Author: David Rooney / Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Andrew Garfield stars as 20th-century prophet Prior Walter with Nathan Lane as closeted political fixer Roy M. Cohn in Tony Kushner’s masterwork, transferring to Broadway after garnering wild acclaim in London.
There’s a wealth of specific references throughout Angels in America to pinpoint the time frame of Tony Kushner’s glorious epic canvas to the mid-1980s — the AIDS crisis was at its height, Reaganomics was reshaping the future, damage to the ozone layer was setting off alarm bells, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy reforms were bringing an end to the Cold War. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this landmark theatrical diptych is a sociopolitical history lesson. For evidence of how relevant the drama remains more than 25 years after it was first produced, just observe Nathan Lane’s virtuoso turn as far-right power broker Roy M. Cohn. That litigious, biliously profane bully systematically denies his homosexuality, his illness and any other inconvenient truth, defining himself with one blunt little word: clout.
Even without the knowledge that Cohn was the trusted attorney of a young Donald Trump, just as he himself had been mentored by reviled demagogue Joseph McCarthy, the connection to our current reality of fake news, political degradation and shameless conflicts of interest is as bold as the neon that throbs in the semi-darkness onstage. In a superlative production like this one, directed with laser-like acuity by Marianne Elliott and imported from London’s National Theatre, it’s the prescience of the writing that truly astonishes — no less than the harrowing beauty, the wildly imaginative flights and the acerbic humor of the drama, or the riveting work of a magnificent ensemble.
The plays glance back over various waves of immigration all the way to the Pilgrims and even beyond, in a witty flourish, to medieval times and the Black Death. There’s a playful sideways trip into an afterlife abandoned by God, but also a forward gaze toward a future built on the basic human resources of hope, compassion and personal freedom. “Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead,” as one character puts it.
What remains amazing is how much of this sprawling yet cohesive tapestry Kushner got so right. His forecast for Russia was informed by the climate of the time, but he predicted the chaos that would pave the way for Putin and a return to Soviet-style order, not to mention tacitly suggesting the degree to which Moscow would continue to influence American political life. And his reflection on the painful progress of the gay struggle — the plays are subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes — seems now uncannily far-sighted in its intimations of a post-equality horizon.
This is a work of myriad pieces, sprinkling a trail of breadcrumbs as Kushner deftly lays out the intimate details of three principal plotlines before gradually interweaving them. He continues to take illuminating detours over the course of the two plays, individually titled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, as his lens widens to offer a more expansive view. It’s in that methodical, puzzle-like spirit that Elliott and set designer Ian MacNeil expertly break it all down, at first compartmentalizing each thread by way of three turntables, and then overlapping the action as one scene bleeds into another. The many transitions — from home to hospital, park to office, New York City to Antarctica, Earth to Heaven — are unusually brisk and dexterous while still giving each scene ample room to breathe. Over almost eight hours of playing time, the pacing never falters, punctuated between scenes by the symphonic thunder of Adrian Sutton’s score.
The central figure is Prior Walter, played by a never-better Andrew Garfield in a revelatory performance that requires him to range from regal hauteur to bitterness and despair, from awestruck terror to fierce retaliation, and finally, to peace and enlightenment. Rocking a Norma Desmond turban, vintage-Hollywood shades and a stunner of an ankle-length black beaded coat (courtesy of costume designer Nicky Gillibrand), Garfield bites into the drag-queeny camp aspects of the role without ever tipping into caricature. His Prior defines himself, quite accurately, as “a rare bloom,” a creature with “exquisite taste, and perfect timing.”
That flair for self-dramatization never diminishes Prior’s genuine suffering. He seems to have known he has AIDS even before the first lesions appeared, and he has a nagging feeling that his cohabiting lover of four years, Louis Ironson (James McArdle), will leave him, long before Louis concedes that he lacks the stomach to hang around and watch Prior die. That sets up Louis as an egocentric neurotic from the start, and the terrific McArdle, a Scot very convincingly playing a Jewish New Yorker, doesn’t downplay that side of him. But the anguish of his often self-pitying path to realigned affections and loyalties is not just sympathetic, it’s actually moving.
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