Let’s forgive a play that has everything in it but the second coming (wait, this is only part one) for being hailed as the second coming itself, but let’s also take it for what it is: a sprawling, very long, but not boring work of throbbing emotion that has moments of genius balancing its pretension, overwriting, and more-familiar elements. The great stuff is Roy Cohn’s as he grooms young aide, Joe Pitt, for unethical politics. But the married Mormon wants no part of it. Unfortunately, he also wants no part of his pill-popping wife (Marcia Gay Harden), as he is a latent homosexual who’s outgrowing his closet. Instead, he finds himself drawn to motor-mouthed Louis, who carries his own devastating secret: he dumped his lover, Prior, rather than deal with Prior’s worsening AIDS.
These three intersecting stories would be enough for good drama, but author Tony Kushner adds elements of the fantastical, which probably sounded better on paper than they feel on stage (the “flaming aleph” is a particularly goofy image). Credit George C. Wolfe for making the talkier scenes move, but he should handle the big arguments with more subtlety; there’s a lot of shouting in Angels. Still, thanks to Kushner, Wolfe, and actor Ron Leibman, Roy Cohn's hell is theater heaven.
