Review: Angels in America Stutters, Then Soars

When "Angels in America" debuted on Broadway on May 4, 1993, America was a much tougher country in which to be gay. There was no gay marriage anywhere; the U.S. was six months away from instituting the military policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; and the death rate from AIDS was skyrocketing.

But the country was also on the cusp of change. A week before the play opened, nearly a million people marched on Washington for "Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation." On May 5, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples was unconstitutional (the legislature later restricted marriage to mixed-sex couples). There were preliminary results of a trial for a new AIDS drug, called AZT, which would become the first antiretroviral drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of HIV.

When Tony Kushner's masterwork "Angels in America" (presented in two parts) exploded onto the stage as "a gay fantasia on national themes," it was capturing the zeitgeist. It used poetic language and grand imagery to represent both the despair and the hope of LGBT people who were fighting to be recognized. It elevated their struggle to an eight-hour epic that, in the world of the play, captured the attention of heaven.

It was extraordinary.

The current production at the Neil Simon Theatre doesn't have that same power — how could it? But it still resonates, especially in "Part Two: Peresroika," though in a different way. It now feels less about the fight of gay people in particular and more about the battle of anyone who is unrecognized and straining to be heard in an country where the political system doesn't care about them.

Andrew Garfield plays Prior Walker, a gay man living in New York City who learns he is HIV positive (a death sentence at the time). His partner Louis (James McArdle) will leave him because he cannot cope. At the same time, another couple has troubles of their own. Joe Pitt (Lee Pace) is realizing that, although he is a devout Mormon, he is also gay; and his wife, Harper (Denise Gough), is struggling with mental illness brought on by the secret he is keeping. But Kushner's work is far stranger than just a domestic drama. Involved with the two couples are Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane), Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown), an Eskimo, a travel agent, and, of course, several angels.

"Part One: Millennium Approaches" is undercut by a kind of hysteria and fussiness. The sets draw attention to themselves by constantly spinning to become different sets; the acting is overblown. Harper, for example, is falling apart from the first moment we meet her. Though it is an exquisitely vulnerable performance from Gough, a Harper without anger or toughness is a Harper who seems more like a child than an adult woman. It's immediately understandable why Joe wants to leave her.

But in "Perestroika," everything is different. The stage becomes a modified black box in most scenes, with only a rim of neon to define sets. The play becomes weirder — one scene is set in Antarctica — but the acting becomes more restrained, more nuanced. The characters become more real and it is easier to identify with their suffering and their moral dilemmas. 

And the power of the last hour of "Perestroika" remains almost unmatched in American theater — except now, the context is different. It no longer is talking about the specter of AIDS and homophobia, but instead about a looming American conservatism and triumphalism. Yet, in the midst of that, it finds the most precious, powerful thing of all: hope.

Angels in America. By Tony Kushner, directed by Marianne Elliott, at the Neil Simon Theatre.