Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.latimes.misc From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: STAGE REVIEW 'Angels' Compels in Tour of Venal '80s Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 11:08:11 EST Message-ID: HEADLINE: STAGE REVIEW 'Angels' Compels in Tour of Venal '80s Publication Date: Tuesday November 10, 1992 BYLINE: SYLVIE DRAKE Playwright Tony Kushner doesn't believe in censorship or fast exits. If it takes seven hours to say what he has to say, so be it. That's the commitment exacted by the first fully produced staging of both parts of Kushner's much hyped and anticipated "Angels in America" at the Mark Taper Forum. Seven hours in exchange for a chaotic, compelling, wickedly funny, frequently powerful, always serious, occasionally sentimental tour of troubled/troubling America of the 1980s. Subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" and delivered in two nearly equal parts titled "Millennium Approaches" (Part I) and "Perestroika" (Part II), it is a cry for national resolve in the face of past greed and present danger that is easier to embrace in post-election 1992 when change is on the horizon. Most of the episodic rambling that exacerbated "Millennium" when it first played the Taper, Too in 1990 has not disappeared. But the two lengthy parts of Kushner's megawork have gelled into something more complete, self-assured and theatrical--in their penchant for aphorism, for dizzying crossovers between heaven and Earth, hallucination and reality, ritual and religion, plagues and politics, lyricism and harangue. Some of the newfound assurance is the result of this seamless Taper production. Oskar Eustis, who has been with the project since its inception and directed here with Tony Taccone, has pounded and shaped an expert company into a distinctive, fluid ensemble. Our primary tour guides are still the same two ill-fated couples: Prior Walter (Stephen Spinella), afflicted with AIDS, and his homosexual Jewish liberal lover Louis (Joe Mantello), who walks out because he can't cope--and Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt (Jeffrey King), fighting his homosexual tendencies, and a sex-starved wife Harper (Cynthia Mace), who takes refuge in Valium. Harper's self-induced hallucinations spill over into Prior's medically induced ones, sending us on a journey where reality and dreams fatefully, and often comically, intersect. Parallel stories dovetail into a single plot. We become privy to a network of tortured relationships: Joe's with Harper, with his mother Hannah (Kathleen Chalfant) and with Roy Cohn (Ron Leibman); Cohn's with his doctor and his male nurse Belize (K. Todd Freeman); Belize's with Louis and Prior, a former lover; Louis' with everyone, but especially Prior and Joe; Prior's with everyone, but especially an impressive, silver-winged persecuting angel with feet of clay (Ellen McLaughlin). Such descriptions, however, rob the experience of its verbal and situational punch. An escape to Antarctica by the desolate Harper remains too literal and expendable for the good of the play. Ditto the travel agent who arranges it. As a rule, though, Kushner's probings wander successfully beyond predictable bounds. He spars with words--but also metaphysics. God, the play tells us, has vanished from a heaven that "is a city much like San Francisco," and it must be more than coincidence that the disappearance dates to the day of the 1906 earthquake. Kushner loves mixing it up this way, deftly using self-derision to offset self-indulgence, and flat-footed retorts to take the edge off lofty pronouncements. It works. As if his human characters were not enough to inhabit the play, he fills the surrounding air with manifestations. Suspended in the ether are two prior Prior Walters, colorful ancestors (Leibman and King) who want to help--and Ethel Rosenberg (Chalfant), waiting to claim her overdue pound of flesh from the raging, dying Cohn. Some of this confounding of "physics" and "ecstatics" and Kushner's subjective brand of "angelology" are a means to an ironic end: the lampooning of some sacred cows and the expression of personal and political views. How well these work will depend on the degree to which Kushner's views will match those of the viewer. Another tendency may fare less well in the long run: that of tossing trendy-topical references into the dialogue. Theater by its nature is anchored in the present, but quips about Maria Ouspenskaya, "The Phil Donahue Show," Ayn Rand sex scenes or Steven Spielberg effects have a limited shelf life. From the splendid story of the healing fountain of Bethesda to the healing of the ozone layer, "Angels" may be stretching itself a little too thin. But there are moments when both "Millennium" and especially "Perestroika" flirt with the grandeur of Greek tragedy--particularly on that bare stage in front of John Conklin's neo-classical Washingtonian wall riven down the center like the restless nation over which it presides. Race relations, religion, politics, corruption, sexual choice and freedom are all tackled in a variety of provocative ways by a playwright whose strength is his ability to create distinctive, disputatious characters. Spinella, Leibman, Mantello and Freeman may have the most colorful opportunities, but not one performance in the company is less than impressive and none is dimmed by any other. This double-header is a major piece of work that can still use some weeding and makes its most questionable choice in the final moments, when Prior Walter shatters the fourth wall to bless the audience and ask for blessing in return. From observers we suddenly become participants, and what had been a pointed morality play becomes a throwback to the less prepossessing touchy-feely works of the 1970s. The breach comes too late to do serious damage, but it's an unexpectedly limp ending for an otherwise powerful play. * "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes--Part One, Millennium Approaches, and Part Two, Perestroika," Mark Taper Forum, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown. Tonight-Thursday and Nov. 18 at 7:30 p.m.: "Millennium Approaches." Friday, Nov. 20, 24, 25 at 7:30 p.m.: "Perestroika." Nov. 27 and all Saturdays and Sundays: "Millennium" at 1:30 p.m., "Perestroika" at 7:30 p.m. No performances Nov. 16, 17, 23 and 26. Ends Nov. 29. $64 for both parts; $32 for "Millennium" on selected dates; (213) 972-7373. Running time: "Millennium , " 3 hours, 30 minutes; "Perestroika," 3 hours, 45 minutes. Kathleen Chalfant: Hannah Pitt K. Todd Freeman: Belize Jeffrey King: Joe Pitt Ron Leibman: Roy Cohn Cynthia Mace: Harper Pitt Joe Mantello: Louis Ironson Ellen McLaughlin: The Angel Stephen Spinella: Prior Walter A Mark Taper production of a play in two parts by Tony Kushner, presented in association with the New York Shakespeare Festival. Director Oskar Eustis with Tony Taccone. Sets John Conklin. Lights Pat Collins. Costumes Gabriel Berry. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Original music Mel Marvin. Fight director Randy Kovitz. Associate producer Corey Beth Madden. Production stage manager Mary K Klinger. Stage managers James T. McDermott, Jill Ragaway. This article is copyright 1992 The Los Angeles Times Home Edition. 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