TRIAGE
Yet The Normal Heart is one of the most effective plays I’ve ever seen, and I’ve often wondered how Kramer pulled it off.
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Both plays are packed with information about their respective topics, and both revolve around a quixotic attempt to deal with crisis.
The threat to quit the world also brings a visit from Baron Wim van Bilderberg, the administrative director of the Central Organization of Industrialized Nations (COIN), a powerful financial cartel. His arrival in the republic’s council chamber, where he confronts the president of the republic and her ministers, sets the stage for the central debate of the play.
So Triage falls to illuminate the causes of world hunger, and it fails to prescribe a viable course of action for ending it. But it’s not totally useless–when you consider it next to something like The Normal Heart, it serves to expose the qualities of good drama in the same way that mediocre poetry exposes the genius of Shakespeare.
