciless honesty that you truly get Kramer's voice here. Birdwell
gives amazing depth, range, and scope to his attack on this monologue
that leaves you drained emotionally by the end. Why? Because you under
-stand completely what Birdwell's closeted teacher feels and why his
heart burns with such anger, confusion, and contempt. Birdwell is
magnificent within this piece and especially with this monologue.
Also delivering smashing, terrific performances are Cedric Neal as
"Tommy Boatright"; Elias Taylorson as "Bruce Niles"; and Mark Shum as
"Felix Turner". Neal provides the only big laughs of the evening-which
the audience is very thankful for. There are a lot of raw, open
emotions spilled on the stage, and Neal deeply helps ease the tension
with a loveable, very funny performance.
Taylorson provides the right amount of anger and tension as a rich gay
executive having to live his life in the closet. Shum is "Felix", a
New Times journalist who writes about fashion and New York high
society. Shum is phenomenal in his work-particularly with Taylor and
Hess during Act Two. Both Shum and Taylorson's work in the second act
leave audience members wiping tears from their faces in the cold
darkness of the theater.
THE NORMAL HEART may sound a little dated, but it really isn't. Many
of the battles and arguments that are explored on stage are still
going on today. We must never forget the first wave of the plague,
never.
I sincerely hope that you do not think that this is just a "gay" play,
because it is so much more. It shows in naked honesty the way AIDS
destroyed so many lives-both gay and straight. How love & friendship
is what kept so many going.
For me personally, THE NORMAL HEART stands out as not only the best
play of the Dallas season so far, but also the finest collection of
actors put together on one stage. Combine that with exquisite
direction, you have the must see dramatic play of the season.
GRADE: A-
By Arnold Wayne Jones - Dallas Voice - Excerpt
Once best known as a screenwriter and author, Kramer has spent most of his
time since the early 1980s as an AIDS activist, and not a very genteel one.
His confrontational style has won him as many detractors as followers,
although it is undisputed that he can claim the title of ³Most Voluble Gay
Man in America² for 25 years running.
It doesn¹t take an historian to realize that ³The Normal Heart,² his 1985
play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, now on stage courtesy of
Uptown Players, is a thinly-veiled autobiography. The plot involves gay men
in New York who see their friends are dying from a mysterious ³gay cancer.²
Some of them realize that this is the beginning of a kind of holocaust. They
try to change gay men¹s behavior, to get the closeted NYC mayor and the
homophobic United States president to take notice, but they clash over how
best to accomplish their goals: Will appeasement or scare tactics work best?
³The Normal Heart² is as impassioned, as radical, as narrative theater can
get. From the provocative first line * ³I¹m going to die,² spoken by a
peripheral character who does just that by the end of Act 1 * to the
emotional final curtain, it¹s more polemic than play. Kramer doesn¹t mince
words or shy away from facts; the script of heavy with statistics, trotted
out of the mouth of his surrogate, Ned Weeks (Paul Taylor), more as
pontification that exposition.
The dialogue nearly drowns in an ocean of data. If theater could show you
footnotes, ³The Normal Heart² would. (You expect Ned to finish every line by
saying, ³So endeth the lesson.²)
The conceit of the show is really Kramer¹s own vanity, a way of sharing his
manifesto without having to be there himself or requiring his audience to
read. He may be the only person ever to martyr himself while staying alive
(he recently turned 71). But unlike ³Angels in America,² which deals with
specific characters but achieves sweeping universailty, ³The Normal Heart²
speaks in generalities and yet feels very confined * it oozes its Noo
Yawkness with a distinctly Northeast-urban vibe.
Yet somehow, the play * especially this production * succeeds irrespective
of its apparent shortcomings.
When the outrage isn¹t being slathered on
impossibly thick, it translates into some heartbreaking moments. ³The Normal
Heart² is ultimately less than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts
are staggeringly effective.
The script is best when it gives the actors monologues that explore their
feelings about AIDS, or conversations about their feelings. Almost every
character gets a big scene, from Bruce (Elias Taylorson), Ned¹s cautious
counterpart, to Ben (Bob Hess), Ned¹s straight brother. They, along with
Cedric Neal, Emily Scott Banks, Mark Shum and Jack Birdwell, each boast
wrenching moments.
Taylor has the unenviable role of the thorny hero, saddled with much of
Kramer¹s preaching. But when he¹s allowed to be a real person and not a
mouthpiece, Taylor¹s brutally frank and unsentimental performance is a
standout.
Director Regan Adair uses a lazy-susan set, decorated in stark colors and
minimal furniture, to concentrate our energies on the words. He wants the
audience to get as angry as Ned, and the ploy often works.
Voltaire once offered the dictum that man¹s ego often leads him to say
³despite² when he really means ³because;² that observation could have been
written for a play like
³The Normal Heart.² At a performance on opening
weekend, the audience seemed drained by the time of the curtain call,
applauding the actors smatteringly not for lack of appreciation but because
they were busy brushing away tears and silencing sniffles.
This summer, as the world notes the 25th anniversary of AIDS, it is fairly
impossible not to succumb to Kramer¹s message. Between all the
proselytizing, the play touches you with the weight of all our fallen
brethren. As literature, it¹s iffy; as a prayer for the dead, it¹s a moving
final testament, a grim reminder of a plague that continues to amass
victims.
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