Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
Angels in America is an interesting play for me because it was one that I studied back when I was an undergrad. I still remember being entranced by it when I read it because of how cinematic it appeared on the page (Perestroika in particular). Yes, many of Shakespeare’s plays have the same qualities, as we’ve seen with the countless film adaptations of his work, but Angels read like a movie script instead of a stage play.
The HBO miniseries certainly added to that particular understanding of the play, with its big Hollywood cast (Al Pacino and Meryl Streep!) and location shooting (although it’s metaphorical Heaven leaves a bit to be desired), so I was excited when I saw that National Theatre Live was going to produce the play as a part of its series this year. I was finally going to have the chance to see how the stage can be made into a “live” cinematic experience.
I put live in quotes because the National Theatre Live experience does compromise the experience of a play in the expected manner — the relationship between the audience and the actors is mediated by the cameras, and because I live in Canada, the performance is live to tape. There were times when it felt like the actors were positioned and blocked for the cameras rather than for the live audience.
But that caveat aside, I was mesmerized by the stage design. Millennium Approaches was presented in a minimalist fashion for the bulk of the play. The three positions of the stage were divided into three smaller stages placed on rotating platforms, effectively allowing them to have nine or more different stage configurations at any time. This staging is used beautifully in the scene were Harper and Joe’s scene crosses over into Louis and Prior’s scene. The scenes are meant to happen simultaneously, and in the film context there are many ways to use editing to convey that effect — the Mike Nichols HBO adaptation simply cuts between the two scenes — but this adaptation has the four characters on stage at the same time, with the two corresponding pairs of characters standing in opposition to each other (Joe and Louis as the “villains”, Harper and Prior as the ones being wronged). It’s a wonderfully staged and directed sequence that connects the two stories together in a visual manner.
When Harper enters her Valium induced hallucination and travels to Antarctica with Mr Lies, she “breaks the frame” and moves down stage. A change of lighting hides the sets upstage and you are immediately sympathetic with how she chose to escape the reality of her husband’s closeted homosexuality by being transported to Antarctica with her. All of that with a simple stage direction and lighting changes.
Perestroika’s staging is much more dynamic, but that also reflects the more fantastical nature of the second half of the play. Instead of three rotating platforms on the center of the stage, we see stagehands dressed in black hurriedly scurry across the stage to change the set under the cover of darkness. Even though you can see the stage change before your eyes, the activity helps create a sense of urgency, as each of the stories in the play reach their climax. The stage is also three dimensional — when Prior successfully wrestles the angel and ascends to heaven, he climbs a set of stairs that are slowly raised to the rafters. Moments later, we set a set of stairs pop up from the bottom of the stage and Prior climbs up into heaven itself.
The Angel America is similarly dynamic. In this adaptation, she is carried by several actors in black (credited as Angel Shadows) to give her the illusion of flight, with two other actors flapping her wings. Although you can’t clearly see the actors carrying the Angel, they also don’t pretend that the actors don’t exist. When the Angel is on the ground, you see the Shadows crawling around the ground beside her, giving her an ethereal quality that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise. Certainly this version of the Angel was more interesting to look at than the version we see in the HBO adaptation (simply Emma Thompson in a blue dress with wings).
Admittedly I’ve read more plays than I’ve seen, so my experience with theatre has always been theoretical rather than practical, but seeing a production of Angels in America has opened my eyes to the qualities of theatre that I haven’t really considered. Even though the stage is by definition a static and fixed space, it can still be as dynamic as film. Once you give in to the experience of watching the play, your mind fills in the gaps that would otherwise be filled in a film adaptation. It’s very much in line with Scott McCloud’s theories developed in Understanding Comics, where the imagination fills in the information between the panels. Yes the staging is quite minimalist, but you don’t need anything more a park bench and the sounds of traffic to understand that you are watching scene set in Brooklyn.
I’ve avoided talking about the play itself because I don’t know if I have anything particularly insightful to add to the greater conversation. In the ten or fifteen years since I’ve read it, it’s become a staple of drama courses and academic essays (when Sparknotes and Schmoop have study guides for the play, you know it’s mainstream now). This particular production has also been covered by many of the big outlets, perhaps in part because it stars Andrew Garfield, and I’ve already seen writers trying to make it seem as if it was a contemporary play (Roy Cohn advised Trump). I can see some of the parallels — as America lumbers through the Trump presidency, people have begun to question the nature of America as a project, and the play certainly asks and demands audiences to think about what America represents. For me, the play is very much tied to its time — not just because of when it was set, or the almost naive optimism of the end of the play (Gorbachev’s Perestroika leading to an authoritarian government controlled by oil billionaires was probably not what people expected from the end of the cold war), but because of what queer identity meant at the time. Obviously the battles aren’t over, as Trump’s latest attack against trans soldiers in the military show, but for gay men in the 80s, the very nature of their existence was being questioned. It wasn’t a question of rights — these were men facing extinction. So the hopeful message at the end of the play is meant to be a requiem for the dead, but also an understanding that life will continue. For a play produced in the early 90s, this would have been a powerful message.
I will say, the one aspect of Angels in America that has always stuck with me is how it uses religion. It treats the mythology of the bible as if it were real, so it’s not a question of faith, but a question of why “God” has abandoned humanity. Kushner’s answer to “why do bad things happen to good people?” is that God has simply walked away from his obligations to humanity and heaven, leaving everyone to fend for themselves. I think in this context, the use of Mormonism is apt, since it’s a uniquely American version of the Judeo-Christian mythology that has come to define the “old world”. If America is meant to represent the movement of human civilization, then featuring the newest iteration of the Jesus mythology makes perfect sense. The answer to God’s abandonment is to be in motion, to look forward, and that includes moving past what we assume to be true of God.
This religious aspect of the play has always been in my mind because I read Garth Ennis’ Preacher around the same time as I read the play. I won’t spoil what happens at the end of Preacher, but needless to say that it is also about how God has abandoned his responsibility to his creations and how we must learn to accept and respond to that fact. What specifically made me connect the two seemingly disparate texts was a speech that I remember Roy Cohn making at the end, when he decides to sue God on behalf of the Angels he abandoned:
Paternity suit? Abandonment? Family court is my particular metier, I’m an absolute fucking demon with Family Law. Just tell me who the judge is, and what kind of jewelry does he like? If it’s a jury, it’s harder, juries take more talk but sometimes it’s worth it, going jury, for what it saves you in bribes. Yes I will represent you, King of the Universe, yes I will sing and eviscerate, I will bully and seduce, I will win for you and make the plaintiffs, those traitors, wish they had never heard the name of . . .
(Huge thunderclap)
Is it a done deal, are we on? Good, then I gotta start by telling you you ain’t got a case here, you’re guilty as hell, no question, you have nothing to plead but not to worry, darling, I will make something up.
I was confused when this performance of Perestroika did not include this scene, since having Roy agree to defend God in court is diametrically opposed to what the Saint of Killers does to God at the end of Preacher. Then I saw Kushner state this in the definitive version of the play text:
In previous published versions of Perestroika I included two scenes which were almost always cut in production. In preparing this new version, I decided it was time to acknowledge the verdict of twenty-two years of production history and remove the scenes from the play. I’m including them here for whatever enjoyment and interest they provide readers; the play in production unquestionably works better without them (2013).
(The other scene removed from Perestroika is the one where Prior meets Louis’ grandmother).
I’ll concede that the scene does take away from the final moments of the play, which is redemptive and all about hope. We don’t need to know whether or not God will return, because we will move on with or without him — just as the gay community has developed and grown from the AIDS crisis of the 80s. Indeed, the fact that this play seems dated at times is a testament to how much progress has been made since it was first produced. That said, it’s still a very memorable scene to me because it makes God a “real person”, whatever that might mean, and at least acknowledges that he is accountable for the damage he has done through his neglect of his creation.
I enjoyed revisiting the play, since it was one of the big reasons I developed an interest in drama. Being able to finally see it come to life over a decade later was a bit of a revelation, showing me how powerful live theatre can be and why it still has a place in a world dominated by screens.
The National Theatre Live experience is a decent compromise — it’s still a mediated experience, and your viewing experience is left to the whim of the director, but knowing that the experience is live (or even live to tape) allows for that urgent energy to capture your attention. It solves a long-standing problem I have with live theatre, that it should be recorded and made accessible to more people, and I can only hope that eventually theatre companies will begin to sell performances for home exhibition.
(There will be a North American encore of Millennium Approaches on August 5th and of Perestroika on August 13th at select theatres)
