Just got tickets for Friday the 13th, based pretty much on the good comments in this thread and FB postings by people who has just seen it.
I was going to avoid this because the original production will forever be seared in my memory, because it and William Hoffman's As Is (which opened around the same time) were beautifully written plays that seemed like documentaries of the lives we were living. I had lost two friends by early 1985, and one was still healthy enough to be an understudy in As Is, but would would soon be counted among the lost boys. I can't even estimate the number or percentage of friends who were sick.
When Brad Davis, the throbbingly beautiful actor who played Ned, died of AIDS in 1991 (actually of assisted suicide), memories of the production took on an additionally sad and ironic life-imitating-art aspect. From 1985 when the two plays opened to 1995, when the new meds started to roll out, AIDS was just ubiquitous--everywhere we looked, someone else was getting sick.
And Larry and Ned's anger was how we felt--or how we felt we ought to feel when all we felt was tired of being angry, tired of being careful, tired of getting tested, tired of going to hospitals, tired of going to memorial services.
I've come to accept that I will be disappointed by almost any revival of a play or musical that thrilled me when I was younger. They used to make me angry, but unlike Larry Kramer, I grow less angry as I grow older. It's not how I feel about a revival, in the scheme of things--it's about how someone with no history reacts to it.
So I was really surprised and impressed over the past few days as I started to hear people talk about the show and use terms like "moved" and "shell-shocked" and "made me think about my life and who I am."
All those comments are from people who were too young to know what people my age were going through...or not even born yet!
So I bought two tickets. And I hope it runs longer.
