Angels in America deserves highest marks for several reasons. The sheer audacity of staging nearly eight hours of theater is a major challenge in itself; add to this the responsibility of presenting an iconic play with the fresh perspective of years and hindsight; and to top it off, both Andrew Garfield as the stricken Prior Walter and Nathan Lane as the repugnant Roy Cohn give earth-shatteringly brilliant performances. This is the go big or go home moment of the season, and the audience that takes in the pageant is dazzled. However, everything is not perfect. The chalk white, awe inspiring, and terrifying Angel has become bedraggled and more than a little nutty. This shifts the balance of the play from mystical to hallucinatory. Lee Pace gives us a Joe Pitt that is so chilly and self-serving, it’s hard to imagine why his wife still professes her love for him. And to be honest, time doesn’t fly by when the philosophy takes over from the drama. The Angel’s speech is largely incomprehensible, and the beginning scenes of both Part I and Part II simply drone on way too long. The shouting becomes exhausting, and a major flaw in the play is that the repetition of the same arguments dims our interest. Yes, Joe is a schmuck and yes, Louis (James McArdle) is a weasel; we get that without being hit over the head with the same shouting and denunciations repeated time after time. Part of the genius of both Garfield and Lane is that they are never boring, no matter how many times they reiterate the points they make. It’s problematic to accept a woman playing various male characters; Susan Brown does the best job possible as Rabbi Chemelwitz, the Russian Prelapsarianov, and Henry, but it’s still distracting to look past the gender. On the same note, seeing major players in smaller parts takes us out of the moment. The only exception is Pace; his stolid persona works perfectly as Prior’s Anglo-Saxon ancestor. These criticisms aside, there is much to praise, especially in the performances. The highest complement I can give Denise Gough as Harper Pitt is that she reminds me of Jenn Colella, of Come from Away fame, in both looks and talent. She presents us with a Harper who is solidly grounded in her own Valium fueled reality. She and Joe should be living a perfect life, with their Mormon faith as a solid base, and their love for each other as a bulwark against the often-jarring world outside. Instead, she’s petrified, aware of the fact that something in her marriage is desperately wrong. Where does Joe go on his long walks? Why is their sex life so unsatisfying for both of them? Belize is an almost fool-proof character; the audience naturally loves him from his first to his last appearance. Nathan Stewart-Jarrett plays the role to the hilt and leaves us more entertained every time he enters the scene. This is the 25th anniversary of the original production. At the time, it was considered mind blowing, and even scandalous. To have AIDS was to have received a death sentence, and a particular kind of madness reigned supreme, from the ever-present terror of the gay community to the seemingly indifference of the Reagan administration. Now that HIV has gone from being an always-fatal plague to a chemically managed nightmare, it would stand to reason that Angels in America would have lost its impact. How disappointing it is that we are still fighting the battle of discrimination and lack of empathy all these years later, and how hard it is to fight the depression and inertia so many of us feel. But we cannot continue to throw our aprons over our heads over the current political climate, wailing that we don’t know how this happened. We must take the situation in hand and reverse the downward spiral of our civilization. In the words of the Angel, “The great work begins.”
