Angels in America: Part Two – Perestroika (2017)

*A few spoilers from Part One.*

The second half of Angels in America. As with Part One, it’s a certified beast, over three-and-a-half hours long. Even as there’s plenty to like about this production, and the play itself, I still concede that it doesn’t fully click for me.

After receiving a vision from an Angel, Prior rejects any suggestion that he was just hallucinating due to his illness and wonders what to do about his prophecy, finding guidance in an unlikely source. Roy, who deeply compartmentalizes his work and politics from his sexuality, finds his health declining due to AIDS. Joe has left his wife and entered into an affair with Louis, but as complications arise between them, it’s uncertain whether they’re really able to be together.

In an odd way, Perestroika is both more grounded and more out-there than Millennium Approaches. Things get ugly—with characters’ experiences with HIV, with relationships, with God, and with themselves. Characters try to be better then regress, they find moments of clarity then get wracked by self-doubt, and they laugh in the face of death then cling desperately to this mortal coil. But in amongst a lot of intense reality is also some wildly-fantastical scenes of celestial visitors. Prior gets a glimpse of how small he is within the scope of the heavens, but at the same time, that gives his own tiny life even more value.

The ideas are complex, and while I was able to sink down into some of them, others eluded me. Not sure if it’s just me/my attention span (there honestly aren’t a ton of things that can keep me engaged for over three-and-a-half hours,) or if the production itself is leaving me a little cold.

The cast is the same from Part One. In this half, I’m still especially drawn in by Russell Tovey as Joe, who’s forced to reckon with what he’s made of in serious ways. Susan Brown’s ensemble role is also a standout here. Among others, she plays Joe’s mom Hannah and an apparition who shares a history with Roy, and both roles go to interesting places in Perestroika.

Andrew Garfield continues to not quite work for me as Prior, which is a bummer. I do like him better here than in Millennium Approaches, so that’s a positive. There are more instances here where I feel like his performance is coming from an honest place. But there are still plenty of scenes where I can “see the strings,” so to speak, where I can feel the “Andrew Garfield Plays Gay Leading Role!” headlines writing themselves in the air. It keeps me from being able to settle into his performance and fully relate to Prior as a person, which obviously hampers the proceedings.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, sexual content, language (including homophobic slurs,) drinking, and disturbing imagery.

Angels in America: Part I – Millennium Approaches (2017)

More catch-up reviews. I remember when the Broadway production of this revival cleaned up at the Tony Awards, and so I was intrigued when I saw that the London production, with most of the same cast, was filmed for National Theatre Live. Angels in America is a beast of a theatrical piece, so this is part one of two.

In mid-80s New York City, politics, love, disease, and God all collide. Prior Walter is terrified that his HIV diagnosis will ruin his relationship, and as the virus progresses, he’s revisited by spirits and angels. Shark lawyer Roy Cohn, a coarse opportunist who rubs elbows in high GOP circles, educates his wide-eyed Mormon clerk on “every man for himself” morality.

That summary only really scratches the surface of the play, in which characters from seemingly-separate plots get tangled up in one another and it can be hard to tell the difference between premonition and hallucination. Most of the characters are some flavor of unlikable, almost daring you to be put off by them: pushy, weak-willed, unfeeling, devoted to appearances over truth. Some wear all their fears on their sleeve while others push them down to their detriment, some are morally bankrupt while others are grasping for something to believe in. But they’re also wildly complex, and they start to unpeel themselves like onion layers over the course of the marathon play (on its own, Part I is over three-and-a-half hours.)

This is my third encounter with Angels in America, having already seen the HBO miniseries from 2003 and the recent remote-filmed series of scenes from the play. I feel like, either I’ve never come to the material fully prepared to digest it or maybe it’s not quite for me. I like this production but don’t love it, despite plenty to recommend it. While there are scenes and sections that draw me in, other parts leave me cold, and I can’t connect to it as well as I’d like to.

That said, the production is definitely something. The design contrasts cold city scapes and desolate hospital rooms with the shock of heavenly visions, which range from frightening to comforting to grotesque. When the Angel finally makes her appearance, I love the design and puppetry that goes into realizing her character.

The cast was the biggest thing that drew me to this recording. Unfortunately, Andrew Garfield doesn’t quite work for me as Prior. The performance is very camp and frequently shrill, and while Prior as a character is genuinely dialed to eleven a lot of the time, his personality feels noticeably “performed” in Garfield’s hands. It’s hard for me to feel the truth in it. However, most of his costars are excellent and feel more lived-in in their roles. Former History Boy Russell Tovey is probably my favorite, playing the conflicted, repressed Joe, and I also find Nathan Lane’s performance as Roy really effective. I’m not familiar with James McArdle, who plays Prior’s boyfriend Louis, but he gives a strong performance, as does Denise Gough as Joe’s troubled wife Harper. The supporting players, appearing in multiple roles, all turn in nice work, especially Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, most prominently as Prior and Louis’s friend Belize.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, sexual content, language (including homophobic slurs,) and drinking/drug use.

The Book of Rannells: The Great Work Begins. Scenes from Angels in America (2020)

This is another Andrew Rannells project that I just sort of happened upon on IMDb. I wasn’t anticipating its release, there was no announcement or trailer that I saw, one day it was just there. Released last fall, this is part of the genre of “DIY pandemic art created to raise money for charity,” of which there have been quite a few. It’s a nice piece that highlights one reason that the COVID-19 pandemic might be resonating particularly within the theatre community, and it also demonstrates how far remote projects have come since the early days of the pandemic.

Just what it says on the tin, this hour-long special offers up scenes from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, a handful of vignettes performed by assorted actors. Like many of these pandemic-era fundraiser specials, all the actors filmed themselves remotely and the full piece was stitched together in post-production. The footage of the actors has been placed into different settings, some of which look like photographic backdrops while others are more artistic renderings of a setting around them. There’s also one scene, featuring Prior’s prophetic vision, in which the different actresses’ faces and voices continually shift/meld into one another, giving it an eerie, trippy feel. The overall digital “setting” isn’t exactly on the level of the Volume where Disney shoots The Mandalorian or anything, but the dreamlike quality of it feels fitting for the piece.

It’s completely understandable why people in the Broadway community might draw parallels between COVID-19 and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Apart from the obvious, a pandemic fueled by a devastating new virus, there’s also the failure of government to act as people died and the way that some people felt incited toward hate/bigotry by the crisis. On the whole, I don’t think the special highlights these parallels too much. The most resonant moments, for me, bookend the piece. During the opening score, footage from New York City in the ‘80s is superimposed over an image of that naval ship that was sent to the city in the spring of 2020 to act as an overflow hospital. And Prior’s final monologue is echoed and shared by dozens of people with masks, with a parting intertitle that they’re all people who’ve been affected by COVID, either personally or through their loved ones.

There’s a good cross-section of actors taking part in this. I spied Laura Linney, Paul Dano, and Brandon Uranowitz (I continue to love anyone who was in the Falsettos revival,) and the trippy prophecy sequence features no less than Patti LuPone, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Nikki M. James (who played Nabalungi in the original cast of The Book of Mormon.) A couple of my favorites were Vella Lovell (Heather from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!) playing Harper opposite Andrew Rannells, and the always-excellent Brian Tyree Henry’s take on Prior in the final scene. Additionally, there are some talking heads from Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Cumming, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Rannells plays Prior as well. His scene with Lovell is the first in the special; if you’re familiar with Angels in America, it’s the scene where Prior and Harper seemingly intrude into one another’s hallucinations. Rannells nails the way that Prior’s dramatics and bitchery are partly who he is, partly an attempt to pretend he isn’t scared of what’s coming, and partly a way of holding onto a bit of his dignity and sense of self amid his illness. He handles the opening soliloquy well and then believably plays off of Lovell, even though they both presumably shot their parts separately.

Recommend?

In General­ – If you’re into theatre and/or enjoy art that’s a little out-there, I would. That said, it definitely helps if you’re familiar with Angels in America – I’m not sure how well it would translate to someone who didn’t know the plays.

Andrew Rannells – I think so. Even though he’s only in one scene, Rannells gets to be self-pitying, frightened, angry, skeptical, and funny. During the part of the pandemic that theatre and film/TV productions were shut down, it felt weirdly nice to see actors still having opportunities to flex their acting muscles.

Warnings

Language (including homophobic slurs,) drug references, and strong thematic elements.