The Normal Heart (NHB Modern Plays)

Larry Kramer

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780014111
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Larry Kramer's passionate, polemical drama is set during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. It follows the efforts of one man, while his friends are dying around him, to break through a conspiracy of silence, indifference and hostility from public officials and the gay community, and gain recognition for a disease that threatens to change everything.

This definitive edition, with a revised text and new introductory material, was published twenty-five years after the play's 1986 British premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London. A quarter of a century after that premiere, the play's prescience and its searing emotional power are beyond doubt.

The play's 2011 Broadway revival opened to an etatic critical reception, and won the Tony Award for Best Revival. It was adapted for screen in 2014, first broadcast on HBO starring Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts.

'burning, argumentative, witty and contentious play about the political and emotional consequences of the AIDS crisis' Observer

'informative, heart-rending, witty, revelatory, poleaxing, a work of utter topicality and transcendent power' The Listener

ACT ONE

Scene One

The office of DR EMMA BROOKNER. Three men are in the waiting area: CRAIG DONNER, MICKEY MARCUS and NED WEEKS.

CRAIG (after a long moment of silence). I know something’s wrong.

MICKEY. There’s nothing wrong. When you’re finished we’ll go buy you something nice. What would you like?

CRAIG. We’ll go somewhere nice to eat, okay? Did you see that guy in there’s spots?

MICKEY. You don’t have those. Do you?

CRAIG. No.

MICKEY. Then you don’t have anything to worry about.

CRAIG. She said they can be inside you, too.

MICKEY. They’re not inside you.

CRAIG. They’re inside me.

MICKEY. Will you stop! Why are you convinced you’re sick?

CRAIG. Where’s Bruce? He’s supposed to be here. I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful lover. I love Bruce so much, Mickey. I know something’s wrong.

MICKEY. Craig, all you’ve come for is some test results. Now stop being such a hypochondriac.

CRAIG. I’m tired all the time. I wake up in swimming pools of sweat. Last time she felt me and said I was swollen. I’m all swollen, like something ready to explode. Thank you for coming with me, you’re a good friend. Excuse me for being such a mess, Ned. I get freaked out when I don’t feel well.

MICKEY. Everybody does.

DAVID comes out of EMMA’s office. There are highly visible purple lesions on his face. He wears a long-sleeved shirt. He goes to get his jacket, which he’s left on one of the chairs.

DAVID. Whoever’s next can go in.

CRAIG. Wish me luck.

MICKEY (hugging CRAIG). Good luck.

CRAIG hugs him, then NED, and goes into EMMA’s office.

DAVID. They keep getting bigger and bigger and they don’t go away. (To NED.) I sold you a ceramic pig once at Maison France on Bleecker Street. My name is David.

NED. Yes, I remember. Somebody I was friends with then collects pigs and you had the biggest pig I’d ever seen outside of a real pig.

DAVID. I’m her twenty-eighth case and sixteen of them are dead. (He leaves.)

NED. Mickey, what the fuck is going on?

MICKEY. I don’t know. Are you here to write about this?

NED. I don’t know. What’s wrong with that?

MICKEY. Nothing, I guess.

NED. What about you? What are you going to say? You’re the one with the health column.

MICKEY. Well, I’ll certainly write about it in the Native, but I’m afraid to put it in the stuff I write at work.

NED. What are you afraid of?

MICKEY. The city doesn’t exactly show a burning interest in gay health. But at least I’ve still got my job: the Health Department has had a lot of cutbacks.

NED. How’s John?

MICKEY. John? John who?

NED. You’ve had so many I never remember their last names.

MICKEY. Oh, you mean John. I’m with Gregory now. Gregory O’Connor.

NED. The old gay activist?

MICKEY. Old? He’s younger than you are. I’ve been with Gregory for ten months now.

NED. Mickey, that’s very nice.

MICKEY. He’s not even Jewish. But don’t tell my rabbi.

CRAIG (coming out of EMMA’s office). I’m going to die. That’s the bottom line of what she’s telling me. I’m so scared. I have to go home and get my things and come right back and check in. Mickey, please come with me. I hate hospitals. I’m going to die. Where’s Bruce? I want Bruce.

MICKEY and CRAIG leave. DR EMMA BROOKNER comes in from her office. She is in a motorized wheelchair. She is in her mid-to-late thirties.

EMMA. Who are you?

NED. I’m Ned Weeks. I spoke with you on the phone after the Times article.

EMMA. You’re the writer fellow who’s scared. I’m scared, too. I hear you’ve got a big mouth.

NED. Is big mouth a symptom?

EMMA. No, a cure. Come on in and take your clothes off.

NED. I only came to ask some questions.

EMMA. You’re gay, aren’t you? Take your clothes off.

Lights up on an examining table, center stage. NED starts to undress.

NED. Dr Brookner, what’s happening?

EMMA. I don’t know.

NED. In just a couple of minutes you told two people I know something. The article said there isn’t any cure.

EMMA. Not even any good clues yet. All I know is this disease is the most insidious killer I’ve ever seen or studied or heard about. And I think we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg. And I’m afraid it’s on the rampage. I’m frightened nobody important is going to give a damn because it seems to be happening mostly to gay men. Who cares if a faggot dies? Does it occur to you to do anything about it. Personally?

NED. Me?

EMMA. Somebody’s got to do something.

NED. Wouldn’t it be better coming from you?

EMMA. Doctors are extremely conservative; they try to stay out of anything that smells political, and this smells. Bad. As soon as you start screaming you get treated like a nutcase. Maybe you know that. And then you’re ostracized and rendered worthless, just when you need cooperation most. Take off your socks.

NED, in his undershorts, is now sitting on the examining table. EMMA will now examine him, his skin particularly, starting with the bottom of his feet, feeling his lymph glands, looking at his scalp, into his mouth…

NED. Nobody listens for very long anyway. There’s a new disease of the month every day.

EMMA. This hospital sent its report of our first cases to the medical journals over a year ago. The New England Journal of Medicine has finally published it, and last week, which brought you running, The Times ran something on some inside page. Very inside: page twenty. If you remember, legionnaires’ disease, toxic shock, they both hit the front page of The Times the minute they happened. And stayed there until somebody did something. The front page of The Times has a way of inspiring action. Lie down.

NED. They won’t even use the word ‘gay’ unless it’s in a direct quote. To them we’re still homosexuals. That’s like still calling blacks Negroes. The Times has always had trouble writing about anything gay.

EMMA. Then how is anyone going to know what’s happening? And what precautions to take? Someone’s going to have to tell the gay population fast.

NED. You’ve been living with this for over a year? Where’s the Mayor? Where’s the Health Department?

EMMA. They know about it. You have a Commissioner of Health who got burned with the swine flu epidemic, declaring an emergency when there wasn’t one. The government appropriated $150 million for that mistake. You have a Mayor who’s a bachelor and I assume afraid of being perceived as too friendly to anyone gay. And who is also out to protect a billion-dollar-a-year tourist industry. He’s not about to tell the world there’s an epidemic menacing his city. And don’t ask me about the President. Is the Mayor gay?

NED. If he is, like J. Edgar Hoover, who would want him?

EMMA. Have you had any of the symptoms?

NED. I’ve had most of the sexually transmitted diseases the article said come first. A lot of us have. You don’t know what it’s been like since the sexual revolution hit this country. It’s been crazy, gay or straight.

EMMA. What makes you think I don’t know? Any fever, weight loss, night sweats, diarrhea, swollen glands, white patches in your mouth, loss of energy, shortness of breath, chronic cough?

NED. No. But those could happen with a lot of things, couldn’t they?

EMMA. And purple lesions. Sometimes. Which is what I’m looking for. It’s a cancer. There seems to be a strange reaction in the immune system. It’s collapsed. Won’t work. Won’t fight. Which is what it’s supposed to do. So most of the diseases my guys are coming down with – and there are some very strange ones – are caused by germs that wouldn’t hurt a baby, not a baby in New York City anyway. Unfortunately, the immune system is the system we know least about. So where is this big mouth I hear you’ve got?

NED. I have more of a bad temper than a big mouth.

EMMA. Nothing wrong with that. Plenty to get angry about. Health is a political issue. Everyone’s entitled to good medical care. If you’re not getting it, you’ve got to...