The play was first published by Plume in the US, and by Drama Editor Nick Hern for Methuen in the UK to coincide with the 1986 British première at London's Royal Court Theatre.

The increasing death toll raises the unknown illness, by this time correctly believed to be caused by a virus, to the status of an epidemic, though the press remains largely silent on the issue.

After most performances of the 2011 revival of The Normal Heart, Kramer personally passed out a dramaturgical flyer detailing some of the real stories behind the play's characters.

Like "Ned," Kramer himself helped to found several AIDS-activism groups, including Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), and indeed experienced personal conflict with his lawyer brother, Arthur.

[citation needed] It has been suggested (though not by Kramer himself) that the model for 'Felix' was John Duka, a New York Times style reporter who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.

[5] Produced by Joseph Papp and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the play opened off-Broadway at The Public Theater on April 21, 1985, and ran for 294 performances.

The original cast included Brad Davis as Ned and D. W. Moffett as Felix, with David Allen Brooks as Bruce Niles and Concetta Tomei as Dr. Emma Brookner (based on Linda Laubenstein, M.D.).

[9] In subsequent productions of the play, Ned Weeks was portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss in Los Angeles,[10] and Raul Esparza in a 2004 Off-Broadway revival directed by David Esbjornson at the Public.

[11] On April 18, 1993, Barbra Streisand organized and introduced a benefit reading for Broadway Cares at the Roundabout Theatre Company (for years she had been trying to get the movie made with her as director).

Directed by Emmy Award winner Paris Barclay, cast members of the production included Sterling K. Brown, Laverne Cox, Jeremy Pope, Vincent Rodriguez III, Guillermo Díaz, Jake Borelli, Ryan O’Connell, Daniel Newman, Jay Hayden and Danielle Savre.

[18] It began previews on 23 September 2021 at the National's Olivier Theatre, with a Dominic Cooke-directed cast led by Ben Daniels, Liz Carr and Luke Norris.

[24] The State Theatre Company of South Australia staged the play at the Adelaide Festival Centre in October 2022, directed by Dean Bryant, with STCSA artistic director Mitchell Butel as Ned and Mark Saturno as Ben.

[citation needed] Kramer wrote a sequel about Ned Weeks in 1992, The Destiny of Me, which was performed at the Lucille Lortel Theater by the Circle Repertory Company in October of that year.

[28] In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich observed, "In this fiercely polemical drama ... the playwright starts off angry, soon gets furious and then skyrockets into sheer rage.

Although Mr. Kramer's theatrical talents are not always as highly developed as his conscience, there can be little doubt that The Normal Heart is the most outspoken play around – or that it speaks up about a subject that justifies its author's unflagging, at times even hysterical, sense of urgency.

"[30] Rex Reed stated, "No one who cares about the future of the human race can afford to miss The Normal Heart,"[30] while director Harold Prince commented, "I haven't been this involved – upset – in too damn long.

"[30] On the day The Normal Heart opened, a spokesman for The New York Times addressed statements in the play about the newspaper's failure to give the disease adequate coverage.

[31] Of the 2011 Broadway revival of the play, Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times:[32] What this interpretation makes clear, though, is that Mr. Kramer is truly a playwright as well as a pamphleteer (and, some might add, a self-promoter).

Seen some 25 years on, The Normal Heart turns out to be about much more than the one-man stand of Ned Weeks, the writer who takes it upon himself to warn gay men about AIDS (before it was even identified as such) and alienates virtually everyone he comes across.

— is Larry Kramer, with a thoroughness that few onstage alter-egos can claim.After the 2011 Broadway production, Patrick Healy from The New York Times interviewed young, gay men that had attended the show to see their reaction to the subject matter.

In his review of the 2021 historic reading of the play presented by the One Archives Foundation, Los Angeles Times chief theatre critic Charles McNulty praised cast member Sterling K. Brown noting that he "captured so brilliantly" the role of Ned Weeks.

Not only is he an exceptional, Emmy-winning actor, but his performance represented an act of coalition building, a recognition of shared struggle and a refusal to let the walls of identity serve as a prison.