State Theatre Company South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Oct 2022
Persuading political entities to acknowledge lethal viral outbreaks is agonisingly difficult. We know this because of the ongoing abrasiveness between health professionals and political authority throughout the Covid crisis.
But even with the perversity of the anti-vaxers' push, Covid has been easy street compared to the early 80s and convincing politicians that the AIDS crisis was killing gay men.
So much of the gay world was in the establishment’s closet at the time. Shame was loaded upon gay sexual behaviour and, indeed, on homosexuality itself.
Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart documents this socio-medical ordeal. It was a brave and controversial play in its day, the 80s. Today it is a history piece and indeed, in this era of gay marriage, it is important that a traumatic past must not be forgotten.
Hence, it is passionately revived in this State Theatre production in which the artistic director himself, Mitchel Butel, undertakes the role of the tenacious New York campaigner who took on the powers of the day to plead action on behalf of the growing plague of dying young men.
It was a terrible time. No one understood the virus. There were no treatments. It caused terrible deaths. AIDS sufferers became untouchables.
It needed the likes of Ned Weeks to gain attention, and during his quest his strident style alienated him from many of those who were right behind him. Butel plays it in a growing lather of frustration. It’s a valiant performance with his character facing off against his heterosexual brother for support. Mark Saturno embodies that brother and their interactions are powerful, extrapolating so many of the establishment’s arguments against the promiscuity of the gay lifestyle. It’s a bravura performance by Saturno.
Since it is a play of arguments and explanations, didactic in its very nature, it demands of its actors substantial speeches as one after another, they break down and give voice to their pain, grief and frustration. So impassioned and effective are these deliveries that the audience responds with spontaneous applause.
Michael Griffiths, leaves his post as onstage pianist alongside cellist Clara Gillam-Grant, to embody the besuited mayoral authority who has the task of putting the AIDS campaigners in their place as unworthy of official attention. He is exquisitely loathsome.
Indeed, there are intrepid characterisations all round, notably from Emma Jones as the courageous AIDS clinic doctor whose experience as a childhood polio sufferer has given her a particular empathy for this new viral horror story. From simpatico to bravura, Jones is a powerful member of this cast. As is Anthony Nicola playing fey Tommy Boatwright. He delivers light in the darkness and also, unusually in 2022, performs the act of smoking onstage with some credibility.
Matt Hyde in flares, cuban heels, and wig, supports as a strong member of that early campaign cohort, along with Evan Lever, as under-appreciated Micky Marcus with young A.J. Pate strong in the minor parts.
Ainsley Melham delivers the pivotal role of the victim, the handsome young New York Times journalist, Felix. He carries Felix’s transition from glamorous confidence to the last-ditch with impeccable conviction. If there is any levity in this play, it is in his early interactions with the edgy Ned Weeks. And, if there is a weird moment, it would be the audience meeting him at his NY Times desk writing with pen and paper. A newspaper desk without a typewriter in the early 80s? If the company can access rotary desk phones, they could surely get a typewriter.
It is not an easy or happy night in the theatre. The play is relentless and just a bit dated. Designer Jeremy Allen has taken the set to appropriately old-school proportions: the full expanse of the Playhouse stage with one tier as domestica for the musicians and medical rooms; the other as the offices, clinics, and mayoral parlor; all of the above suggested by brick walls, crumbling facades and even an heroic frieze of ancient Greek battle, a certain parallel of which was to be found in the AIDS phenomenon. Set changes wheel here and there quite effectively while Nigel Levings keeps mood in the lights with resting cast members sitting stage-side in the shadows.
Dean Bryant’s direction enables all the torrents of dialogue and, while perchance they could use a blue pencil, the audience’s respect for and engagement with the subject matter underwrites its attentiveness. At denouement, there is not a dry eye in the house.
For a few of us, the production is particularly heart wrenching insofar as it reminds poignantly of a man called Norman Hudson, understood to have been Adelaide’s first AIDS fatality. He had been marketing manager right there in the Festival Centre back in the 80s. He caught the virus when on a fellowship trip to New York. He was a one-time dancer and a vivid, handsome, accomplished, popular man. His name and that of his partner Dr John Downton, a distinguished plant scientist at Waite, are remembered now only by those who knew and loved them. Their relationship, the way in which John tenderly cared for Norman until the end and, subsequently, very quietly succumbed himself to AIDS is the heartbreaking illustration of what this play was and is all about.
Few people remained untouched by that epidemic through its years of fear and suffering, waiting for it to be understood and treated. And, while Norman Hudson may be remembered by a certain theatre-world inner sanctum, at least the name of Ian Purcell, South Australia’s great champion of AIDS care and understanding, resonates and is honoured.
These people deserved mention in the program notes.
That they were not, speaks volumes about the way in which AIDS generally is now the forgotten epidemic. Monkeypox is news now, along with Covid. It is ironic, since HIV is still extant.
Samela Harris
When: 8 to 15 Oct
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
