SOURCE: A review of The Normal Heart, in The Nation, Vol. 240, No. 18, 11 May 1985, pp. 569-70.

In this review, Berman finds The Normal Heart an amateurish play, but concedes that it is "a rare instance of an atrocious political play that succeeds in clobbering home its point."

You might almost think, after seeing the Roundabout production [of An Enemy of the People], that Ibsen has turned into a hack and that the Ibsenian age is behind us. Not true! To be persuaded otherwise, go see The Normal Heart, by Larry Kramer, at the Public. The Normal Heart is An Enemy of the People, sort of, for 1985. The Dr. Stockmann character is a gay-rights leader named Ned Weeks and the pollution crisis is AIDS. Ned's acquaintances are dying all around him and the thought dawns that neither the gay community nor anybody else is doing much about it. The issue...