The Destiny of Me

Funny, gutsy, and unabashedly emotional, Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me has the power to hit us where it hurts – in the heart. AIDS activist Ned Weeks, the subject of Kramer’s earlier play The Normal Heart, checks himself into an experimental treatment program run by the very doctor that his militant organization has been criticizing most. Frightened of dying from the disease, Ned finds himself fighting to get a little more time among the living – and to figure out his life. Through Kramer’s use of daring stagecraft, Ned, from his hospital bed, reenters his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, talking with the boy he once was and with whom he still hasn’t come to terms. Seeing his past through the dual vision of a child’s and an adult’s eyes becomes a stunning revelatory experience, filled with anger and laughter, understanding and irreconcilable absurdity. All the while Ned, the patient, engages his doctor and nurse in a caustic verbal exchange about AIDS research, treatment, and activism. Stirring theater, as well as provocative, exciting reading, The Destiny of Me is great American drama, and Larry Kramer is an artist with the skill to make words, like scalpels, cut our feelings to the bone.