This is the third time I’ve seen Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes including the original run and the 2003 television version. The piece was originally commissioned by Oscar Eustis (then with Eureka Theater in San Francisco) as a play about “gays, Jews, and Mormons.” Author Tony Kushner had no epic ambitions when he surprised himself by creating the 7 hour, 24 character, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner- in two parts, later joined.
Kushner set his saga in 1985. He laid siege to the AIDS epidemic with an implicit call to arms and explored coming out into the gay community, both personal issues. That the writer did so on a much larger canvas keeps the piece timely. Utilizing myth, religion, and archetypes, he pit a fatalistic angelic messenger convinced humanity will kill the earth (addressing environmental issues and greed) against the indomitable hope of a gay man who prefers life – even dealing with Kaposi’s sarcoma to Heaven.
James McArdle and Andrew Garfield
Angels is both specific and monumental. Characters are sympathetic, politics so sharp, the author draws blood (literally and figuratively), religion knowledgeably manifest, bigotry excoriated (without preaching). Shockingly, the playwright’s arch sense of humor has us laughing through an obstacle course of tragedy – illness, fear, cruelty. The accomplishment is masterful.
We orbit two couples. Joseph Pitt (Lee Pace) is a handsome, Republican Mormon who works as a law clerk while being groomed by powerful lawyer/McCarthy ally, Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane). The young man is either naïve or obtuse, seemingly unaware of his mentor’s reputation. Joe is adamantly in the closet, but married to Harper (Denise Gough) which has reduced his fragile wife to a life of Valium, vivid hallucinations, and despair. A nighttime voyeur so full of self loathing he’s a gay virgin, Joe takes secret walks.
Denise Gough and Lee Pace
Louis (James McArdle) has spent four years in a loving relationship with Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), named for ancestry that goes back to the 1500s. When it’s discovered that Prior has AIDS, Louis at first breaks down – the sick man ends up comforting him, then dumps his partner in a hospital and flees. Friend and nurse, Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) takes care of the patient with tenderness and dry wit.
The couples’ lives are woven together in multiple ways. Cohn, aware his protege is gay, is himself so deep in the closet, he insists on being registered at the hospital as a liver cancer patient when diagnosed with AIDS. Pulling strings is easy. The megalomaniac is locked in searing combat with the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Amanda Lawrence) whose death he personally arranged when it appeared as if she’d get off. Belize is Cohn’s embattled nurse.
Andrew Garfield and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
Joe and Louis meet in the park and the Mormon awkwardly pursues his first gay affair. He then telephones his mother (Susan Brown) in Utah to confess. Consequences are extremely unexpected. Harper and Prior bond in each other’s dreams (or hallucinations).
Prior is visited by forebears heralding an astonishingly realized ANGEL (Amanda Lawrence). The AIDS victim is deemed a prophet. He’s petrified and confused, not the least because the winged creature’s presence inevitably produces a colossal hard-on. (I can think of few directors able to evocatively depict sex with a member of the Heavenly Host. This one can.)
Lee Pace, Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane (Pace and Lane are forebears)
Andrew Garfield should get the Tony Award. He’s astonishing. Never before has the actor shown such range and fearlessness. Meticulous choices have been made about Prior’s expressive physicality as well as his interior life. The sheer range of emitted sounds is marvelous. Garfield’s grounding helps us experience extraordinary occurrences without questioning them.
Nathan Lane’s embodiment of Roy Cohn first appears to be yet another sarcastic, quipping version of so many previous roles. I was fearful the actor would give us more of the same. In fact, by his second scene, Lane takes Cohn in his maw and rips into him with equal understanding and lack of mercy. Venal and precise.
Nathan Lane; Susan Brown
James McArdle in the emotionally wrenching, less spot-lit role of Louis, turns himself inside out displaying a wracked conscience with which it’s easy to empathize. McArdle’s character represents legions of petrified lovers, friends, family members, hospital workers…all who fearfully turned away when most needed. In the same way, Lee Pace’s Joe stands in for those gay men (and women) cowed by religion, parents, and bigoted society, riddled with guilt, unable to live who they are. The depth of Joe’s swift immersion into a relationship where he could be himself and its consequences are well served by the actor.
As portrayed by Denise Gough, Harper Pitt wears her nerves on the outside. Dibilitated by strained connection and unrequited desire, the character began to lose her mooring before we meet. Reality is now transient. It’s a credit to the actor that we take the journey without attempting to analyze it. Performance is visceral.
Nathan Stewart-Jarrett who plays dual roles, shines as Belize who says more in fewer words and a look than anyone on stage. Stewart-Jarrett moves and speaks with a beautifully pronounced lilt. His timing is pitch perfect.
James McArdle, Susan Brown, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Andrew Garfield – at Bethesda Fountain
The rest of the cast is extremely able with Amanda Lawrence’s supple Angel and Susan Brown’s Ethel Rosenberg stand-outs. Most actors play multiple roles. Ahead of its time, this meant and means women additionally play men.
Also featuring Angel Shadows/Puppeteers: Rowan Seamus Magee, Matty Oaks, Jane Pfitsch, Ron Todorowski, Silvia Vrskova, Lucy York sinuously moving furniture and people with all but unseen hands.
Director Marianne Elliott (The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night, War Horse…) helms an inspired production. Intimacy is treated with perception and empathy. Ghosts wisely appear with no fuss. The Angel is magnificent; graceful, intractable, frightening – decidedly not in the white-robed tradition of other productions. Acting focus is total. Physicality is bold and character specific. A brave realization.
In Part I, Set Designer Ian MacNeil employs several, side by side, revolving rooms and a self contained foyer that rises through the stage floor. The only decoration besides minimal furniture are strips of neon light making Cohn’s office, Prior’s bedroom, and the hospital institutionally alike. Though scenes fluidly change, antiseptic blandness is unappealing, the neon too disco. Even Cohn’s apartment which should be nouveau riche is dull.
In Part II, however, MacNeil comes up with some marvelous visuals. There’s a scene where we’re observing Cohn in his hospital bed. Past him we see Louis bleeding on the floor of his apartment and further to the rear, Prior in his bedroom. Juxtaposition is terrific. A ladder to (and from) Heaven? is nifty as is what appears to be “the control room” up there. In fact, Prior’s journey back to earth through a hole in the clouds, the ozone? is balletic. And oh the “ceiling/sky.”
Costumes by Nicky Gillibrand are both street real (Belize’s taste is a treat) and, when called for, utterly magical.
Adrian Sutton (Music) and Ian Dickinson (Sound Design for Autograph) evoke both the apocalyptic and earthly with equal skill. Sounds accompanying singular phenomona are perfect.
Puppet Design by Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes is heady, elegant (angels) and unorthodox.
Photos by Brinkhoff & Mogenburg
Opening: Angel-Amanda Lawrence
The National Theatre Production of
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd Street
