The Normal Heart, The National Theatre, February
Larry Kramer’s lacerating melodrama was the first Aids play on the British stage, coming from New York in 1985 with Martin Sheen as Kramer’s activist loudmouth Ned Weeks. That role is now taken by Ben Daniels in a revival directed by Dominic Cooke that will be more than a poignant period piece: Kramer, who died last May, charts an unfolding tragedy and a health crisis the authorities are slow to acknowledge. One early adversary, who got the message and became a friend, was the immunologist Anthony Fauci, lately on the White House coronavirus task force.
Choir Boy, Nottingham Playhouse, 12th to 27th February
What Alan Bennett did for English grammar schoolboys in The History Boys, Tarell Alvin McCraney does for black American choir boys with added gospel music. This is the UK regional premiere of a stirring coming-of-age story in which an openly gay scholarship pupil, with a poster for Dreamgirls tacked on his bedroom wall, finds his true voice in a hostile environment at an exclusive prep school resting smugly on its laurels in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement. Nancy Medina directs a co-production with the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.
Iphigenia in Splott, Lyric, Hammersmith, 22nd January to 13th February
Newcomer Sophie Melville received astounding reviews for her performance in Gary Owen’s monodrama when first seen in Cardiff—where Splott is a local district—and then briefly at the National Theatre five years ago. She reprises her role as Effie, a foul-mouthed street urchin who encounters a wounded war veteran in a bar and makes a sacrifice comparable, but dissimilar, to that asked of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War.
