Washington Post - Highly Recommended
"... “The Normal Heart,” written by Larry Kramer and first seen in New York in 1985, has taken an unconscionably long time to be produced at a top-of-the-line theater here (Washington Shakespeare Company staged it in the mid-1990s). But in director George C. Wolfe’s stark, fleet and passionately raw production, amends begin to be made for that sin of omission. The show, in Arena’s Kreeger Theater, is a kissing cousin to the Broadway mounting by Wolfe last year starring Joe Mantello, Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey that won the Tony for best revival. And the Washington version is in every respect a superb descendant."
DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"... Like the playwright himself, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart is passionate and explosive in a way that strikes at the core of the HIV-AIDS crisis, and makes this production a heart-wrenching gem. Every event and character in the show is unapologetically portrayed from Ned Weeks’ (Patrick Breen) point of view in a way that exchanges history for drama. But that point of view is the secret sauce that makes this show so emotionally resonant. By forcing us to live these events through Ned’s eyes, we keenly experience the confusion, frustration, and rage of living through the early days of HIV-AIDS before it even had the name."
Baltimore Sun - Highly Recommended
"... The power of this revival -- based on last year's acclaimed Broadway premiere directed by George C. Wolfe (Leah C. Gardiner is the re-staging director for the Arena production) -- comes from a cast that makes lines loaded with facts and messages sound as natural as the conversational dialogue."
MetroWeekly - Highly Recommended
"... The power of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart lies not only in its incisive, witty and emotionally honest account of the birthing pains of New York City's first AIDS activists, but in its universal truths. For when Kramer's feisty (and largely autobiographical) protagonist Ned Weeks despairs, ''We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it's like, what we're going through,'' he captures the cri de coeur of every perceived "other." Whether ravaged by disease, famine, drought or genocide, these are the "normal" hearts that ask how can the world watch us die and not help? The gay men here are all of us, for, depending on who's judging, we are all the "other" to someone."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"... Wolfe has brought together a powerful ensemble; Breen and MacFarlane both appeared in the Broadway production but have moved into more central roles. The 10-member cast has no weak links, from Breen's bravado and Wettig's frustration and fury to MacFarlane's determination and Christopher J. Hanke's often hilarious attitude."
Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended
"... Indeed, the play is at its best when chronicling Ned’s fraying relationship with his mostly still-closeted fellows. Kramer lived this: The playwright was a founding member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis but left the group over philosophical differences. Ned wants his peers to be more uninhibited politically but more conservative sexually. His clashes with Bruce Niles, the handsome bank executive and former solider who is chosen over Ned as the organization’s president— even though Bruce remains in the closet and refuses to appear on television—have a believable, satisfying friction."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"... A Normal Heart is as much a timeline as anything else—its structure is chronological, set between 1981 and 1984—meaning time, or the lack of it, is one of the most vividly felt aspects of the production. The character of Weeks, a thinly veiled version of Kramer himself, constantly recites numbers, facts, and figures, underpinning the urgency of what is literally a life-or-death situation. Breen, who strikes the right balance between endearingly neurotic and furiously obsessive, at times seems like a man possessed, screaming one minute and dumbly calm the next. His community of gay friends doesn’t want to hear that promiscuity might be threatening their lives, while the medical, political, and journalistic institutions in New York and Washington respond with abject homophobia, refusing to even acknowledge the crisis."
Washington Jewish Week - Highly Recommended
"... Among the standout moments in a production with many, Wettig's turn as the doctor committed to her patients - gay men often living on the fringes of society - and to sounding the alarm is a stunner. Wettig's character is a wheelchair user due to aftereffects of polio, but that only strengthens her powerful monologue blasting the medical establishment about its inaction on the impending HIV-AIDS crisis. The frisson as her voice rises, her face reddens and her fists clench is palpable."
The Georgetowner - Recommended
"... In a host of outstanding performances, Patrick Breen as the combative, bristling, enraged and enraging Weeks is so kinetic that you start to feel toward him exactly as his friends and allies do. Luke MacFarlane as Turner has—like the character must—charm to burn until the bitter end when he himself is consumed. Patricia Wettig—of television's “Brothers & Sisters” and “Thirtysomething” fame among many credits—gives a blunt, brave coating to the doctor, in a wheelchair for most of her life because of polio—and her outburst in the second act inevitably draws cheers."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"... Larry Kramer’s heart-wrenching Tony Award-winning play, The Normal Heart, offered one of the most powerful theatergoing experiences I’ve had when I witnessed the Broadway revival production last year. DC area audiences are currently fortunate enough to experience (or re-experience) that spectacular production as Arena Stage produces the play under a special arrangement with Broadway producer Daryl Roth. The Arena Stage mounting of the play at the Mead Center for American Theatre reunites members of the Broadway creative team and some of the Broadway cast. This flawless production of a very strong script with a powerful message is a must-see for DC audiences- not only for regular theatregoers, but also broader audiences concerned with social change, the state of human and civil rights in this country, and health issues plaguing the United States and the rest of the world."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
Arena Stage’s first-rate production of Kramer’s furious, relentless howl still delivers a stinging emotional wallop, just the way it was meant to when it was a burning transmission from the breastworks of battle thirty years ago.
