DVD/150: ANGELS IN AMERICA (Mike Nichols, 2003, tv)

Here goes... trying to fit Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA into 150 words:

Kushner was thrilled when Robert Altman agreed to direct a two-part film of ANGELS in 1994, as Kushner had used Altman's NASHVILLE as a guide for multi-character storytelling while writing.  A prohibitive budget for what was considered a risky investment ended the project but it was snapped up by HBO for a mini-series.  The new director was Mike Nichols who was a better fit as a director for the piece.

What impressed Kushner was Nicols' wish for some actors to play numerous roles, as was the norm in ANGELS theatre productions; a harder trick to pull off on film than onstage.

 

 

Although Nichols and his marvellous cast deliver, ultimately what is missing is the exhilaration of seeing it theatrically; your imagination cannot be engaged when film presents you with locations, extras and special effects.

Shelf or charity shop? Stand by for a major plot twist: I think I can let ANGELS IN AMERICA fly away.  Despite Nichols' fine direction and the memorable performances of Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Mary Louise Parker, I would rather revel in the memory of the stage productions I have seen.

 

Click here for my blog of the stupendous National Theatre production in 2017

THE VISIT or THE OLD LADY COMES TO CALL at the Olivier, National Theatre

It is sad there are plays disappearing from the repertoire of the major theatres who are now putting on new tick-box State Of The Nation plays or Woke-To-Caffeine-Level revivals with gender bounced characters in drab modern dress using hand-mikes.  Where are revivials of particularly 20th Century European dramas to be found - the ones not that well-known enough to become a West End star vehicle for a GAME OF THRONES actor.

Step forward the National Theatre, all the more surprising as it has become The National Theatre of The Crashingly Obvious under Rufus Norris' PC Worldview.  But here we are back in 1956 in the strange, blackly comedic world of Friedrich Dürrenmatt for his most famous play THE VISIT. Dürrenmatt was a Swiss writer whose novels and plays did much to elevate German drama in post WWII.

THE VISIT is a deadly cocktail of the harsh judgemental world of Brecht peopled with the conniving, small-minded citizens from the plays of Oden von Horváth while shot through with Dürrenmatt's own satire. It has proved his most successful play in English language versions including the sanitized 1964 film with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, but was also the basis for an opera as well as the last Broadway musical of John Kander and the late Fred Ebb starring Chita Rivera and Roger Rees (his last show before his death).

Jeremy Herrin's production of Tony Kushner's US-based adaptation takes up the whole of the Olivier's stage and makes much use of the under-stage drum to make whole new sets appear before us, although it must be said that there is not much joy looking at Vicki Mortimer's drab and murky sets for the depressed town of Slurry in upstate New York.

Slurry is a town in sharp decline: businesses are failing, mainline trains don't stop there anymore and the city government is running out of money.  Only one thing can save them and it looks like it might be about to happen - Claire Zachanassian, the world's richest woman, was born in Slurry and she is coming back to visit.  Although she left as a young girl under scandalous circumstances, the mayor begs her former lover Alfred Ill to put the city's case to the eccentric widow.

The imperious and glamorous Claire arrives and soon has the whole town at her feet - although she reveals there's not just a monetary change in her life as she now has two false legs and a false hand!  Alfred discovers this while asking her for the (ahem) hand-out for the city.  Claire says she is willing to help the town on one condition which she will reveal at that night's gala reception. After a lavish, dull homecoming ceremony with child athletes and a huge choir, Claire announces she will give the town one billion dollars - half for the town's coffers, half to be divided between Slurry's families.

After the ecstatic applause dies down, Claire reveals her condition: Alfred was her lover when she was young and after she became pregnant, he disowned her.  She tried to bring a paternity suit but the trial judge and Alfred fixed the hearing by introducing two male witnesses who purjured her and the case was dismissed forcing her to leave the town in shame.  Now the trial judge is Claire's butler and her two clownish courtiers are revealed to be the two witnesses whom she tracked down to blind and castrate.  Now she wants her final revenge on Slurry: one billion dollars - if Alfred is killed.

And that's about it - the following two acts tread water for the inevitable to happen, the second act is purgatorial as it is the same scene replayed again and again as Albert begs his community not to kill him while also noticing that all his neighbours now own credit cards and are spending out on the expected windfall.  Albert tries to escape but the town turn out at the station to stop him getting the train.

The third act is a strange mix of tension and obviousness as Albert's fate is revealed when the town make their decision, watched dispassionately by Claire.  It is no surprise that it was adapted into an opera; it's basic plotline would be well suited to the medium.  Like Brecht, Dürrenmatt does nothing to make Alfred sympathetic so - because she has the best lines - I was totally behind Claire to triumph.  It makes for a very lop-sided battle of wills.

None of Dürrenmatt's characters have anything that equals depth so well done to Sara Kestelman and Nicholas Woodeson for bringing vigour to their roles of the disenchanted school head teacher and Slurry's garrulous Mayor.  Hugo Weaving brings increasing levels of unbelieving panic to his role of shopkeeper Albert Ill as one by one, his friends and family choose Claire's promised money rather his safety, it was good to see him on stage after having only ever seen him on screen before.

The ice-cold heart of the show is the wonderful Lesley Manville who delivers every killer put-down with a soured thud; in her hands the improbable Claire becomes a very human-sized avenger.  It was a measure of her performance that - rather than the usual replication of Scutari hospital on a wet Wednesday night - the audience was silently attentive and, during her denunciation of Slurry and Alfred, you could hear a pin drop.  Seemingly modelled on elements of Madonna, Lauren Bacall and Elaine Stritch, it's Lesley Manville's show.

An evening of revenge and retribution which I would recommend although Tony Kushner really does like crossing his t's and dotting his i's... I would suggest having a foyer bar break for the dull second act.

Redux: CAROLINE OR CHANGE at Playhouse / THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden

Now we are at the end of 2018 it was interesting to be able to look back at productions previously seen which are now revived: the Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori musical CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which transferred from Chichester to Hampstead earlier this year and is now shouting out at the Playhouse Theatre and also the Royal Ballet's evergreen - or ever-snowy - THE NUTCRACKER with choreography by Peter Wright.

It was good to see CAROLINE, OR CHANGE again and I found it again to be a musical that resists the urge to make it easy for it's audience, with five characters all locked in their own private mental spaces and who find connecting to be fraught with suspicion and defensiveness which makes for a difficult first act as it's hard to see where the audience's sympathies should lie.  However the second act reveals cracks in the characters' carapaces giving them the possibility of  connecting: mother to daughter, stepmother to stepson.

Sharon D. Clarke is still playing the Louisiana single mother Caroline Thibodeaux who supports her daughter and two sons by being the 'daily' for the Jewish Gellman family.  Caroline spends most of her time in the basement service room with the washing machine, the dryer and the radio - unsurprisingly the creators have these appliances personified and they sing songs that illustrate and comment on Caroline's situation.

Caroline is a defensive, guarded woman, quietly angry at the world and finds it hard to accept affection from any quarter, while her eldest daughter Emmie is quietly angry with society's attitudes and her mother's inability to accept change, Stuart Gellman is a widower still grieving for his dead wife although his has since remarried, his new wife Rose is growing more and more unhappy with her distant husband and his guarded son Noah who is himself still grieving for his dead mother and who constantly tries to engage with Caroline who is amiable but keeps him at arm's length. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the characters all have to face up to change and all the implications of their actions.

Practically all the original cast have transferred to the Playhouse and the performances have grown with their exploration of the deeply woven characters: Lauren Ward and Alastair Brokenshaw as Rose and Stuart Gellman, Teddy Kempner as Rose's firebrand father from New York and Naana Agyei-Ampadu as Caroline's more outgoing fellow domestic Dotty. There is also stand-out support from Me'sha Bryan as the bubbly Washing Machine and Angela Caesar as the ever-watchful Moon.

Abiona Omonua is marvellous as Emmie who yearns to break free from her mother's demands to be submissive and to stay in her place; she has a lovely singing voice and has a vital presence on stage.  However the show is dominated by the mighty Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline, her solitary pain burns off the stage and you are on the edge of your seat waiting for her eventual explosion and indeed when she breaks and sings the searing "Lot's Wife" Clarke releases a tsunami of pent-up anger and pain that hits hard.  With this role, Sharon D. Clarke ascends to being a true theatre great, and her recent tv appearances in the new DOCTOR WHO will surely bring her a much-deserved wider fame.

Nigel Lilly's music direction brings Tesori's challenging score to vibrant life, Fly Davis' set and costumes look fine in their new home, Ann Yee's choreography is still thrilling and Michael Longhurst's direction holds the whole production together, quite the more remarkable for this being his first musical.  CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is booking until 6th April and I recommend it highly.

In a different world totally to Caroline and her basement is Peter Wright's glorious version of Tchaikovsky's THE NUTCRACKER at Covent Garden.  This was our third time seeing it but it is so magical it is always worth a re-visit. I don't think I can improve on what I blogged in 2015 after my first visit to it:  "The production is simply enchanting, radiating warmth and goodwill like a particularly large glass of mulled wine.  Helped immeasurably by the late Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs, Wright's take on the story has the magician Drosselmeyer mourning that his nephew has been transformed by an enemy into a nutcracker, as you do!  His chance to undo the spell comes with a Christmas invitation to a family where he gives the nutcracker to the young daughter Clara."

Clara and the newly-restored nephew have adventures before visiting the court of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince and also experience the the divertissements organized by Drosselmeyer, and all danced to Tchaikovsky's magical score which features some of ballet's greatest hits.

We were spoilt in 2015 as we saw Francesca Hayward as Clara, Alexander Campbell as The Nutcracker, Gary Avis as Drosselmeyer, Iana Salenko as The Sugar Plum Fairy and Steven McRae as her Prince, a truly memorable cast which has not been replicated since, this year we had Emma Maguire as a vivacious Clara, Luca Acri as an athletic Nutcracker, Christopher Saunders as Drosselmeyer, Yasmine Naghdi as Sugar Plum and Ryoichi Hirano as the Prince.  They were all fine but lacking the star wattage of the 2015 cast, however we were lucky to have the wonderful Itziar Mendizabel as the focal point of the Arabian dance, sinuous and statuesque.

Christopher Carr staged it wonderfully again and the ROH Orchestra made Tchaikovsky's score flood the auditorium to the rafters under the baton of Barry Wordsworth.  If you have never experienced this production you really are missing a magical experience: all performances appear to be sold out for the rest of the run but it does get revived occasionally on cinema screens and the DVD of the production is also available.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE at Hampstead Theatre - Sharon D. Clarke ain't backing down...

Sometimes a musical comes along that seems so unique that you wonder will it ever find an audience.  One such show is CAROLINE, OR CHANGE which packs so much in that it makes writing about it tricky... where do you begin??

I must admit most of what I knew about CAROLINE, OR CHANGE was from Dori Berinstein's excellent documentary SHOW BUSINESS: THE ROAD TO BROADWAY which covered the 2004 season and the journey from previews to Tony nominations for CAROLINE, AVENUE Q, WICKED and TABOO among others: CAROLINE was nominated for six but came away with only Best Supporting Actress.

I can't remember why I didn't see it in 2006 at the National Theatre when it won the Olivier Award for Best Musical, but when it was announced that powerhouse actress Sharon D. Clarke would be leading a revival at Chichester last year then I knew it would be something to see and hear.  Luckily the revival transferred to Hampstead and it has been announced that it will transfer again to Playhouse Theatre in the west end.

The collaboration between book-writer and lyricist Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori had a long gestation period as they workshopped and tried different approaches to the material which came from Kushner's own childhood, growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in Louisiana who hired a local black woman to be their maid.  In 1963 - if you are wondering if the Kennedy assassination is mentioned WHADDYA THINK?? - Caroline Thibodeaux is a single mother bringing up three children in Louisiana, just getting by on her wages for keeping house for the middle-class Jewish Gellman family.

The son, Noah, is eight years old and still coming to terms with, not only the recent death of his mother, but his father's remarriage to Rose Stopnick.  It's an unhappy family all-round, Rose is unsure of her position with the phlegmatic Caroline or how she can establish herself with Noah and his still-grieving father Stuart.  Noah has grown closer to the no-nonsense Caroline who let's the boy light her one cigarette of the day in the utility basement.  Caroline is not lonely down there however.. not with the radio and washing machine that sing to her.

As the country reverberates to the death of Kennedy, Rose admonishes Noah for leaving money in his trouser pockets and, to teach him a lesson, tells Caroline that she can keep any money she finds in his pockets.  Although money is a concern, proud Caroline wrestles with taking the boy's money as she has also refused Rose's extra food.  She gives in however, much to her children's delight who can now buy comics and sweets, but what she doesn't know is that Noah is deliberately leaving the money for his friend Caroline.

Rose's father visits for a Hanukkah dinner but events go awry when Caroline's daughter Emmie answers back when the old man talks about Martin Luther King; Caroline is mortified that her daughter would do this and they argue.  Meanwhile Mr Stopnick has given Noah $20 as a Hanukkah present but he has left it in his trousers by mistake... and Caroline doesn't want to give it back.  Change is in the air... how will Caroline cope?

Michael Longhurst's production has a couple of stutters but on the whole it is a remarkably bracing evening, it helps that the show is sung-through although thankfully no Lloyd Webber recitative is in evidence to provoke yawns.  Tesori's score is constantly interesting, using different styles of music from pop to kletzmer filtered through a Broadway idiom to include the two families' stories.

Kushner's story can look bizarre with it's singing washing machine, dryer, radio and even the bus, but the convoluted lives of his characters, all on the cusp of change, is involving; the only odd note is that Noah's father is so mournful over the recent death of his first wife you wonder how or why did he get married a second time to Rose?

The set and costumes by Fly Davis, Ann Yee's choreography and Jack Knowles' lighting all add their distinctive touches to the show and Longhurst has an excellent company who all have moments to shine.  Charlie Gallacher did very well as Noah, he is rarely offstage but kept up a good performance throughout - it's a tough role for just a boy but he did well.  As Noah's father Stuart, Alastair Brookshaw also did well to give a performance through the overall gloom of his character, and Teddy Kempner was very good as Mr Stopnick, Rose's left-wing father who provokes with his arguments.

Me'sha Bryan, Angela Caesar, and Ako Mitchell all gave fine voice to The Washing Machine, The Moon and the Dryer/Bus while T'Shan Williams, Sharon Rose and Carole Stennett are great as collective voice of The Radio which keeps Caroline going through her work day.  It was great to see T'Shan Williams again after her great performance in last year's THE LIFE.

There are very fine performances from Lauren Ward as Rose, the young wife trying to find her place both upstairs and downstairs in her new home to varying degrees of success, and from Abiona Omonua as Emmie, Caroline's oldest daughter who can see the future coming and wants in, no matter how much it will upset her mother.

But the show belongs to the unstoppable Sharon D. Clarke as Caroline.  In possibly the performance of her career, Clarke is relentless as the emotionally-shutdown Caroline.  Unsmiling, terse, radiating a doughty wariness, her Caroline gives no inch - the scene where Noah and Caroline shout insults at each other was ferociously done.  The show's climax is a fierce solo for Caroline - it's like Tesori and Kushner are doing CAROLINE'S TURN, a number where the character finally lets her pent-up passion burst out.

It goes without saying that Sharon D. Clarke ripped through the song with pain and power; as I watched her I thought there is no reason why she should not play Sally in the National's revival of FOLLIES next year...

As Owen said, it was such a relief to see Sharon's beaming smile at the curtain-call!  The news that came through after we saw the show of it's West End transfer was great - if there are any West End awards going for Best Actress in a Musical next year then our Sharon deserves them all.

If you fancy a show that constantly surprises... CAROLINE, OR CHANGE is the one for you.

It will run at the Playhouse Theatre from 20th November to 9th February 2019...

ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES and PERESTROIKA at the Lyttelton Theatre: The Great Work...

It is here.

The sky darkened, a loud crashing was heard and there it is, flapping it's mighty wings and pointing the way to the future.... yes, the National Theatre's much-awaited revival of Tony Kushner's mighty two-part play ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES has landed at the Lyttelton Theatre.  Could it live up to all the hype generated?

Hell yes.

ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES - the first part of Tony Kushner's reaction to both the onset of the AIDS pandemic as well as President Reagan's refusal to even acknowledge the crisis for four years after it's first appearance - was first seen in a 1990 workshop in Los Angeles and had it's world premiere the following year in San Francisco. At the same time, a copy of the text found it's way to Richard Eyre, then Artistic Director of the National Theatre, who rushed it to director Declan Donnellan.

It opened at the Cottesloe in 1992 and I was dazzled by the sweep of Kushner's imagination and innate grasp of what makes theatre magic: characters who slowly draw you into their lives, great dialogue and stage imagery that haunts you.  It later won the Critic's Circle and Olivier Awards for Best New Play.  In 1993, Donnellan directed PERESTROIKA, again at the Cottesloe, in repertory with MILLENNIUM.  It was sold out for it's entire run and I never got to experience the second play onstage.

Ten years later both plays were filmed for HBO by Mike Nichols with a starry cast of Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Mary-Louise Parker, and while enjoying it as well as finally seeing PERESTROIKA, I felt it was something that needed to be experienced in a theatre again - I still have an unwatched dvd!  So when it was announced that Marianne Elliott was to direct a National Theatre revival with the starry line-up of Nathan Lane, Andrew Garfield, Russell Tovey and Denise Gough, I knew that tickets HAD to be bought.

The National went into a HAMILTON-style booking period, no doubt wishing to control any third-party re-selling, and coming up with five monthly ticket ballots to those unable to get them through the mailing list and general on-sale.  But that is all in the past now... the plays are on and again one reels from the National at the end of both plays - or both on the same day for real die-hards - with one's theatrical blood racing at the breadth of both Kushner's vision and Elliott's productions.

MILLENNIUM APPROACHES is the better-constructed of the plays; Kushner introduces his seven main characters and then sets them spinning away from their carefully-constructed lives as they confront both the AIDS virus and their place in 1980's America.  Interestingly both plays start with monologues from minor characters which, in retrospect, set the agenda for each play: in PERESTROIKA the oldest Bolshevik alive harangues his comrades for straying from the path of Communist Theory, while in MILLENNIUM APPROACHES an elderly rabbi prepares to bury a Jewish woman who journeyed from a shtetl to Brooklyn.  Spoilers ahead...

Prior and Louis are lovers in New York where Louis is an over-intellectualizing clerk in a law firm.  Sitting together after Louis' grandmother's funeral, Prior tells Louis he has just been diagnosed with the HIV virus.  Louis attempts to be supportive as his lover's symptoms worsen but eventually he walks out, leaving Prior devastated and increasingly paranoid from hearing a disembodied voice warning him he will be visited soon.  Prior's only support comes from his oldest friend Belize, a black nurse in an AIDS unit who also has a jaundiced eye and withering put-downs.

Pious Mormon Joe is a lawyer in the same legal office as Louis but is being fast-tracked for advancement to the State Department in Washington DC by New York's most-feared lawyer Roy Cohn, secure of his place in history through his involvement with the anti-communist trials in the 1950s.  Joe however cannot obey his father-figure as his wife Harper is wrestling with irrational fears and Valium abuse that have led to agoraphobia and delusions.

Harper however realizes that it is the creeping knowledge that Joe is actually homosexual that has driven her to despair and when she finally confronts him, he admits that he is struggling with his sexuality.  Meanwhile Roy Cohn is told by his doctor that he has been diagnosed with HIV which sends Roy into a vicious rage, threatening the doctor with legal action if he says it is anything but liver cancer.

Co-workers Louis and Joe realize they are attracted to each other, leading the conflicted Joe to call his mother Hannah in Salt Lake City and tell her he is gay which makes her so angry she quickly sells her home to finance her to fly to New York to get Joe and Harper reunited...  but Harper is lost in a delusional state, wandering the streets of Brooklyn thinking she is in Antarctica.

Roy Cohn's health takes a turn for the worse and he is admitted to hospital where Belize is his night nurse and proves to be the one person unafraid of him.  Roy is also haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, the 1950s woman accused of spying who Cohn made sure was found guilty and executed.  The devastating climax occurs when Prior's paranoia is made flesh when an Angel crashes into his apartment and tells him to prepare as "The Great Work begins".

By the end of MILLENNIUM I was almost breathless with the pure theatrical magic conjured by Marianne Elliott's sweeping production and the bravura performances; the appearance of the bedraggled Angel - looking more like a scrutty pigeon than an ambassador of God - is such a coup de theatre that you leave the theatre buzzing with excitement and aching for the second part... we had a whole fortnight to wait!

PERESTROIKA does not have the narrative drive of MILLENNIUM and sometimes I was aware that it was treading water and crying out for an editor but as soon as those thoughts settle Kushner pulls you back into the lives of his characters and you are hooked again. 

Harper is rescued by mother-in-law Hannah from her delusional wanderings and camps out at the Mormon Visitor Centre where Hannah is volunteering, Joe and Louis are in a tentative relationship, Roy Cohn is growing sicker despite having a private stash of the wonder-drug AZT which disgusts Belize who knows of patients who have been deprived of it by Cohn's heavy-handed string-pulling, and Prior is a changed man after his visit from The Angel.

Prior recounts to the incredulous Belize what happened; The Angel told Joe that God has turned his back on both Heaven and the world as mankind has kept evolving, exploring and moving ever-forward and refusing to stay fixed and afraid.  God's actions have left the Angels as mere lookers-on but they have selected Prior to be a Prophet to deliver the message to mankind to stop moving and then maybe God will return.

Prior stalks the streets of New York dressed in black struggling with his Prophet status and finds a kindred lost soul in Harper when he visits the Mormon centre.  Prior has neglected his health and collapses, establishing an unexpected friendship with Hannah who advises him that one should fight against Angels' bad advice as well as welcome their good advice.

Belize delights in telling Louis that his new boyfriend's father-figure is the hated Roy Cohn, the lovers fight and Joe leaves after physically attacking Louis.  Joe visits Roy in hospital and attempts to explain why he has left his wife only for his mentor to hypocritically abuse him for being gay, finally waking Joe up to Roy's callousness.  After learning that the Law Society have finally disbarred him for his many years of corruption, Roy dies alone. Belize summons Louis to the deathbed as he is the only Jew he knows and makes him say the Kaddish over the body, movingly prompted in his ignorance of the words by the ghost of Ethel.

The Angel appears to a recovered Prior and Hannah in his hospital room and he wrestles it into submission, The Angel finally relents and lets Prior ascend the neon ladder to Heaven which looks like a run-down operations room, staffed by the other ineffectual Angels.  Prior relinquishes his Prophet status, acknowledging the implications of becoming a mere mortal again but telling them that mankind must be allowed to keep moving ahead and discovering new possibilities.

Joe attempts a reconciliation with Harper but she refuses, she is leaving NY to discover a new life in San Francisco, alone.  Louis and Belize are by Prior's bedside when he wakes from his dream of Heaven - Kushner slyly gives Prior Dorothy's dialogue from the epilogue of THE WIZARD OF OZ - and reveal that they have Cohn's secret supply of AZT to aid Prior's health.  Four years later Prior, Louis, Belize and Hannah visit the Angel of Bethesda fountain in Central Park and Prior addresses the audience, telling of his belief in the angels who walk among the living every day and that we must prepare for the future...The Great Work continues.

The two play's combined length of 7 hours 30 minutes slide past unnoticed and this is primarily down to Marianne Elliott's astounding direction - at all times you are engrossed in her sleek, filmic production and although there are the occasional longueurs (in PERESTROIKA in particular) you never lose your fascination with the main characters and the world they inhabit.  Elliott's ability to move from the Manhattan scenes to the fantasy worlds just within an arm's length of the characters is consistent throughout and never feels jarring or contrived, it's a very humane vision of the play's plains of existence.

Ian MacNeil's huge set might be a bit tricksy at times with it's neon-edged little boxes that turn and re-form themselves for interiors but again the scope of imagination is to be applauded.  Paule Constable's wonderful lighting designs effortlessly convey Kushner's worlds within and without with elegance and style.  A word too for the excellent sound design of Ian Dickinson.

Elliott has also an astonishing cast to bring her production to expansive life, a real ensemble but all delivering on-the-money performances; Nathan Lane is the glittering dark malevolent heart of the production as the venal Roy Cohn and as with all well-written villains, you cannot help but be drawn to his unforgiving personality.  He perfectly captures the larger-than-life personality that would be the magnet for the idealistic Joe but also takes no prisoners in his titanic rages that kills the soul of anyone in it's path.  As his sphere of influence shrinks from all of Manhattan to a tiny bed in an AIDS ward you cannot help but feel pity for a man who was in such denial of himself and his deeds.

The biggest surprise was Andrew Garfield who made Prior, for all his self-pity, a constantly evolving character, making his fear and bafflement at his physical and celestial destinies all too real while also finding room for the character's humour to shine out.  Russell Tovey was a surprise too as the closeted, hesitant Joe and was unafraid to play up the character's dangerously ambivalent and passively cruel undertow.  Seeing the shows a fortnight apart meant we had two Louises - James McArdle for MILLENNIUM and his understudy John Hastings for PERESTROIKA.  McArdle's banked-down performance took time to warm to but by the time of the excruciatingly funny scene where Louis ties himself in ever-tighter politically correct knots with an increasingly furious Belize he had me onside.  Hastings gave a more vulnerable reading of the character and while maybe not having the level of ability as the others, still was effective as the contrite Louis aware of his failings.

Another genuine surprise was Denise Gough's deliciously spiky Harper, a potentially irritating character who in Gough's hands was anything but, her painful life with the glacial Joe all to realistically played.  She found the mordant humour in her character too and in her final scene she touched universal truths with Harper's reflections on looking down at the world from a plane.  The real scene-stealing performance though was from Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Belize, a FIERCE queen and the one character who can tell the truth to whoever he meets.  He really was quite, quite glorious.

Susan Brown and Amanda Lawrence between them created a rich collection of characters: Brown travelled a continent-wide arc as Hannah Pitt, Joe's conformist Mormon mother, who slowly softens to become an understanding woman but she also delivered telling performances as Rabbi Chemelwitz, Ethel Rosenberg and Roy's exasperated doctor.  Lawrence made a memorable Angel as well as the friendly HIV unit nurse Emily and Hannah's Mormon friend Sister Ella.  It was a delight too to see the main cast chip in telling cameos: Garfield was also Louis' butch leather pick-up in Central Park who still lived with his parents, Gough was Roy's State Department ally Martin Heller while Lane and Tovey were a hoot as Prior's ancestors sent by The Angel to prepare it's way.

Time and again, the plays proved that there never was a better time to revive them: all Joe's breathless enthusiasm for Reagan making America feel good about itself again, the politics of greed over empathy, Harper's paranoia of a world not caring about the environment and most frighting of all, that the abrasive, vengeful Roy Cohn really was Donald Trump's legal advisor during the 1970s and 1980s.

The run is sold out but there are still two ballots to go which will give you access to book specially reserved seats - https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/angels-ballot-presented-by-delta - and the plays will be screened as part of the NT Live theatre-to-cinema project http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/61490-angels-in-america-part-one-millennium-approaches

Try and see them however you can - see them for the amazing production, the remarkable cast and for Kushner's dazzling, angry, funny and ultimately profound masterpiece.