Nathan Lane, Andrew Garfield and Lee Pace headline an instant-classic revival of Tony Kushner's great play
At nearly eight hours, unfolding over two parts, the Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” is a significant commitment, temporal and financial. But one of the countless wonders of this instant-classic production is the way it energizes, instead of enervates, as it goes along, expanding in scale and scope, spinning out one surprise after another. By the time the stage literally cracks open near the end of the second part, and the main character Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) ascends a neon staircase to heaven, this “Angels in America” has placed its audience in a sustained state of exhilaration.
Or perhaps the better word is “rapture,” given the heady theological concerns of the show, which follows nearly thirty characters reckoning with the AIDS crisis in mid-1980s New York City. Kushner’s play detonated like a bomb when it was first mounted in the early 1990s, in part because of its audacious mixture of the political, personal and philosophical, but also because it asserted a never-before-granted place for gay characters at the center of a story Shakespearean in scale and Dostoyevskian in moral complexity. “We will be citizens,” Prior declares, in his now-famous concluding monologue. “The time has come.”
Twenty-five years later, some of “Angels” has admittedly dated — especially its one-liners related to the likes of Ed Koch and Lillian Hellman, likely to sail over the head anyone in the audience under forty. More often, though, this production confirms how trenchant and indeed prophetic Kushner’s drama was and remains, especially in its pitiless grief for a generation of gay men whose internalized homophobia destroyed themselves and others, and in its expansive and hopeful vision of a future of equality.
As directed beautifully by Marianne Elliot (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”), “Angels in America” is also a rip-roaring, vastly entertaining melodrama, one that defies easy summary, but that features real-life characters like erstwhile Donald Trump lawyer Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane) and Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown) interacting with fictional figures, such as the neurotic Louis Ironson (James McArdle), his AIDS-stricken lover Prior, their friend Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett ) and the Mormon couple, Joe Pitt (Lee Pace) and Harper (the superb Denise Gough, most recently seen here in “People, Places & Things”).
Nathan Lane plays lawyer Roy Cohn in the new Broadway revival of “Angels in America,” now playing at the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway (Photo by Brinkhoff & Mogenburg) The first past, “Millennium Approaches,” is the more modest affair, and Elliot contains most of the action to three, neon-framed revolving sets. But the show builds in both emotional force and visual grandeur, culminating in the thrilling appearance of the Angel (Amanda Lawrence), here rendered with feathery wings and wearing a tattered American flag dress, and operated by a group of spandex-clad figures referred to in the program as the “Angel Shadows.” (The set design is by Ian MacNeil; the costumes are by Nicky Gillibrand.) That sets up the altogether sweeping and magnificent second part, “Perestroika,” which glides from one dazzling set piece (at one point, Prior very literally wrestles with his angel) to the next (a Mormon diorama that comes magically alive).
This production originated at London’s National Theatre, and its current incarnation features a mix of British and American performers; if there’s any complaint here, it’s that a few of the actors — especially McArdle and Brown — don’t entirely sound American. But the performances are all so committed and deeply felt that any initial reservations fade away.
And the three men at the center of the show would, in a just world, tie for the Best Actor Tony: Garfield offers a wrenching, intensely physical take on Prior, drawing us completely into his descent into illness and semi-madness. Lane finds notes of gentleness and levity in the monstrous Cohn, offering up a much more sympathetic and tortured figure than you might expect.
And the revelation of the show is Pace, whose performance — alternately stoic and desperate, ice-cold and burning hot — makes the case that Joe Pitt is this impossibly complex and original show’s most tragic and complicated figure.
Angels in America
Part One: Millennium Approaches
Part Two: Perestroika
Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52nd St, New York
Tickets: $ 79-$ 598; available for each part or both; online at www.ticketmaster.com. Through July 1.
Christopher Kelly may be reached at ckelly@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chriskelly74. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.