I kept saying for months that I wanted to see this show but for some reason never pulled the trigger to actually buy tickets. Friends were telling me to see it, I was hearing buzz on the streets and finally during the TONY Awards a few weeks ago decided to buy tickets during The Normal Heart. While watching the TONY’s, they gave out the award for Best Featured Actor which went to John Benjamin Hickey from The Normal Heart. At that moment, I logged online and bought tickets for the show last Friday night (not the Katy Perry song) and have forever changed the way I see plays. 

What’s that, you say? Forever changed the way you see plays?
YES! A bold statement, I know. However, I have NEVER been moved like this during anything: plays, musicals, movies, etc. Let’s just say that in the last 15 minutes of this show, you pretty much hear the entire audience sobbing and sniffling. I actually just got chills as I wrote that.

The Normal Heart was originally on Broadway back in the 1980′s and is the true life story of author Larry Kramer. The story takes place in NYC in the 1980′s at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. This is way back before AIDS had a name. When people (mostly gay men in NYC) were dropping like flies and nobody had the faintest idea why. The story follows a gay couple, Mickey and Felix (played by Patrick Breen and John Benjamin Hickey, respectively) who are in the middle of fighting to discover exactly what it is that is killing nearly every one of their friends. Mickey is a passionate activist whose voice will be heard and Felix is a writer for the New York Times.

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Another main character in the show is the doctor who is bound and determined to find out what is killing all these gay men both in NYC and around the world. In a TONY Award-Winning performance, Dr. Emma Brookner (played by Ellen Barkin in her Broadway debut) knows the symptoms of this disease and is fighting to get the funding to properly research this epidemic. There is one seven minute monologue where Dr. Brookner is pleading for funding in front of a board that is one of the most moving scenes I have ever witnessed.

The story takes place over the course of three years and as each year passes, the names of those lost to AIDS appear on the walls around the stage. By the end of the show, the entire theater is covered with the names of those lost. I won’t go into any details about what happens at the end of the show but will tell you if you’re lucky enough to see this before it closes on July 10th, don’t make dinner plans after the show. As people exited the theater, it was dead silence and red eyes as far as you could see. Clearly, everyone in the theater was just as moved as I was.

The show brought home three TONY’s this year and deserved even more in my opinion. This show truly changed the way I will see plays in the future. As I said, you only have about two weeks to TRY and get tickets. It’s not going to be as easy as logging online to TeleCharge and buying them as the show is completely sold out for the remainder of its run. Your only chance (which I highly recommend) is to go to their rush. Here’s how it works: starting two hours before each show, the box office sells a very limited number of tickets to that night’s show for $36.50. Note that I said two hours before the show is when they start selling the tickets. You’ll need to be in line 1-3 hours before that in order to get a good place in line. If you’re not the first person to arrive, pop into the box office and ask them how many rush tickets they have available for that night’s show so you don’t waste hours of your time waiting in line only to find out they only had four seats that night and you were person five in line.

Like I said, this show will change your life and the way you see theater going forward. Do anything you can to see this show before it closes!