Warning: This is not one of my shorter essays - and if you have never seen Angels in America, be aware it contains mountains of spoilers about the play.
Ben Cherry and Barrett Foa in the Rep’s production. Photo by Peter Wochniak.
This past Friday, I saw a new production of Angels in America: Part One, Millennium Approaches at the Repertory Theater of Saint Louis. It shortly will run in rotating rep with Part Two, Perestroika. It is an excellent production at every level, with nuanced performances, a seamless design, obvious care, heart, and attention to detail, and faithfulness to the original searing intent behind Tony Kushner’s uncompromisingly epic masterpiece. I might have a quibble or two about some small choices made along the way, but, frankly, quibbles are all they are – and they are more a reflection of my personal taste than they are a reflection of the validity of the choices made within the production. There are a multitude of ways to produce a play that is ‘right’ and far fewer ways to produce that same play that are fundamentally ‘wrong.’ The Rep’s production is, without question, one of the former – and a production that deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
But… this essay is not intended to be review. Rather, it is something of a reflection about what startled me most in watching the play unfold this Friday: how relevant and resonant this play is to America in 2019… why Angels in America very much still matters.
A Little Background on the Play
First premiered in at the Eureka Theater in San Francisco in 1991, the play now is nearly 30 years old. Two years later, after its opening on Broadway, it won the Pulitzer Prize. (Interestingly, it would have a West End London run before it would have its Broadway run in New York.) From the moment it first was seen, it was unquestionably significant for its era. Among its many firsts was also its most obvious: it unapologetically treated stories of being gay in America – taking these stories out of small storefront theaters in the Castro in San Francisco or the Village in New York (where audiences were primarily gay themselves) and put them on a stage in New York for an audience who may never in their lives have previously encountered this level of thoughtful, nuanced, authentic reflection of gay men. And, of course, in that authenticity came a few of the more salacious bits of the play that drew moral outrage from some corners of the country: the play’s full frontal male nudity, its at times heartbreaking depiction of anonymous sex, and willingness to confront the twisted legacy of corrupt, closeted power broker Roy Cohn.
My Personal History with the Play
I first saw the play in 1997. I was a freshman at Harvard, and it was the first student production of my college career to play on the Loeb mainstage at the American Repertory Theater. I would later perform on that stage, direct on that stage, and find myself working nearly four years for the ART along the way. The first play you see on a stage that would become such an important part of your life will always carry outsized weight in your memory. However, Angels in America, Part One did so for more than that reason.
The Loeb Drama Center. Photo courtesy of Yelp.
I still remember how heartbreaking Jessie Shapiro’s performance was as Harper – a woman whose existing struggles with mental illness are only amplified by her relationship with her closeted husband Joe Pitt. The childlike simplicity of her plea to Joe for a “buddy kiss” after they fight in their first scene still breaks my heart to think about – and the simple wonder that came across her face, bundled in a parka, finding snow was falling on her in Antarctica still makes me smile. Geoff Oxnard’s heroic struggle as Joe to be everything he believes God wants him to be while suppressing that part of him that is so desperate “to sin” stayed with me as well. In his performance, Joe really was ‘the best little boy in the world,’ eager with a smile to cover any weakness, fear, guilt, or inner terror. The mammoth set sprawled across the Loeb Mainstage with countless levels and acting areas: Cohn’s office here; the Pitt’s living room there; Louis and Prior’s bedroom over there; bathroom urinals, park benches, a hospital room, a Bronx trash can, and many other locations scattered in various other corners throughout.
Why it resonated with me most, of course, was that as an 18 year old kid watching this play for the first time, some of their struggles were also my own. At 18, I knew I was gay (even if I couldn’t find the words to put so neat of a bow on it) and, like Joe Pitt, I struggled intensely with what my faith taught me that was (a test that God had put into me to overcome and prove my worth; a calling to be celibate my entire life to ensure I would not sin; and a threat that could not even be spoken for fear of sinning even in thought if not in deed). Joe Pitt’s anxiety that the way speaks or carries himself may project to others that he is gay (which he expresses to Louis in their first chance meeting) was no different than Joe Gfaller’s at that moment. And with all the terrible things happening to gay people in America in the late 1990s (beyond AIDS and its stigma, within a year of me seeing this play Matthew Shepard would be killed), I was not yet prepared to subject myself to the discrimination I expected would naturally present itself as soon as I came out.
Massachusetts Avenue at Central Square, looking a little different today than it did in the late 90s.
My compensation mechanisms were surprisingly similar to Joe Pitt’s (and, I suppose, to Tom’s in The Glass Menagerie, now that I think about it – a gay character in popular theater long before people realized it). I took walks. They gave me time to roll these maddeningly complex puzzles around in my head. They gave me space to breathe. They took me away from the eyes of my friends and my classmates and let me briefly be anonymous. And, eventually, by the unintentional result of trying so many varied routes to take walks, they led me to discover where, at the appropriate hour of the evening (roughly 30 minutes before until 30 minutes after bars closed) I would be likely to take a walk and run into any number of other gay people walking in the opposite direction. (There was, it turned out, about a mile and a half away from the Harvard campus a small pocket of gay bars. The last of them closed last year.)
Like Joe Pitt, I simply embraced the opportunity to watch these people walk past me as I walked down Massachusetts Avenue. I observed snapshots of a community literally passing me by. Some would become visibly less comfortable the closer they got to campus and the farther they got from the bars. For some, their comfort in holding hands or being boisterous within their larger groups never dissipated. And for yet others, there was almost a defiant pride in visible signals of their homosexuality – which, given the late 90s, translated into frosted tips, bold and bright colors, tighter than necessary jeans, and vocal plethora of gay slang (that I would later learn had evolved from polari decades before, a necessity to help people within the LGBT community communicate without being understood and arrested). Simply witnessing these glimpses of a community I was still afraid to acknowledge I was a part of made it easier for that fear to dissipate. As with Joe Pitt, it took me many months of observing before I even attempted to speak to any of these passersby.
Seeing It Resonate Again Today
Watching the play again at 40 gave me almost a sense of nostalgia for that simultaneously simple yet deeply complicated moment in my life. But I was reminded that, as much as our country has evolved in the last 20+ years (after all, we have an openly gay man who is a legitimate contender to win his party’s nomination for the presidency), many young men and woman are facing that identical struggle today – be they gay, lesbian, trans, or simply gender non-confirming. And even if ‘the world is a better place’ for the LGBT community now, that means little to the kid whose family, school, community, or church doesn’t seem to be an inclusive or welcoming space during their moments of truth.
But, it is not because coming out is still hard for many people that Angels in America feels so deeply resonant today. In fact, its resonance has much less to do with being gay as it has to do with being a compassionate, humane citizen. The subtitle for both Part One and Part Two is the same: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. As I read that, it strikes me that Kushner is saying that the subject of the play is the theme of being American (or America) itself. The play’s many gay characters are simply one reflection of that. One could explore these same themes through the lens of the lived experience of the immigrant community, the African-American community, even the WASP community. (It would, in fact, be fascinating to see what A WASP Fantasia on National Themes looks like.) Perhaps because Kushner himself is gay, writing through the lens of these characters helped him create a world in which the voices would be authentic. (The ‘fantasia’ I think of as simply a reflection of the style, incorporating magical realism freely.)
The play, while first produced in 1991, is set in 1985, a time when America’s gay community was in the throes of the AIDS crisis. (Over 5,000 Americans would die that year as a result of AIDS, and the FDA was finally beginning a treatment test involving antibodies, five years after people began dying.) Exploring the journey of those struggling with AIDS is one of Angels in America’s most obvious plot points. However, from Kushner’s perspective AIDS appears to be a reflection of something larger happening in America. Hiding under the bright optimism of the start of Ronald Reagan’s second term, America is diseased.
The historical Roy Cohn posing for Vanity Fair four months before he died of AIDS.
The infection starts from a political and moral corruption in government from people whose desire to retain power and clout outweighs any hope that the people they represent are a priority. Roy Cohn has no compunctions about trying to place Joe Pitt into a role in the Justice Department that will shield Cohn from prosecution. In one a truly tour de force scene with his doctor, Cohn parses the difference between being a heterosexual man who sleeps with other men and being a homosexual. The latter has no clout and never will. As Cohn is a man who can dial 15 digits and get Nancy Reagan (and presumably Ronald with even less effort), he is a man with supreme clout. He can therefore not be a homosexual. He is simply a heterosexual man who sleeps with men. This certainty that all of government can be controlled by men with such clout is reflected further in his belief that within a few years, the Supreme Court and the federal courts will be stacked with so many conservative judges that things like Affirmative Action and Roe v. Wade will be dismantled within years.
Sound familiar? It is no surprise that not only was the real Roy Cohn the current president’s lawyer, he was also the current president’s mentor.
However, Kushner is quick to show that this disease is just as present on the left as it is on the right. While Cohn may be the play’s indominable strong man, Louis Ironson, the play’s most vocal liberal, is in many ways its most loveable and most infuriating weakest man. Put in the position to be brave and support his boyfriend Prior Walter as he is hospitalized, he simply runs away. For all of his beliefs in ‘doing the right thing,’ he is simply incapable of summoning up the courage to do them (at least in Part One). Rather than fight AIDS on behalf of someone he loves, he seeks to punish himself for running away by finding someone who can infect him himself. When he cries out ‘infect me’ in the midst of late night public sex in the Rambles in Central Park, it’s enough to make the stranger with him disengage completely. Prior may the one who is infected with AIDS, but there is no question that Louis is very sick himself, just in a different way.
Kushner’s indictment of liberalism as over-thinking and under-delivering in the person of Louis is just as harsh as his indictment of Roy Cohn and his brutal, lawless conservatism.
It’s More than Just the Politics
However, politics isn’t the only resonance between Kushner’s portrayal of America in 1985 and our country today. Either our world hasn’t changed as much as we imagine, or Kushner’s prescience was stronger than we would have expected. Or, perhaps there are some fundamental American themes that (sadly) transcend time.
Peter Frechette and Jayson Speters in the Rep’s production. Photo by Peter Wochniak.
Roy Cohn’s increasingly predatory behavior with Joe Pitt points clearly to the many men in power (straight and gay) who have been called out by the recent #metoo movement. From his first scene with Joe, calling the smiling young man “delicious” through to their final scene together when a drunken Cohn uses Joe’s trust in him to attempt to violate him with unwanted physical affection, Cohn’s arc is a textbook less in manipulation and gaslighting. Making Joe one of “Roy’s boys” (as Cohn puts it over a dinner meeting) objectifies a presumably talented lawyer for his innocence. Cohn’s darkly philosophical perspective that men with distant fathers need to find men to become new fathers to them – nominating himself for such a role to Joe – infects so much of Joe’s thinking that when Joe finally does attempt to come out to his mother, needing to tell he is gay is conjoined directly with needing to find out if his father really loved him. Roy’s emotional manipulation of his prey has made it impossible for Joe to untangle his own conflicted feelings about being gay with the justification Roy seems to have given him: that it’s his father’s fault. One cringes imagining the tens of thousands of situations still today in which men in power like Roy Cohn damage their own prey across every sector of business and industry. And yet, one also realizes through Angels what a vicious cycle it is for all involved. Roy reflects fondly on men like J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy, who became father figures and mentors to him early in his own career, and one cannot help but wonder what kind of emotional damage those relationships did to him during his formative moments.
In Harper, the stigma of mental illness itself creates a similar emotional damage. As we look at rising addiction rates of opioids across the country, initially prescribed to treat physical pain, it is impossible not to see the damage that Harper’s addiction to valium as a close corollary. At first the drugs seem like an escape for Harper, a way to avoid facing head on why the man she loves won’t sleep with her. But to replace her anxiety about Joe, she simply finds new worries. The fear of a man with a knife under her bed seems completely irrational, until Joe realizes that her fear was just a projection of the existential threat he himself has been to her all along. As he attempts to push away any possibility of acting on his feelings of same-sex attraction, his behaviors more and more look like what we’ve begun to call toxic masculinity: his fights with Harper get more heated, his ability to express his real emotions get more suppressed, and his own behavior (drinking included) becomes more erratic and potentially dangerous. Faced with that side of her husband, it’s no wonder that Harper wills herself to a place as far away as possible from her living room in Brooklyn.
But Harper’s growing obsession with Antarctica is another reflection of how Kushner’s magnum opus is perhaps even more salient today than it was when it first opened. Harper hears a story on the radio about the hole in the ozone layer and becomes obsessed with an idea that we now understand to be climate change. It all sounds like nonsense to her decidedly Republican husband, an excuse for not talking about “real” and “important” issues. (Again, sound familiar?) But to the would-be-devout Mormon Harper, the ozone is like a flickering blue halo protecting the earth, and with that damage, the earth’s halo is dimming. Without it that halo, the earth is in dire trouble.
Tracking the hole int he Ozone Layer as part of the discovery of the hole in 1985.
In the play, the dimming of that halo may also be a metaphor for the dimming of our commitment to the faith of our fathers. The play opens with a eulogy for Louis’s grandmother, a Russia Jew who made America her home decades before. Instead of living by the principals of his faith, though, Louis adheres more closely to a strange hope that at least, whatever he does in this world, the afterlife for him will be a lot like a rainy day in March rather than some kind of heavenly reward. While Judaism may be among the oldest faiths still practiced on the globe today, the strong presence of the Mormon faith in the play gives us the only truly “American” religion (and one of the globe’s newest religions) as a counterweight. But try as Joe and Harper may to be good Mormons, it seems that that is a fleeting ideal as well. Joe, after all, is gay. Harper tries to explain that Mormons don’t believe in gay people when she encounters Prior. But she herself is addicted to Valium, and Mormons (she says) don’t believe in addiction either. Even Joe’s mother, who appears to be anchored in her faith, has no issue sneaking a cigarette from a friend (also forbidden) as long as no one else sees her smoking it. These minor infractions pale in comparison to the abject daily corruption in Roy Cohn’s life. But they are daily transgressions nonetheless, and ones that seem to carry limited guilt for the ‘sinners’ involved.
Hypocrisy, toxic masculinity, climate change, sexual harassment, mental illness, physical plagues, political world views incapable of seeing each other eye-to-eye… all in all, the comparisons that linger seem pretty bleak. But what makes Angels resonant today isn’t just that which is dark in our world. Watching the play, minute by minute (despite all the heavy American themes that Tony Kusher’s play addresses), the theater rings with laughter. Because whatever else may be true across the decades, so too is our nation’s commitment to optimism: to love, to humor, and to hope.
Prior may deeply fear his fate after his diagnosis. He may be terrified to enter a hospital room for fear he will never return from it. But he will still put on his best make up and face the world with cheek and aplomb – because that alone gives him hope. To be who he is and to have gotten to where he has, he has had to be resilient, gutsy, and brave each step of the way. His campiness may be a cover to keep the world from seeing his fears, but to keeps him moving ever forward. His friend and nurse Belize spends part of the play considering if he’ll put on his wigs and get into drag again – as he too realizes that the act of pretending to have joy may actually help you find some joy and optimism yourself. The laughter that is inescapable inside of the play is Kushner telling us that as well. We can face these hard truths together as a country, but we can face them better if we can step back and laugh at them (and, in the process) ourselves too.
In Conclusion…
I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to revisit this play at the Repertory Theater of Saint Louis this past weekend, and I look forward to seeing the play conclude in Part Two when I go back in a couple of weeks. Take all its resonance to today, all the nostalgia it induced about my own first encounter with it, and all its importance as a work of great literature… and put it aside. In the right hands, it is, at its heart, a great evening of theater. And in addition to all the reflecting that it generates, just watching it done well is extremely satisfying.
In the final act of Part One, one of Prior Walter’s ancestors reflects, “So this is the twentieth century. The world has gotten so old.” In its uncanny resonance to a world nearly 30 years after Tony Kushner began writing the play, Angels in America reminds us that even as the world gets older, it doesn’t always get wiser. And by looking through that mirror today, the play continues to provoke us to, not only reflect on ourselves, but also to reflect on our responsibility to do something that horrible stasis. The problems we faced as a nation in 1985 don’t need to still be the problems we face in 2019. If we act together, in ways large and small, perhaps there is a way to ensure that those problems won’t be the ones we still face 35 years from now.