THE NORMAL HEART
THE NORMAL HEART, Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 12 February-14 March 2026. Photography Neil Bennett
How long does it take society’s opinion pendulum to swing from rejection to acceptance and back again? If Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart is any measure, it’s about 40 years. That’s how long it’s been since the prejudice and hatred of polite society allowed AIDS to kill millions before any effort was made to halt it. And last year, when, as Mitchell Butel writes in his program notes, “In 2025, the American government declared that World AIDS Day, which has been commemorated since 1988, would no longer be officially recognised.”
Butel is too diplomatic to say “Trump”, but that’s what “American government” means and he goes on to note that Trump has “…also quietly changed ‘LGBTQ’ to ‘LGB’ on the Stonewall National Monument website to erase the words ‘queer’ and ‘transgender.” That’s particularly vicious as transgender activists led the Stonewall riots – the genesis of worldwide gay rights. Happy days.
The production opens with a stylised gay disco scene – all nostalgia and beautiful bods – but Butel, STC’s new(ish) artistic director, plays Ned Weeks, a New Yorker who realises early on that something very wrong is happening to the city’s gay society. Fit, healthy young men are falling ill, and soon, mysteriously dying. Rumours circulate, and misinformation takes hold, but no one is paying attention.
In a hospital waiting room, Ned meets Dr Emma Brookner (an electrifying company debut from Emma Jones), whose patient list is growing then dying almost as quickly. She’s researching and lobbying with no money and no support. Kramer’s play is semi-autobiographical, and Ned’s writing career is jettisoned as he, too, begins to agitate: desperately trying to get anyone – gay, straight, mayor, doctor, politician – to listen. To no avail. President Ronald Reagan definitely doesn’t want to know.
The production, directed by Dean Bryant, which originated in Adelaide in 2023, when Butel was artistic director of State Theatre Company of South Australia, is part of his inaugural Sydney season. At two hours and 30 minutes, including an interval, The Normal Heart (from W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939) is played on a set by Jeremy Allen that miraculously melds the paint-peeling, mouldy walls and ceilings of a run-down hospital, and various apartments and offices. It’s lit by Nigel Levings to create clearly differentiated spaces. Further atmosphere and a kind of propulsion come from the rear of the stage and composer Hilary Kleinig’s music, played by cellist Rowena Macneish with cast member Michael Griffiths on piano.
As the first few years pass of what would eventually be recognised as a global pandemic, Ned teams up wth Bruce (Tim Draxl) in an advocacy group. Vignettes of activities such as a phone help line, hospital visits, failed appointments with public officials, and fraught social gatherings bring in the company in combinations that have others watching from the sidelines or going about their business. Griffiths, Nicholas Brown, Evan Lever, Kelynan Lonsdale, Fraser Morrison, and Mark Saturno are dynamic and not a foot is put wrong across a variety of roles. All are wired for sound, as is increasingly the case, and it’s down to sound designer Andrew Howard that it’s not apparent.
Ned’s journey is that of HIV-AIDS worldwide: ignored, ridiculed, pilloried, feared and finally, recognised when it becomes a threat to and killer of heterosexuals. It’s also the journey of a man whose anger and courage fuelled a movement, despite all and everything being against him. The sexual politics of the times may be an eye-opener to new generations – of any sexual identity – and as well as absorbing entertainment, The Normal Heart is a crucial history lesson in a society that disdains the subject.
Programmed to honour the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, the production is vying for an audience with any number of breathless coming-of-age and coming-out drama-ettes (true, everyone has to start somewhere), but The Normal Heart is the show of the moment and the times.
Even the shortest of memories should be shaken, post-COVID, into thinking about the certainty of pandemics and their consequences, as well as the resurfacing of awful people in high places, and the laughter and tragedy of lives lived on the edge. To do that while being drawn along by a thrilling central performance from Mitchell Butel, and a fine company directed (and choreographed) by Dean Bryant with verve and sensitivity, is alternately heart-rending, funny and thrilling. Theatre at its best: heart-warming, truthful and rich.
