Theater stages entire six-hour epic 'Angels in America'
Thanks to Boston Theatre Works, the Little Theater Company That Could, Tony Kushner's Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play "Angels in America" will be performed in full for the first time in 10 years.
Both parts of the epic theatrical event, "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika," are being staged in repertory at the Boston Center for the Arts' Calderwood Pavilion through Feb. 16, with a couple marathon weekends (where both parts are played back-to-back) on Jan. 30 and Feb. 10.
"People have been telling me I'm crazy for doing this," says co-director Jason Southerland. "I don't find it very fulfilling to just see part one. It's all a run up to the arrival of the angel."
It's a rare theatrical feat to put on the entire convoluted, profanity-ridden (and surprisingly funny) play. The complex story includes homosexual themes (there's a gay Mormon character), religious imagery and political discussions. And with the two parts, it has a total running time of about six hours. Oh, and did we mention that co-directors Southerland and Nancy Curran Willis only had five weeks to pull it all together?
<p style="text-indent: 0in;"> That's why having two directors, very rare in the theater, was important. Southerland needed help from Willis, whom he lovingly describes as "a white, straight, Republican mother."
"Jason and I put our egos aside," explains Willis. "It's not about him being right or me being right. It's about what's right for the production and it doesn't matter whose idea it is. We have a great respect for each other."
"We're like a married couple," continues Southerland. "We work so well together and found that we have such a symbiosis."
"Wait, is that contagious?" quips Willis without missing a beat.
"No," laughs Southerland. "You can live with it now. Joe gets it in part three of 'Angels.'"
<p style="text-indent: 0in;"> The plot is complex and hard to explain, but we'll take a crack at it. Louis and Prior are a gay couple who discover Prior has AIDS, which brings problems to the relationship. Joe Pitt is a closeted homosexual and a Republican law clerk, married to Harper who is addicted to valium, a fact that accounts for many of the visions on stage. Roy Cohn is a lawyer, also a closeted homosexual, trying to recruit Joe. He is a powerful man who describes himself as a "heterosexual…who [has sex with] other guys."
Sounds like a lot? That's only in Act One.
In the play, eight actors perform the 40 roles, so instead of splitting the play up in parts, the directors split it up by relationships.
But even more daunting than the enormity of the production may be the expectations that surround "Angels." The play debuted in 1993 and knocked just about everyone on their Broadway butts. It stretched the boundaries of theater with its scope and subject matter. It presented topics such as homosexuality and AIDS in a way that was topical and edgy. Some argue that, because of "Angels," theatergoers are now more comfortable with plays that don't adhere to traditional styles.
In 2003, HBO released a miniseries based on the play starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Jeffrey Wright (who is an original cast member).
"The film was magnificent," says Willis. "But if you read Kushner's notes in the script, you see there's an element of theatrical magic that's only present in the stage version."
"It raised the bar for the performances," says Southerland about the film. "But you don't get the personal experience of it the same way you would in the theater, which is what we're trying to recapture."
Some argue that "Angels," with its emphasis on AIDS, was a play of the '90s. Others say the play has evolved with the times. When Willis first saw the play, she was first struck with the disease, and how AIDS was in her community (the suburbs) and, at the time, wasn't well known or understood.
"But now the politics of the play is more present for me," says Willis. "I was probably a little offended by the politics back then because I grew up with parents who supported Reagan. And now, even though it's not the Reagan era, there's certainly a sense that the government is not where we want it to be at this point in time."
For Southerland, it's just the opposite.
"It started with the politics," says Southerland. "At the time, I was part of that young gay, disfranchised community. But now that we have people like (Mike) Huckabee running for president, who said that AIDS patients should go on an island so they won't infect anyone else, it's back to the disease."
But in the end, the play is about the simplest things in life: family, community and hope. And it has the audacity to insist that, not only is a better world possible, it's inevitable.
"The play still has hope in the end, and maybe we need that message more than ever given where we are right now," says Willis. "It feels like there's more than just a disease that can kill us."
"Angels in America" (parts one and two)