The Normal Heart (NHB Modern Plays)

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