Review

FYI --

 

Here is an unedited versiuon of my review of Angels in America.  The edited version will be up on www.pamphletpress.org as soon as Jenny Southlynn is able to post it.

 

Jim Seay

 

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...ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH...
 a review of
 Angels in America, Part I: the Millennium Approaches
 by James L. Seay

   After a momentary silence spake
   Some vessel of a more ungainly Make;
   "They sneer at me for leaning all awry.
   What!  Did the Hand of the Potter shake?"

     The Rubiyat of Omar Khayya m

 John M. Clum in Acting Gay:  Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama refers to Tony Kushner's Angels in America as "a turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture."  Robert McRuer, in his The Queer Renaissance:  Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities seems to agree.   It seems as though the "Queer Renaissance" coincides with the spread of the AIDS pandemic from the early eighties on.  During this time, we have Martin Sherman's 1979 play, Bent, which deals with homosexual treatment under the Third Reich (AIDS did not exist at the time of the play's action), and Moises Kaufman's Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, I Am My Own Wife and his most notable work, The Laramie Project (which makes many references to Angels In America).  While Angels in America may very well be a "turning point in the history of gay drama," it is hardly a turning point in "the history of American drama."  After all, American naturalist, Theodore Dreiser wrote his play, The Hand of the Potter in 1918.  Indeed, Dreiser faced more than a little resistance from the theatre-going public, due to the controversial subject matter (homosexuality) of the play. 

 Critics tended to take sides quickly; those who condemned Dreiser's play because of its frank portrayal of what they considered "sexual deviance," which violated not only their individual sense of decency, but their sense of "stage propriety," and those who welcomed The Hand of the Potter, hailing it as an attempt to enact a new vision of tragic drama.  In his review of a production of The Hand of the Potter for The Nation, drama critic Ludwig Lewishon explained, "[Dreiser] substitutes the concept of tragic guilt for that of sin;  he sees that guilt arises out of the life-process itself and selects its guilty but sinless victim ....& nbsp; He alienates the ordinary spectator by repudiating the notions of sin and expiation through punishment.  It is Isadore Berchansky's undeserved punishment that he is what he is.  The tragic guilt that he must bear issues from implacable and anterior sources.  Why should we strike at him because the hand of the potter slipped?"

 Lewishon goes on to conclude that many critics condemned the play because Dreiser's idea of tragedy "invalidates their absolute moral judgments; it cracks the foundation of their punitive justice;  it shows up the blank folly of hate, war, revenge."  Somehow, it seemed to this reviewer that Lewishon could have been reviewing not Theodore Dreiser's The Hand of the Potter in 1918, but Tony Kushner's Angels in America today.  So much, at least in my estimation, for the turning point in the history of American drama.  The point comes because of a more enlightened and tolerant audience as m uch or more than from Kushner's admittedly powerful but hardly watershed script. 

 While Kushner refers to his script as a "gay fantasia on national themes," suggesting that, like a musical fantasia, it is composed of  variations on familiar themes (which, by-the-bye, it is), it also seems to share some of Dreiser's naturalism.  The philosopher Paul Draper defines naturalism as "the hypothesis that the physical world is a 'closed system' in the sense that nothing that is neither a part nor a product of it can affect it."  In other words, naturalism is the denial of supernatural events, forces or entities.  Virtually the whole of Angels in America, with one startling exception, seems to be the antithesis of supernaturalism, and that one exception is, of course, the angel, herself (and in the Parkland production, a choir of demi-angels referred to in the programme as Angelic Club Kids).  We find the characters in the physical world of the play to be acted on by nature only, and not anything that is not a part or product of it.  The characters of Prior Walter (Thom Miller), Louis Ironson (Mike Harvey), Joseph Porter Pitt (Aaron Clark) and even Harper Amata Pitt (Emily Hard) and Roy M. Cohn (Tim Schirmer) are, like Dreiser's Isadore Berchansky, victims of being who they are.  And like Dreiser, Kushner substitutes tragic guilt for sin.

 The Parkland production succeeds on most levels.  From a strictly visceral point of view, Bernard M. Wolff's lighting design, utilizing color and pattern to the best effect I have ever seen at Parkland Theatre, creates a hellish vision of the world in which the characters are trapped.  David Morgan's set seems the perfect vehicle to allow Wolff's lighting plot to utilize cinematic devices such as fades and dissolves that permit the action to flow to and from six different locations seamlessly.  The acting is up to Parkland' s usual high standards.  I was particularly impressed with Tim Schirmer's performance as the historical character of Roy M. Cohn, one of Joseph McCarthy's trusted councils in the early 1950s.  I have admired Dr. Schirmer as a musician for years, and now have a totally new respect for him as an actor.  I'm not terribly sure why Kushner brought Cohn into the play, except to show an actual character destroyed by the guilt he felt from being what he was.  He also provides the immediate conflict between Joe and Harper, supplying Joe the opportunity to indulge his lust for money and power while Harper hides in a Valium induced hallucination which doubles for a life, as she struggles with the guilt she feels from her suspicions about her husband's sexuality and her religious upbringing.  Both Clark and Hard do excellent jobs in bringing these complex characters to life, although Hard seems at times, early in the play, a little too Mary Tyler Moor e.

 The other plot line has Prior victimized by his infection while his lover, Louis wrestles with guilt for not being strong enough to stick by Prior in his seemingly terminal illness.  Prior then becomes guilt ridden over his feelings of betrayal.  Again, we see that guilt, as Lewishon put it, "arises out of the life-process itself and selects its guilty but sinless victim."  Miller and Harvey are  very believable as Prior and Lewis, and the audience has little difficulty in establishing an empathy for both of them.

 Excellent acting is also found in many of the minor parts as well.   Of particular note, I felt, were the performances of Michael Anthony Pierce as Belize, the almost sterotypic gay African-American, but who seems to have made peace with who he is, and can see through the clouds of guilt shrouding the other characters.  Also of serious note was K.J. McKinnie as the South Bronx Bag Lady.  ; In this all-too-brief part, she was a shining jewel.  Dallas Street and Andy Roberts as the ghosts of Prior Walter's ancestors, Prior I and Prior II, who died of another pandemic centuries ago, also added a bit of levity to the heavy piece, but also reinforced the guilt the characters felt from being what they were (Prior I:  Now I know why he has no children -- he's a sodomite!")

 Thom Schnarre's direction was equally excellent, which is of particular note when one realizes the risk he took.  Schnarre ventured out on a road so perilously loaded with artistic land mines that it a wonder that he survived, let alone triumphed.  In his programme notes, Schnarre concludes by saying, "This production is my political statement and my personal apology for my past."  It has always been my experience that personal catharsis, (and for Schnarre, by his own admission, that is what this is) tend to be rather like bowel movements -- for th e one experiencing it, it is a great relief.  But for the one watching, it is disgusting.   To his great credit, Schnarre avoided this pitfall and turned his personal catharsis into a truly moving night at the theatre.

 -30-
 

James L. "Jim" Seay
Playwright, Drama Critic, and Director
1507 Collier Avenue
Rantoul, IL 61866-3405
Ph. No. 217-893-0320
Fax No. 217-893-1221
e-mail: james_seay31@xxxxxxxxx

"When power leads man to arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations."
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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