Playwright: Tony Kushner
At: Hypocrites at Bailiwick, 1650 N. Halsted
Phone: ( 773 ) 883-1090; $25
Runs through: May 6
I jinx myself every time I pick a show I haven't seen as my Critic's Pick. See last week's Windy City Times. I thought it was a safe bet to select Millennium Approaches because I've seen the play before and been moved by it, but more importantly, it's being done by The Hypocrites, one of the most innovative and inspired theater companies in town. I thought there was no chance this show wouldn't be a winner, so I went out on a limb and chose it without seeing it. I should have learned; every time I've done that in the past, the show turns out to be undeserving of the title.
Sadly, this production of the first part of Angels in America, Tony Kushner's epic portrait of America at the beginning of the AIDS crisis back in the early 1980s, never quite delivers on its obviously lofty ambitions. By now, Kushner's saga is pretty well known ( and presented in two three-hour segments; the second part, Perestroika, opens April 8 and will run in repertory with Millennium Approaches until early May ) and its indictment of the political failings that caused the disease to go unchecked for so long and its interwoven stories have become somewhat iconic. ( See Roy Cohn, villainous closet case, sell out his gay brethren; see Ethel Rosenberg visit a dying Cohn. ) I wouldn't say that Kushner's story 20 years later doesn't still ring true with political and social significance ( gay couples, for example, continue to struggle with sero-discordant relationships; straight marriage continues to provide a wobbly haven for the closeted ) , but it needs a fiery and strong production to make it work.
The Hypocrites, of whom I am a big fan of ( and, in particular, the directorial genius of Sean Graney, who is at the helm again here ) , seem to be overreaching. This Angels in America looks more like community theater than anything I've seen the company do to date ( and I've seen a lot of its work ) . There's taste and elegance in the creative design ( set by Graney and Jim Moore, lighting by Jared Moore ) , but there's also a curious distancing factor in these areas; the slick lighting effects, for example, often obscure the actors' features, casting them in backlit darkness, when we should be able to read their pain. The stripped-down set, economical for certain, doesn't allow us to step into a world of people we care about, which is essential for this play. And Graney indulges himself in some gimmickry here: casting Jennifer Grace in three male roles for no reason other than the oddity factor; Grace, at best, looks like a bad drag king and it's off-putting, transporting me right out of the world Kushner created. Graney's use of multiple coffins, too, is heavy-handed…and seems stolen from his more subtle motif of doors he utilized for his excellent production of Death of a Salesman.
The ensemble hasn't been coaxed to deliver the kind of performance excellence I'm used to seeing this company deliver. Some of the fault might lie in Kushner's characterizations, but almost all of the cast come across as one note, and not really people. And we need people … people who make us laugh and make us grieve.
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