SOURCE: "Splash," in New York Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 18, 6 May 1985, pp. 91-2.

In the following evaluation, Simon argues that The Normal Heart transcends its polemical tone to become "a fleshed-out, generously dramatized struggle, in which warring ideologies do not fail to breathe, sweat, weep, bleed—be human."

We've all heard the one about the musical you leave humming the scenery; well, Big River is the one from which you emerge hurrahing the sets. …

But, finally, is this musical trip down the Mississippi, fun as it frequently is, really recessary? Rereading a few random pages of the book [Huckleberry Finn], I was tickled and shaken as I seldom, if ever, was by the show. As T. S. Eliot noted in his introduction to the novel, there is a River God in it, and it is Man's subjection to him "that gives to Man his dignity." Nothing in Big River is...