http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040513/review_nm/review_stage_normal_dc_1
Thu May 13, 4:11 AM ET
By Frank Scheck
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Arriving nearly 20 years after its original production, this revival of Larry Kramer's groundbreaking play about the rise of the AIDS (news - web sites) epidemic threatened to be a theatrical museum piece.
Sadly, however, the disease is very much among us, and the play's themes are still all too relevant. The Worth Street Theater Company's revival, being presented at the same venue where the work originated, compellingly makes the case for its status as a modern theatrical classic.
Set in the years 1981-84, the play chronicles the efforts of Ned Weeks (Raul Esparza) -- a character clearly modeled after the author -- to raise a fire under the media, the city government and the gay community to recognize the extent of the crisis facing them. Constructed in numerous short and explosive scenes, it is a strongly didactic and preachy work, awkwardly constructed and sketchy in its characterizations, but it burns with a fierceness and moral outrage that was clearly born of experience. A roman a clef that nonetheless wasn't afraid to name its targets -- Ronald Reagan (news), Ed Koch and the New York Times among them -- it is a tremendously powerful piece of agitprop that is all the more powerful for its specificity.