There’s a famous story about the first British production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America at the National Theatre in 1992. The director feared he’d been burgled because he came home to find his flat covered in paper — page after page of Kushner’s obsessive emendations, arguments and ideas spewing from the fax machine. The world is old and weary; people are new and needy. There’s a lot to say.
Kushner has carried on rewriting Angels over the years. The National’s revival of the two-play epic, luxuriantly cast, is electric and never less than riveting throughout its eight hours. To spend a day with these gabby, greedy characters and the words that spill out of them is the best fun, stretching heart and mind.
Buckle
