Gamm Theatre Announces Bonus Productions Of Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA

The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre has announced that its 40th Anniversary Season will culminate in June with a special production of Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, followed in September by Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika.

Staged as a bonus to the theater's 5-play season lineup, Tony Kushner's groundbreaking play will be the flourish on The Gamm's celebratory milestone season, then serve to launch The Gamm's next decade of exhilarating theater. A director and cast announcement is forthcoming.

Among the most searching and imaginative dramas in the American canon, Kushner's two-part masterpiece confronts the great cultural, political, religious, and sexual themes of our era. The first half starts in 1980s against the backdrop of New York City when the devastating AIDS epidemic is raging and the Reagan White House is failing miserably at confronting it.

The story revolves around the intersecting lives of eight characters with different relationships to AIDS and homosexuality. The darker and more mystical second half picks up where the first left off — with characters from part one transitioning from the opportunistic 80s to a new sense of community in the 90s. 

Considered by many to be the greatest play of the last 30 years, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches premiered at San Francisco's Eureka Theatre Company in 1991. Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika followed at the Mark Taper Forum in 1992. The entire play debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993. The pair won an avalanche of industry awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. The 2003 HBO Films miniseries Angels in America won both the Golden Globe and Emmy awards for best miniseries.

“Kushner's epic work began more than 30 years ago, blowing through the theater with hurricane-force and garnering every possible award and honor here in America and across the world. Three decades on, it remains a north star for American theater and a standard bearer for the unique power of this art form, blending the comic, the tragic and the mythic to wring our hearts dry. It illuminates the darkest corners of human experience, revealing hope, grace and transcendence in the midst of great pain and suffering,” Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella said. “Our growth over the past 40 years has led us to this point, eager and equipped to take on this bonfire of a play. It is also a good time to remember, as Mr. Kushner reminds us so powerfully, that ‘the world only spins forward.'”

ABOUT ANGELS IN AMERICA

In the first part of Tony Kushner's epic, set in 1980s New York City, a gay man is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls. Other characters include the infamous McCarthy-ite lawyer Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, a former drag queen who works as a nurse, and an angel. In the second part, the plague of AIDS worsens, relationships fall apart as new ones form, and unexpected friendships take form. Masterfully exploring loved, sex, religion, family, Angels in America is “the most ambitious American play of our time, an epic that ranges from earth to heaven.” [Newsweek]

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches runs from May 29-June 15 at 1245 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, R.I. Tickets for Gamm Theatre subscribers and members are on sale starting August 19 for as low as $40 per show when purchased as a package, or $50 for a single play. Tickets are on sale to the general public on October 1, with prices ranging from $70-$80 per show or $125 for both shows. For details go to gammtheatre.org/angels or call 401-723-4266.

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