‘The Normal Heart’: A Beautiful Time Capsule With Enduring Relevance

Despite the fact that it was first staged in 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis, Sydney Theatre Company’s latest production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart still has plenty to say four decades later.

This expert-level production of Kramer’s highly-acclaimed play is excellent in part because of its time capsule qualities, evoked by a brilliant cast of performers, stellar direction and truly inspired set design. But despite its specificity, it taps into something more fundamental about how human beings respond in a burgeoning crisis, and what it takes for a group of people to become a movement.

The Normal Heart follows writer and gay man Ned Weeks (Mitchell Butel), a semi-autobiographical version of Kramer, at the turn of the 80s in New York City. His fellow gay men are coming down with a mysterious illness, causing strange spots to appear on them and causing death to travel through the local queer community.

Though Ned has an ally in Dr. Brookner (Emma Jones), he founds the Gay Men’s Health Crisis as a support network for people living with AIDS, and falls in love with the New York Times writer Felix Turner (Nicholas Brown). Yet his abrasive personality puts him at odds with many of the group’s other members, making it even more difficult to navigate this existential threat together.

The Normal Heart is brilliantly performed and expertly directed

Therein lies the most impactful element of The Normal Heart: its genuinely nuanced depiction of this coalition of men trying to navigate an epidemic they know staggeringly little about. Outside of the autobiographical nature of Ned, many of the show’s other characters are also based on the lives of people that Kramer encountered in his time as a founder of the GMHC.

Under the careful direction of director Dean Bryant, who frames all the action in an evocative set designed by Jeremy Allen, this collection of characters is brilliantly brought to life by a superstar cast of performers. Mitchell Butel is one of the returning actors from the South Australian 2022 season, and he’s nothing short of brilliant in this role.

Ned is an undeniably complicated character and person, equal parts passionate and bitter; Butel captures it all with a real sense of grace, emotion and occasional bit of humour. His personality is brilliantly contrasted against the other characters through some properly exceptional casting decisions that encapsulate the difficulties of gay identity in the 80s.

There’s Keiynan Lonsdale as the self-assured and confident Tommy, Evan Lever (another returning actor) as the much more anxious Mickey, who worries about being able to keep his job while undertaking activism, and an exceptional Nicholas Brown as Ned’s new lover Felix.

However, special mention goes to Tim Draxl as Bruce Niles, who captures the sense of inner conflict and weight that Bruce feels perfectly – there’s one particularly heart-wrenching scene with him that had my eyes wet. Similarly brilliant is Emma Jones as Dr. Brookner, who’s given a standout monologue that absolutely brings the house down and encapsulates the show’s themes perfectly.

The Normal Heart is still an important work today

Indeed, the real power of The Normal Heart lies in the painful reality that its themes continue to endure today. Despite its specific time and place, it contains widely resonant musings on what it means to take action in the face of systemic bureaucracies that could care less about marginalised people.

There is a constant sense of distress that the characters in this play are under, endlessly fighting for change that they don’t even know if they’ll be alive to see. It’s a deeply felt sentiment for all social justice causes, taking on extra meaning as it debuts in our city the same week that open police brutality has rocked our streets in the name of bodyguarding a man accused of war crimes in Gaza.

Yet despite the feeling of hopelessness that these real men felt in the 80s, and that we may feel today, there’s something intrinsically hopeful about staging a new production of The Normal Heart in 2026. Despite the harrowing reality depicted in Kramer’s work, we are privileged with the gift of hindsight in knowing that the AIDS crisis, as depicted in the play, is over.

We know that wouldn’t be the case without the contributions of people like Kramer and the real men this play’s characters are based on. They didn’t organise because they wanted to make history, but because it was the right thing to do. Thus, Sydney Theatre Company’s The Normal Heart is more than just a sensationally produced lesson about the past; it’s a call to action for us today.

The Normal Heart is playing at the Sydney Opera House until March 14th.