The Great Come Back of play "Angels in America" to the theaters around US

Tony Kushner’s magnificent two-part epic Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, which opened on Broadway in 1993 and went on to become the signal cultural event of the decade, has made a great comeback to Broadway once more in 2017 starting at Neil Simon Theater and spreading to theaters across the country including Ensemble Theater in Cleveland. With capacity no more than 60 seats the show had a great success during its presentation of Part One: Millennium Approaches setting high hopes for the opening of the Second Part: Perestroika, the following weekend. 

Angels in America touches upon numerous important subjects revolving around sexuality and the AIDs epidemic. The audience is introduced, almost simultaneously, to two different story lines: the relationships between Prior Walter (Scott Esposito) and his long-term partner Louis Ironson (Craig Joseph) and the struggle to self-identify in life of Joseph Pitt (James Alexander Rankin) that is influenced by his gay boss Roy Cohn (Jeffrey Gover) and Mormon wife Hanna Pitt (Dedui Ring). 

The story takes place in New York City during 1985's boom of AIDs epidemic, opening by the Prior and Luis sitting on the bench, living the best time of their life until Prior decides to show his first lesion to Louis, escalating the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Harper Pitt struggles with paranoia, delusion and Valium addiction is left home alone. Her condition progresses as Joseph spends more time trying to develop his career growth. Joseph is God-fearing Mormon husband who is stuck in the closet and is driven farther away from his wife every day. He is mentored by his boss Roy who is also deeply closeted but very passionate about always receiving what he wants. Soon Roy is also diagnosed with AIDs in the middle of the romance development with his employee Joseph. Joseph leaves his family and comes out to his mother Harper who decides to come to New York from Utah to change her son's mind regarding his sexual orientation. His wife Harper falls deeper into her delusions and finds her peace in delusion of Antarctica. 

 As Prior gets sicker his boyfriend Louis grows distant and experiences a lot of confusion expressed in dialog with mutual couple's friend Belize.  Belize, former drag queen, provides comfort and support to his friend Prior while working as a nurse. In his illness Prior receives a series of ghostly visions as he battles with reality where he is deadly ill and left alone in the world that still hates homosexuals. Two story-lines unite when Joseph and Louis meet at the park and have deep dialog about their place in life and how they both feel that they don’t deserve to be loved. Though Tony Kushner does not provide the audience with clear ending last vision of Prior brakes all the hopes of happy one. 

The director of the show, Celeste Cosentino, assisted by Sara Bogomoly and Tyler Whidden, did a fantastic job managing this eventful play by providing audience with smooth transitions, celerity of the scenes and common language manner. The play run time is 3 hours and 40 minutes which were filled with action, taking very little time between seances changes. On multiple occasions the stage was divided on by two different story lines that had been exchanging the spotlight while the actors continue silently acting on the dark side of the stage. This technique emphasized the important message that these two different stories were happening at the same time and made it easier to understand their connection at the end of the play. 

The humor of this play has balanced the mood and took away the heavy weight of the subject. The story is filled with pain and yet portrait colorfully, energetically and with humor. Actors provided audience with a mixture of emotions but most importantly they gave a chance for all people to relate to the story in one character or another. Unlike other plays Angels in America does not have bad and good characters, nevertheless it offers audience the virility of approaches to handle difficult life situations. Also, it demonstrates the solutions characters find to battle the pain that had been thrown at them. The main goal of every story line is happiness and the price that one must pay for it.

The characters were portrayed brilliantly by the local actors. Casual manner of the speech between characters made it easier to process the importance of the issues that were discussed. Lack of motivations and emotions in Prior's face played by Scott Esposito gave the audience of understanding of the desperation that he was experiencing. My personal favorite actor was Robert Hunter playing Belize. He was able to live Belize's character on stage by giving best impression of sassy, fashionable heartbroken gay men who cares about his appearance in every gesture . Hunter was able to become Belize for that night and made me believe that he was 80's black drag queen. 

Overall the play had made me feel joy, pain, tension and anger. I was laughing with Prior as he was putting on makeup for his last drag show. I was relating to Joseph when he was struggling with acting upon his desires towards same-sex and I was crying with Prior as he had vision of his last dance with love of his life Louis. The play evoked emotions within me and many other members of the audience as well as educated me about the struggles of homosexuals in the heights of the AIDs epidemic.