The actual first scene is in the waiting room of Dr Emma Brookner (Liz Carr liberated from Silent Witness and full of powerful emotion) where Ned Weeks (Ben Daniels), the lightly-disguised figure of Kramer, is waiting to interview her about a new disease that is killing gay men and which the mainstream media is ignoring. Paule Constable's lighting moves at the same moment from sombre greys to flashing whites, as the men launch themselves into a hedonistic dance, a reminder of the club culture in which AIDS first emerged in New York. The flaming bowl is gently raised above Vicki Mortimer's crucible of a set, a grey circle with curving benches, and stays there throughout, a reminder and a challenge. This shattering evening of theatre opens with a moment of silence, as the cast gather around a cauldron, which they light in an act of remembrance for the millions who have died since the epidemic began. It is the greatest tribute I can pay to Cooke's new production in the Olivier in the round that he makes its depiction of the early years of the AIDS crisis seem just as raw and horrifying as ever, while drawing from it larger more universal resonances, about love, and politics and society's reaction to disease. It is, as Cooke says, 'that rarest of things: a history play written by one of its key participants.' Larry Kramer's cry from the heart was one of the first plays I remember watching that engaged with events that were still unfolding in the world around me. I saw that production in 1986 it shook me to the core. 'It had a profound effect on me and I've wanted to direct the play ever since.'

'As a student, I was lucky enough to see the landmark Royal Court production of The Normal Heart, starring Martin Sheen,' writes director Dominic Cooke on the National Theatre's website.

The normal heart by larry kramer