2004's Best -- Stage

10 The Normal Heart (Off Broadway) Twenty years later, many imagined that Larry Kramer's scorching screed about the early days of the AIDS crisis would play like a period piece. Instead, director David Esbjornson's revival revealed the play as a work of wrenching political theater that has lost none of its power to move an audience to tears and outrage. As Kramer's brilliant, vain, maddening alter ego Ned Weeks, Raúl Esparza added another knockout performance to what's fast becoming the most impressive résumé of any young stage actor in New York.