Review: The Normal Heart at Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

‘A blistering, heart-shattering revival that proves The Normal Heart is not history – it’s a warning.’

Every now and then, a piece of theatre comes along that doesn’t simply move you, it collides with you. It lands like a slap to the face and leaves the sting long after you’ve left your seat.

Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart is that kind of play. And Sydney Theatre Company’s revival proves, once again, why it remains devastatingly urgent.

Having seen a previous incarnation of this work, I arrived knowing the blows it delivers. I was not prepared, however, for how freshly, and frighteningly, they would land in 2026.

Kramer, founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1981 and ACT UP in 1987, channelled his rage, grief and relentless advocacy into this largely autobiographical work. Premiering Off-Broadway in 1985 to acclaim and controversy, it charts the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York between 1981 and 1984 through the eyes of writer and activist Alexander ‘Ned’ Weeks and the circle orbiting him.

Under the stewardship of the new STC creative team, this production feels both intimate and incendiary. Dean Bryant’s direction is unflinching, resisting sentimentality and instead allowing the text’s urgency to confront, educate and provoke. The pacing crackles. The arguments feel dangerously alive. The silences are suffocating.

The design, excellently executed by Jeremy Allen, is stripped back yet deeply evocative, a fluid, transformable space that shifts from Fire Island freedom to hospital sterility in breath-like transitions. The actors assist in reshaping the world, never fully leaving it, often watching from the periphery like ghosts of a generation. It’s a choice that tightens the emotional vise.

The soundscape by Andrew Howard, weaves in subtle echoes of the early 80s without drowning us in nostalgia. Nigel Levings’ lighting isolates and exposes with surgical precision, faces illuminated in fury, dimmed in fear, fractured in grief.

The ensemble is extraordinary.

Keiynan Lonsdale’s Tommy bursts onto the stage with biting wit and buoyant warmth, offering fleeting relief from the gathering storm. Multitalented Michael Griffiths played multiple roles as well as the piano throughout, alongside cellist Rowena Macneish. Ben, Ned’s conflicted brother, played by Mark Saturno, is rendered with aching restraint; the embodiment of love shackled by shame. Bruce Niles, the organisation’s cautious and closeted president, exquisitely portrayed by Tim Draxl, maintains careful composure until it fractures spectacularly in his recollection of his partner’s final hours, a moment of breathtaking vulnerability.

Evan Lever, who reprises his role of Mickey Marcus, simmers with ideological conviction and eventual despair, his breakdown painfully human. The choice to keep performers visible in the shadows when not in scene intensifies the sense of communal witnessing, they are watching each other fall.

Emma Jones as Dr Emma Brookner is a force. Sharp, furious and unsparing, her blistering monologue to the board detonates in the theatre. Accusation and prophecy in equal measure. You could feel the audience holding its collective breath.

Nicholas Brown as Felix Turner is luminous. His early scenes brim with intelligence and charm, his chemistry with Ned electric and tender. As illness takes hold, that vitality fades with heartbreaking precision. The deterioration is handled with restraint, making it all the more devastating. The love story at the heart of this play remains one of its most powerful weapons, romantic, ordinary, extraordinary.

And then there is Ned.

Obnoxious. Righteous. Exhausting. Necessary.

This production’s Ned is driven by furious integrity and impossible desperation by the incomparable Mitchell Butel. He bulldozes rooms and alienates allies, yet you cannot look away. Every confrontation feels like a ticking clock. Every speech, a demand that history pay attention.

What is most startling about this revival is how contemporary it feels. The tension between respectability politics and radical disruption, between working ‘within the system’ and burning it down, could have been lifted from today’s headlines. The fear of government inaction, the fight over whose lives are deemed worthy of urgency, the exhaustion of marginalised communities forced to educate while they grieve. It resonates with chilling clarity.

This is not a museum piece. It is a mirror.

Kramer wrote The Normal Heart to grab attention, spread information and incite empathy. Sydney Theatre Company’s 2026 production does exactly that.

It is furious. It is tender. It is achingly modern.

One not to be missed.

5 stars

Lia Loves.

Images by Neil Bennett