The faultless ensemble includes an impeccable John Benjamin Hickey as the first man to break through Ned’s defenses and Ellen Barkin as an early AIDS doctor, who brings down the house with a frustrated tirade about the slow official response to the epidemic. Pace commands tears with a superb account of the death of his lover, a passage that holds its own against the most gruesome messenger monologues of Greek tragedy. Jim Parsons provides exemplary comic relief and unexpected depth as a Southern activist in Ned’s group, and Patrick Breen, Mark Harelik, Luke Macfarlane, Richard Topol and Wayne Alan Wilcox offer admirable support. The entire company acts up a storm, and the production leaves you drenched. The Normal Heart is hectoring, stiff and one-sided; it is also raw, scary and galvanizing. That’s Kramer in a nutshell, and his kind of nuts we still need.