Play Details
Context
Artistic Director
Max Stafford Clark
Part of
New York Shakespeare Festival
Dates Performed
Thursday 20th March 1986
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
Play Details
Synopsis
New York City in the early 1980s
A realist drama, over three years, told in multiple scenes and locations, chronologically.
At the beginning of the HIV-AIDS crisis, journalist Ned Weekes and doctor Emma Brookner fight against complacency, prejudice, bureaucracy, and denial to raise awareness of and raise funds for research into, a new disease that is killing gay men at an alarming rate.
Cast & Creative
Cast
Mark Burton
Cast
Richard Cordery
Cast
Philip Cade
Cast
Frank Copperstone
Cast
Nancy Crane
Cast
Angelo Gibson
Cast
Ian Keith
Cast
Stuart Fox
Cast
John Shea
Cast
Aaron Swartz
Designer
Geoff Rose
Lighting
Gerry Jenkinson
Costume
Cathie Skilbeck
Deputy Stage Manager
Fiona Bardsley
What our readers said
Loosely inspired by real events, the play documents how those attempting to see off what would become a devastating global epidemic were blocked at every turn. At the same time, it is an intimate portrait of gay lives, and loves, in New York in the early 80s.
What’s it like reading this play now? Hows it aged? What does it speak to etc?
The play feels to me like a vital dramatic document of the beginning of an era that we are still living in. It exposes the slowness of politicians, science, and society, in general, to respond to the emergence of HIV-AIDS, despite the best efforts of individual medics and members of civil society.
What does it tell us about the past and present?
It reminds us that the virus that is more treatable now than ever was once a mystery, and a deadly one and that it took the efforts of the LGBTQIA community to force action on the part of the powers that should have been investigating. It warns us against complacency.
