Tag Archives: Angels In America

WATCH: "ANGELS IN AMERICA" National Theater/Broadway Cast Production - Full Play [Video]

WATCH: “ANGELS IN AMERICA” National Theater/Broadway Cast Production – Full Play [Video]

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The National Theater presents the Broadway Live production of Tony Kushner’s multi-award-winning two-part play directed by Tony award-winning director Marianne Elliott.

America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell.

The cast includes Andrew Garfield playing Prior Walter, Denise Gough playing Harper Pitt, Nathan Lane playing Roy Cohn, James McArdle playing Louis Ironson and Russell Tovey playing Joe Pitt.

Glenn Close, Patty Lupone to Headline Virtual ‘Angels in America’ Performance Benefit With A Twist

Glenn Close, Patty Lupone to Headline Virtual ‘Angels in America’ Performance Benefit With A Twist

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On October 8th. Glenn Close, Laura Linney, Patti LuPone, S. Epatha Merkerson and Jeremy O. Harris will present a free hourlong virtual benefit performance of seven scenes from ” Tony Kushner’s award winning “Angels in America,” the 1993 play about the AIDS.

Though the 15 actors filmed themselves in separate locations, in a feat of technical wizardry, their likenesses have been collaged together to make it look as though they are in the same room. “It lives between a theater piece and a film,” the performance’s director, Ellie Heyman, said. “I’ve never worked on anything like it.”

The twist is that the casting departs from tradition as Close will transform herself into Roy Cohn, the evil closeted gay lawyer. The drug-addicted housewife Harper Pitt is typically played by a woman in her early 30s, but in this production, the 89-year-old actress Lois Smith tackles the role. And Brian Tyree Henry, a Black man, is one of three performers stepping into a part usually filled by a white actor: Prior Walter, a 30-year-old gay man who contracts AIDS. (The other two will be Paul Dano and Andrew Rannells.)

The virtual performance will benefit the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Fund to Fight Covid-19 and will be streamed live at 8:30 p.m. October. 8th. on the Broadway.com YouTube channel.

Gay History - WATCH: The 1993 "Angels in America" Broadway Press Reel - Video

Gay History – WATCH: The 1993 “Angels in America” Broadway Press Reel – Video

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For those of you who don’t know Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is enjoying a return Broadway after 25 years.  The two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991[ and its Broadway opening was in 1993.

The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.

The entire two-part play debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993, directed by George C. Wolfe, with Millennium Approaches performed on May 4 and Perestroika joining it in repertory on November 23, closing December 4, 1994.

The original cast included Ron Leibman, Stephen Spinella, Kathleen Chalfant, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Wright, Ellen McLaughlin, David Marshall Grant and Joe Mantello. Among the replacements during the run were F. Murray Abraham (for Ron Leibman), Cherry Jones (for Ellen McLaughlin), Dan Futterman (for Joe Mantello), Cynthia Nixon (for Marcia Gay Harden) and Jay Goede (for David Marshall Grant). Millennium Approaches and Perestroika were awarded, in 1993 and 1994 respectively, both the Tony Awards for Best Play and Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Play.

Below you can watch scene snippets of the original Broadway production.