Doctors start to see patients with bewildering new symptoms of a previously unidentified virus. When the nature of the infection becomes clearer, medics and activists argue over possible precautions, while conspiracy theorists spin the origins of the illness and the possibility it might be a form of state genocide.

The Normal Heart
national Theatre, London

A Splinter Of Ice
Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Doctors start to see patients with bewildering new symptoms of a previously unidentified virus. When the nature of the infection becomes clearer, medics and activists argue over possible precautions, while conspiracy theorists spin the origins of the illness and the possibility it might be a form of state genocide.

These events occur in New York City during 1981-84 and, while the National Theatre is clearly reviving Larry Kramer’s 1985 play The Normal Heart partly due to pandemic parallels, the overlap only goes so far. The medical and governmental response to HIV/ Aids was criminally slow because the first victims belonged to minorities (initially gay men and recipients of blood supplements) with little political heft, while Covid-19, after an early neglect of the elderly in residential homes, was addressed rapidly and cash-lavishly as soon as it was perceived to have an impact on the majority.

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