Angels In America: Perestroika

I'm trying to wrap my head around the titanic achievement of Angels in Americaby Tony Kushner. It's so epic, so titanic, so huge ... yet also such a microcosm. Unlike so many epic plays dealing with tectonic shifts in politics, Kushner never, never loses focus on the personal and the simple. From tangled relationships to a hearing in heaven between the divine forces that rule the continents, he keeps his balance always. It's daring to write a ply like this: there's no hiding behind "realism", nor can is simply be excused by "fantasy" ... it is unabashedly unique and personal. It is imaginative boldness, and nothing but.

What's all the more amazing to me is his practical boldness. Kushner was writing for the Eureka Theater, not exactly a place brimming with funds and resources, certainly not the resources he ended up with when these plays became Broadway Blockbusters. It's too tempting in this age of endlessly workshopped plays to write for the economics: empty stages with few scenic demands (unlike, say, crashing ceilings and glowing alephs), small casts with minimal requirements. Though his notes indicate a simple bare set ... this is a "bare" far removed from the "two chairs and a special" mentality that so often underlies the econimics of contemporary play development. Kushner here wrote what he wanted to, and let his collaborators figure out how to make it all happen onstage.

Even as a period piece, it is a gorgeous work that reminds me that American theater does not need to be constrained by the kitchen sink.