Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA in the New Millennium at Portland Stage

Portland Stage joins forces with the Dramatic Repertory Company to revive Tony Kushner’s multiple award-winning 1991 drama, ANGELS IN AMERICA, in a production that Artistic Director Anita Stewart proudly calls “all Maine-made.”  The company has shouldered the huge task of presenting the sprawling seven-hour epic in two parts, the first of which “Millennium Approaches” proves its ability to create a powerful emotional impact long after its premiere.

Kushner’s play, which he calls “A Gay Fantasia,” is a poignantly poetic work that exists on several levels of reality.  Set in 1985, it is a dream play where hallucination and fantasy seamlessly intersect with actual events, where two storylines converge, overlap, and morph, ANGELS IN AMERICA revisits the nightmare of the AIDS crisis.  The characters grapple not only with life and death, but also with painful reassessment of their values, their relationships, and their own place in the context of a crumbling world where denial, conservative politics, racism, prejudice all further complicate their journeys.

Kushner’s carefully orchestrated dialogue virtually sings with the precision of an aria, a duet or quartet.  There are flashes of humor and warmth amid the terrifying darkness, and throughout the impending doom, there is a glimmer of hope and faith in basic humanity. The angels who hover over the play are fierce avenging angels, but they are also embodiments of hope and healing.

Directed by Keith Powell Beyland and Peter Brown, the Portland Stage production focuses on the emotional interplay of characters, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.  The unit set by Anita Stewart creates a backdrop of the New York cityscape  rising above a dingy space, which transforms into various locales by means of a few key props. As Kushner would have wished, there is little done to disguise the stagecraft, giving the supernatural elements an air of nightmarish grotesquerie.  SeifAllah Salotto-Cristobal’s enigmatic lighting design and Seth Asa Sengel’s subtle underscoring of sound effects complement the concept. Emily White supplies the simple costumes with colorful touches for some of the hallucinatory characters.

Robbie Harrison makes a sympathetic and deeply agonized Prior Walter, while Nate Stephenson is convincingly devastated as his conflicted lover, Louis.  Joseph Bearor does a fine job of portraying Joseph’s psychological distress as a closeted gay man trapped in a difficult marriage, while Michela Michalizio makes a strong foil as his neurotic and dependent wife, Harper, whose own slender grasp on reality borders upon the tragic. Paul Haley has some intense moments as Roy Cohn, one of Kushner’s most complicated characters, but he does not completely project the monstrousness of the man.  Ashanti Dwight Williams makes a flamboyant, worldly wise ex- drag queen and male nurse, Belize.  Denise Poirier and Casey Turner complete the cast playing several roles, with Turner’s Angel managing to be both ominous and inviting and Poirier’s Mormon mother a sadly comic depiction of narrow-mindedness.

Producing ANGELS IN AMERICA is an ambitious, laudable undertaking for Portland Stage and the Dramatic Repertory Company. While medicine and science have taken great strides since Kushner penned his play, the painful scars left by the AIDS epidemic and America’s handling of the crisis remain unhealed wounds on the national consciousness, just as the political and social issues raised by the play continue to plague us.  For a 21st century America, newly emerged from another pandemic, there are lessons in humanity to be learned from this timeless and powerful play.

Photo courtesy Portland Stage

ANGELS IN AMERICA runs from May 1- May 26, 2024, at Portland Stage, 25 Forest Ave., Portland, ME  207-774-0465  www.portlandstage.com

 

 

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