As Is

In 1985, when William Hoffman's drama As Is arrived on Broadway, AIDS was still very new and very, very terrifying. HIV had just been discovered, but there were no medications to treat it. Patients were shunned by co-workers, landlords, friends, family, even funeral homes.

The disease was a virtual death sentence. And the epicenter of the epidemic was taking place within a one-mile radius of St. Vincent's Hospital. That today, several people reading this are probably asking "What's St. Vincent's Hospital?" is only one of the markers that separate 1985 from 2010. (For the record, it was the Greenwich Village hospital that was known for treating AIDS patients. The hospital itself died recently.)

When I saw As Is at its Broadway transfer in the mid-'80s, it had an immediacy and emotional impact that is difficult to judge from the good-hearted, if uneven, revival taking place on West 42nd's Theater Row. Like The Normal Heart, which opened at the same time and also received a recent New York revival, As Is deals with issues, situations and a mind-set that may seem as foreign to young gay men today as the Nazis to Germans coming of age in the 1960s.

The Normal Heart and As Is present interesting bookends to the early days of the crisis. Larry Kramer's play takes the political as personal. His first-hand look at the political and community response is a long, suppressed scream at the inaction on all levels, from Washington to family doctors.

As Is takes the opposite tack. It's the personal as political. Rich, the WASPy writer who contracts the virus, doesn't fulminate against the do-nothing politicians who have allowed this disease to spread. Like most of the early victims, he blames his circumstances, the luck of the drawer, and --�not a little -- himself.

His ex-partner and devoted caregiver Saul is much more practical, if often a bit too verklempt (it's a Yiddish word for "way too overcome with emotion"; Saul would know what it means). It's Hoffman's genius to make these two men ciphers for what was happening all around them while keeping them flesh-and-blood, three-dimensional characters.

The playwright came out of the Caffe Cino innovative off-off-Broadway crowd. Athough As Is employs a more conventional narrative than some of those off-the-way "happenings," it still presents a director with structural problems.

The scenes are episodic. Athough there is a narrative flow, it comes in fits and starts, sometimes interrupted by fourth-wall-breaking scenes like the one where representative Americans describe the first time they heard about AIDS.

Given the limitations of a tiny stage and few props, the director, who is Hoffman himself, does as much as can. The transition from the Saul and Rich apartment to a hospital room is especially nifty and economical.

The dialogue in the dives where Rich lands to try to drink and fuck his way out of his problems seemed pretty hotsy-stuff for Broadway in the '80s. Now, my mother probably knows what fisting is. I'm not sure if that's why Hoffman played the bar scenes largely for laughs. Admittedly the dialogue does seem like self-parody at times, but believe it or not, lots of people actually spoke this way. (Hey, there's a reason why they were called the Village People.)

What makes the play seem more shaky is the uneven cast. Todd Michael's Saul came across as too controlling; the Jewish mother aspects of his character should emerge as Rich deteriorates, not presented in the first scene as a yenta. As Rich, Jeff Auer excudes anger, occasionally at times when a more moderate tone may have fit the words better.

The rest of the large (for such a small production) cast do well with their multiple rolls, with Jessica Luck getting a special mention for her nifty underplaying of her characters.

if 1985 was the year AIDS finally broke into the arts -- not only the two plays but An Early Frost on TV and the film Parting Glances a year later -- no one work, not even Kramer's excellent polemic, best captures the terror, flight and fellow feeling of those dark early days of the epidemic when an "every man for himself" ethos fought with a sense that we'd might as well hang together.

Anyone interested in where we started, how far we've come, or just a damn good play should get to West 42nd Street. And at $15 for all seats, it's one of the best deals in town.