Angels in America

Published Wednesday 16 May 2007 at 15:25 by Thom Dibdin

Bold and muscular in its delivery, director Daniel Kramer drives this complex, multi-layered play on with an awe-inspiring intensity. Detailed enough so each part can stand on its own in this portrayal of pre-Millennial, gay New York, the coherence is such that they are really best seen together - and certainly in order.

Kramer’s skill, with no little help from the design team of Soutra Gilmour (set), Charles Balfour (lights) and Mark Bouman (costume), is to bring out all the camp, glistening surface comedy of the writing. Like the very best of Hunter S Thomson, it skips from one subversive laugh to the next as it heads directly, explosively and with a real understanding of fantastical theatricality, into the dark heart of the American dream.

At its core, however, this is a production that stands on the success of an octet of performances which are note-perfect in their delivery. Mark Emerson has exactly the right amount of camp as HIV positive Prior Walter, with Adam Levy getting all the angst and internal conflict of his Jewish boyfriend, Louis Ironside, and Obi Abili bringing the full force of eighties dayglo outrageousness as their confidante, the one-time drag queen and nurse, Belize.

Jo Stone-Fewings displays a real understanding of the balance needed for in-the-closet lawyer, Joseph Pitt. He gets all the required naivity of the era as he bangs his head against the Mormon religion of his mother Hannah, his convenient marriage to Valium-addled Harper, his worship for hard-nosed lawyer Roy M Cohn and his sex-fuelled affair with Louis.

As Harper, Kirsty Bushell floats effortlessly into realms of fantasy, bringing the sort of frailty which allows you to both understand the hurt her husband is causing her, while accentuating the fantastical and the comic side of the production. As her antithesis, Ann Mitchell brings all the grounding necessary to the role of Hannah.

At the dark heart lies Roy M Cohn. A non-fictional character, the illegal acts of this high-flying lawyer who died of ‘liver disease’ referred to in the play are real. Greg Hicks’ creation of him as a character so poisonous, evil and utterly Machiavellian that, like Belize, you cannot help but be drawn to him, is certainly fictional, however.

As a production, this lives and dies on whether it convinces in the magic of its realism. And to that end it is Golda Rosheuvel - as the dark, almost satanic, angel whose appearance could, so easily, end it all Deus ex Machina - who allows the production to open up the heart of the American dream and expose the festering ills that make it dark and enfeeble its beat.