Take me seriously, for a moment.
Nov. 18th, 2003 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tzikehIf you don't get HBO, I strongly suggest ordering it for the month of December.
Tony Kushner's adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America is going to air in December. Part One (Millennium Approaches) airs Sunday, December 7 at 8e/7c, and Part Two (Perestroika) airs the following Sunday, same time. On Broadway, this was a two-night, eight-hour event. It has been streamlined, by Kushner, into two three-hour sections for television.
The HBO version stars Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Mary-Louise Parker, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright, and a handful of other extremely talented actors, most playing multiple roles (as it was done on stage as well).
Seeing this play was one of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life, and I guarantee you that if this adaptation is even one-tenth as good as the play, you will be thrilled by it.
It is impossible for me to explain what the play is "about". It is set in 1985, and centers around two couples - Prior and Louis, and Joe and Harper. It puts their lives, loves, and struggles in focus against the backdrop of the scourge of AIDS, the Reagan Administration's refusal to confront the crisis, and the loathsome but complex persona of Roy Cohn (also a character in the play). But do not be deterred by how dour this sounds. This is a frighteningly funny, exuberant piece of theater which well deserved its Pulitzer. Do not miss it.
Quotes from reviews of the original production:
Tony Kushner's adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America is going to air in December. Part One (Millennium Approaches) airs Sunday, December 7 at 8e/7c, and Part Two (Perestroika) airs the following Sunday, same time. On Broadway, this was a two-night, eight-hour event. It has been streamlined, by Kushner, into two three-hour sections for television.
The HBO version stars Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Mary-Louise Parker, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright, and a handful of other extremely talented actors, most playing multiple roles (as it was done on stage as well).
Seeing this play was one of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life, and I guarantee you that if this adaptation is even one-tenth as good as the play, you will be thrilled by it.
It is impossible for me to explain what the play is "about". It is set in 1985, and centers around two couples - Prior and Louis, and Joe and Harper. It puts their lives, loves, and struggles in focus against the backdrop of the scourge of AIDS, the Reagan Administration's refusal to confront the crisis, and the loathsome but complex persona of Roy Cohn (also a character in the play). But do not be deterred by how dour this sounds. This is a frighteningly funny, exuberant piece of theater which well deserved its Pulitzer. Do not miss it.
Quotes from reviews of the original production:
"Angels in America is the broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time."—Jack Kroll, Newsweek
"A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama."—Frank Rich, The New York Times
"Something rare, dangerous and harrowing... a roman candle hurled into a drawing room...."—Nicholas de Jongh, London Evening Standard
"a masterpiece."—John Lahr, New Yorker
