Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
By: Tony Kushner / Narrated By: Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Susan Brown, Denise Gough, Beth Malone, James McArdle, Lee Pace, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Bobby Cannavale, Edie Falco
Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
Well done, with the definite feel of the time, but oh heavens…
…is it overwrought, or what?!
Lemme share just how old I am: I had just gotten to UTAustin for my first year of college and was rooming with my first roommate. Her family of origin was teeming with kids brought up as strict Catholics, so what did every single one of them turn out to be? Mavericks!
I have memories of tooling around town in the 80s with her gay brother and his friends who very much embraced “The Hedonistic Lifestyle” that conservative nay-sayers touted was the gay community’s undoing. The music would be blasting, he and his friends were soooo over the top with their observations and declarations, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.
Several years later, that group would be decimated by AIDS, leaving my friend missing her brother desperately. Yup, those were different times, and I’ve triiiiiied to keep them in mind as I’ve listened to Angels in America, have triiiiiiied to “see” it in the way her brother and his friends might have experienced the play. Would they have been laughing? Assuredly. Would they have been crying? Most DEFinitely. And I can certainly feel that they’d have been babbling excitedly about it forEVER after it, would have been quoting lines and tossing them back and forth at each other forEVER after it… had they but lived.
So I’m giving this production the respect that it’s due, but I also think that it’s oh my goodness, soooo overwrought. I kept thinking to myself, “If I have to hear Prior giggle hysterically one. more. time! I’ll SHOOT m’self!” Or, “If I have to hear the (Fabulous!) Nathan Lane shriek in profanity-ridden hostility instead of speaking, one. more time! Dang, I shall just DIE!”
Prior and Louis are living in fear, having buried so many friends who sickened, failed, died. And Prior is very, very sick himself. When his current bout of ailments has him terrified and collapsing in a pool of bloody urine, Louis calls 911 and then hotfoots away, after just a single visit to Prior when he’s hospitalized. ImMEDiately, Louis is screwing around with Joe Pitt, Mormon Republican extraordinaire who’s juuuuuust coming out of the closet (After haranguing his wife that SHE’S why, with her valium addiction, he seeks to be away “on long walks” most of the time). And basically the story progresses as the disease progresses through Prior’s body, through the body of lawyer Roy Cohn. THE Roy Cohn, who is visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whom he personally lobbied the death penalty for.
It’s a LOT of hallucinations/visions/dreams, it’s melodrama Melodrama MELODRAMA as ain’t it all so terrible, and ain’t each one of us divine in our own right, whether we’re straight or gay, clean or addicted, calm or desperately hysterical (i.e. All that maniacal giggling)? I get it, it was AWFUL back then in the 80s when gays just weren’t Reagan’s people, so why show any interest? It. Was. AWFUL!
But does that mean THE Go To Classic for the era has to be THIS? Cutting edge at the time, sure, and gave voice to the lost and abandoned souls suffering alone. But did it have to have a revival? I KNOW, NOT the thing to say, but each of the characters were just insufferable and miserable. Only Belize, the ex-drag queen and current nurse who’s guiding his community through racism, and an epidemic, touched me. The rest just shrieked and giggled, moaned and judged. And oh. my. GOD: Louis! He’s written to where he goes off on looooong judgmental tangents that give Liberals a bad name. Having a character like that? Oh GOD, did I want to throttle him, or what? His character certainly had my teeth on edge even from the get-go before he abandons Prior. And Prior calling calling calling Belize even at work, making him sing for him, (Yes, while Belize is AT WORK). I didn’t find that sweet, I found it domineering and the Black guy making the high-strung white guy feel okay.
The acting was well done if hyper, with Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Belize being standouts. Denise Gough as the valium-popping Harper Pitt, she who’s discovered her husband will NEVER love her as much as she loves him, is also well done… once she got past her frantic tones. But everybody else? Aaaaallll uptight and frenzied, it was exHAUSting.
I wish I could say this is soooo ICONIC, such a searing indictment, is of a keen-eyed intelligence with razor-sharp representations, blah blah once again ICONIC blah.
But it just shredded my ears and destroyed my last nerve. Sorry, y’all, it made me roll my eyes and groan.
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