Angels in America part 1: an intimate epic

2 Dec 2023 - Photos by Nathan Nash

It was thirty years ago that Angels in America opened on Broadway. The play was set almost a decade before that, in the '80s when even less was understood about AIDS. Tony Kushner (Caroline or, Change) wrote a fierce, angry, epic play that hasn't mellowed in the production now at Buddies. While AIDS is now seen as manageable with "undetectable means untransmissible" and Prep, the horror and the helplessness that we felt at that time is instantly conjured by many scenes. A wound that is easily ripped open and that is agonizing. Audience members too young to have experienced those terrible days or all that loss, may have a different reaction. I can't speak for them, I first saw Angels in America when my friends were dying and having our experience on the stage, mythologized and analyzed, simply taken seriously with near operatic passion, was healing and galvanizing. So it is, with trepidation, that I approached this revival of Angels of America.

As familiar as I am with the play—I've seen two different theatrical productions, watched the HBO version twice, read and re-read the text, and reviewed the filmed version of the star-studded production by Britain's National Theatre. So the most shocking thing about this production directed by Craig Pike (Shove It Down My Throat, Lulu v7: Aspects of a Femme Fatale), was how fresh it felt. The staging is simple, naturalistic and brisk, placing most of the emphasis on the words. This allows Kushner's supernatural and religious elements to slide in unobtrusively and, until the climactic moment, seem integral to everyday life. There is much discussion of the nature of visions, hallucinations and dreams, all of which of course, ties back into the theatrical production we are witnessing and participating in. The words and ideas arrive in torrents, Kushner writes in high gay, goes for baroque, and everyone is suspiciously articulate. But in riding the stream of verbiage and ideas, new ones appeared. An argument between Roy Cohn and Joe revealed a new layer to Kushner's pointed dissection of gay: Cohn was a complete aberration, and perhaps validated his self-identification as a "heterosexual who fucks around with men," because a gay man could, obviously, not be that evil.

Louis has a long speech about politics that is simultaneously a parody of Kushner's own overwriting. While the speech exists partially just for Belize to puncture it and point out that it is less intellectualizing and more attempting to rationalize guilt for abandoning Prior, it also contains the sentences that give the play its title. And forces the dramatic personal is political thrust of the writing. A simple nugget of truth that needed to be polished so it stood out enough to register. Very sensitive work with the text. The only staging flaw is an insufficient grapple with the set design which is an elongated thrust stage with audience on both sides of the action. While the proximity is breathtaking, inevitably, there are moments when one is forced to watch the back of an actor's head when a simple angling would have relieved it. There is also a passage, right at the end of the play, where Prior cowers in terror. Cowers and unfortunately also is forced to narrate a frenzied unnecessary exposition. However all is forgiven when the climax arrives. A difficult theatrical image done with a twist, flair and emotional heft.

 
While at its heart, Angels in America is a play about gays and AIDS and all the complicated responses to both, but Kushner is also concerned with immigration, with the idea of America as the product of immigrants. So we have rabbis, a trip to Antarctica, ghosts from the Mayflower, a biracial nurse/drag queen, etc. Gay and AIDS do not exist in a bubble, they are part of the fabric and crop up in the most unexpected places. Intriguingly, there is also a speech about Republicans stacking the Supreme Court under Reagan's watch, which gets a knowing, rueful laugh from the audience. There is much humour and comedy amongst the terror and anger fuelling Angels in America. Much of it bittersweet, all of it heartfelt. And whenever it becomes too much, as in life, gayspeak comes to the rescue. Prior even stands on his bed, shouts defiance to the heavens, snapping bitterly that he is a gay man and has already seen the worst that could possibly be and has survived. And will survive.

Of course these thoughts are just from experiencing the first half of Angels in America. The cast is uniformly good but two, Jim Mezon (Knives in Hens, Lear, Red) as Roy Cohn and Kaleb Alexander (MixedUp, Pass Over, All's Well That Ends Well/Hamlet, Family Story, Delicacy) have most of their heavy hitting scenes in part 2. Mezon is a nasty, raging Cohn with a shocking fear of rejection he struggles to conceal. Mezon also has a fun time playing a ghostly ancestor of Prior. Alexander does a nice delineation of how gayspeak is used as a defence and an offence, can cut to the quick or completely obfuscate. How a calculatedly limp wrist can deliver the most stinging of slaps. Christine Horne (Prince Hamlet, Tom at the Farm) delivers a Harper so fragile yet practical that she tips the balance of sympathy in her favour. Impressive when the audience was predominantly queer. Wade Bogert-O'Brien in the central role of Joe initially confused me by treating Kushner's words as iambic pentameter, giving them a disconcerting flatness contradicted by his expressive physicality. Then, when his portrayal of a ghost was set to a rollicking rhythm, it snapped into place: a closeted man, particularly a man hiding his sexuality even from himself, is going to modulate his voice to a masculine monotone while his anguish and desires play across his face and gestures.

Brenda Bazinet and Soo Garay will also get bigger moments in part 2, but they sketch multiple characters with precision. And of course Garay gets an entrance to end all entrances. Ben Sanders almost makes Louis likeable, but doesn't shy from the pomposity or the terror that drives him. In the integral leatherman buttfucking scene, Sanders is fearless and the counterpoint timing with Mezon's dance of denial makes Kushner's observations about gay guilt seem more sagacious than they are. That leaves Allister MacDonald (Stage Mother) as Prior, having to navigate the most difficult arc in the show. Prior begins as pitch black comic relief, covering his vulnerabilities with gayspeak, drag and denial. That he grows into a prophet worthy of grappling with an angel, without losing any of those attributes, is a a contradiction of our standard judgment of gender roles. MacDonald is flippant and petrified as he flings out quips and innuendo before collapsing into real emotions. It is a tough balance and I found MacDonald a touch brittle but expect that to be remedied. Because yes, despite having made a vow to avoid any productions longer than two hours, I will be heading back for the second three and a half hour of Angels in America part 2. Part of it is admiration for tackling such a daunting play so well, part of it is wanting to continue being shown a classic not reinvented, but refracted from a slightly different angle, an intimate interpretation. An intimate epic. And of course it is because part 1 ends with the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers and "the great work has begun."