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The Public Theater will present a one-night-only reading of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in honor of the groundbreaking play’s 40th anniversary. Tony Kushner will direct the benefit reading on Monday, April 27 at 7:00 p.m. in The Public’s Barbaralee Theater (formerly the Anspacher Theater), where the original production moved for an extended run after the play’s world premiere in the LuEsther Hall. The original production is the longest-running play ever produced at The Public. Casting and more information will be available closer to the benefit date.
The Normal Heart premiered in The Public’s LuEsther Hall in April 1985, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and featuring David Allen Brooks, Brad Davis, D. W. Moffett, and Concetta Tomei. The production moved to The Public’s Anspacher Theater for an additional seven months, where Joel Grey later joined the cast. The play returned to The Public in 2004 for the Worth Street Theater Company’s production directed by David Esbjornson, featuring Raúl Esparza, Joanna Gleason, and Lisa Kron. Twenty-six years after its world premiere, The Normal Heart made its Broadway debut in 2011 with a Tony Award-winning production directed by Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe and featuring Ellen Barkin, John Benjamin Hickey, Luke MacFarlane, Joe Mantello, Lee Pace, and Jim Parsons.
Benefit tickets for The Normal Heart reading start at $400. Proceeds from this benefit will support The Public and God’s Love We Deliver, founded to support people with HIV/AIDS and now providing medically tailored meals, nutrition care, and education to individuals living with serious illness.
