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Play readings on Zoom are a pandemic placeholder few theater-lovers will be sad to give up. But they have on occasion provided an opportunity to experiment with casting, shedding fresh light on a role, a performer and even a playwright.
A reading of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” a benefit for the ONE Archives Foundation, did just that on Saturday night. Sterling K. Brown and Laverne Cox were the headliners in an ensemble directed by Paris Barclay.
Many were no doubt tuning into see what Cox, the “Orange Is the New Black” star, would do with the role of Dr. Emma Brookner, the pioneering AIDS doctor who sounds the alarm from her motorized wheelchair that a mysterious new disease is cutting a deadly swath through the gay community.