Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Feb 9 – Mar 14, 2026
Playwright: Larry Kramer
Director: Dean Bryant
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Mitchell Butel, Tim Draxl, Michael Griffiths, Emma Jones, Evan Lever, Keiynan Lonsdale, Fraser Morrison, Mark Saturno
Images by Neil Bennett
Theatre review
The story begins in 1981, at the very dawn of the AIDS crisis that would devastate gay communities around the world. As a marginalised group, attempts to secure recognition and support proved extraordinarily difficult. Yet the indefatigable activist Ned Weeks refuses to accept indifference or rejection, as vividly portrayed in Larry Kramer’s seminal work, The Normal Heart.
Written four decades ago and drawing heavily on Kramer’s own experiences, the play arrives from a vastly different social and medical landscape. Encouragingly, much has changed — not only in the treatment and understanding of the disease itself, but also in the broader recognition of gay rights. As a result, the work can at times feel overtly expositional to contemporary audiences. However, as a historical lens on one of the most defining public health and social crises of modern life, it remains deeply significant, even if not always uniformly resonant.
Dean Bryant’s direction delivers a production of fitting urgency, capturing the emotional temperature of the era and offering a clear sense of what it meant to work on the front lines of the fight for HIV and AIDS to be taken seriously. It is a passionate and deeply sincere staging, imbued with a palpable sense of commitment, even if it does not always sustain meaningful engagement.
The cast is led by Mitchell Butel, who brings admirable presence and authenticity to the role of Weeks, grounding a story that continues to demand retelling. Powerful monologues are delivered with memorable force by performers such as Emma Jones, Tim Draxl, and Evan Lever, each contributing striking moments of dramatic intensity.
Production designer Jeremy Allen underscores the desperation of the era with a set that appears subtly worn and frayed at the edges, quietly reflecting a world under strain. His costumes evoke the textures of early-1980s gay culture, with characters embodying the archetypal looks and sensibilities we now associate with that period.
Nigel Levings’ lighting is largely unobtrusive, allowing the performances to remain the focal point, before gently asserting itself in key moments — particularly towards the conclusion — when a more overt sentimentality emerges. Cellist Rowena Macneish provides live accompaniment of extraordinary sensitivity, her playing elegantly underscoring the production’s most powerful emotional currents.
While antiretroviral therapies have transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition, The Normal Heart endures as an indictment of institutional indifference—a reminder that political structures remain perilously susceptible to abandoning their most vulnerable constituents. We entrust governing bodies with the intricate machinery of public welfare, yet those who wield power frequently subordinate communal wellbeing to private interests, ideological rigidity, or bureaucratic inertia. The disquieting symmetry between Kramer’s era and our own is difficult to ignore: in Sydney mere days ago, state violence was deployed against citizens exercising their right to dissent, while across the Pacific, democratic institutions in the United States appear to be unravelling with vertiginous momentum. Larry Kramer waged his battles until his final breath; his unyielding moral clarity demands not our nostalgia, but our emulation.
Suzy Goes See 