ANGELS IN AMERICA
The theatrical epic Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is held as one of the greatest Broadway productions in all history. I have never seen even a local or regional production, probably due to its expansive nature. For those of us who will probably never see a live production, there is the Mike Nichols television miniseries. After finishing Angels in America, I leave thoroughly puzzled over why people would want to watch both parts.
Split into two parts, Millenium Approaches and Perestroika, with each part subdivided into chapters, the overall plot covers much territory. The story entangles two groups. On one side, there is Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a Jewish man in a long-term relationship with WASP Prior Walter (Justin Kirk). Walter, scion of an old American family, has AIDS. Louis, despite his liberal leanings, cannot handle his partner's illness and leaves him.
Weaving in and out of Louis' life is Mormon Republican attorney Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson). He is married to drugged-out Harper (Mary-Louise Parker), who is stupefied through her Valium pill-popping haze. She occasionally goes into fantasies where Mr. Lies (Jeffrey Wright) takes her through the refrigerator to Antartica. Harper knows what Joe will not admit to perhaps even himself: Joe is gay.
Someone else who will not admit that he is gay is Joe's mentor, notorious attorney Roy Cohn (Al Pacino). Like Prior, Cohn is dying of AIDS, but he refuses to admit that he has the disease. Eventually though, Cohn needs hospitalization but uses his connections to get his hands on massive quantities of AZT, which were not freely available in October 1981. Prior and Cohn are attended by nurse Norman Ariaga, better known as Belize (Wright in a dual role). Belize is friends with Prior and Louis, though he finds the latter difficult to intolerable.
Cohn wants Joe to take up a Washington job so that he can keep himself from being disbarred. Joe, honest and upright, refuses. He also finally surrenders to the pleasures of the flesh with Louis, with whom he has fallen in love with. Joe also admits his homosexuality to his mother, Hannah (Meryl Streep). While Hannah will not accept this announcement, she sells her home and moves to New York to look after him.
Prior, for his part, finds himself visited by two of his ancestors (Michael Gambon and Simon Callow), who are precursors to an Angel (Emma Thompson), who declares that Prior Walter is a prophet whose great work begins.
I think that is all Part One. Part Two has Prior tell Belize his vision, which includes him having a version of sex with the angel. He also begins hunting down Louis' new partner, as is appalled that Joe Pitt is actually hot. Belize recognizes him as Roy Cohn's protege, which enrages Louis who thinks of Cohn as the Devil Incarnate. He also suspects Joe was Roy's lover, which Joe vehemently denies. Eventually, Louis cannot abide being with a closeted Mormon Republican.
Prior, still in his prophetic role, finds an unlikely ally in Hannah. As a devout Mormon, she is not surprised about angels visiting mortals. She even manages to see The Angel come to Prior. While Hannah is terrified, she also instructs Prior on how to battle against the Angel. He forces the Angel to take him up to the ruins of Heaven, as God has abandoned it for humans, who are His playthings. Will he take up the mantle of bringing God back to Heaven?
One person who will not see Heaven is the dying Cohn. He not only is dying but has to content with the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Streep), who in her Nuw Yawk accent taunts her nemesis. Will Roy Cohn be defeated by someone from beyond the grave or will he get one last laugh before shuffling off this mortal coil? Will Louis, now with a mother figure in Hannah, live long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Union and begin his own great work?
Who am I to argue against what I have been told is one of the greatest works of fiction ever written? Well, I will be, for I found Angels in America boring and at times outlandishly albeit unintentionally hilarious. I figure that this adaptation is close to how the original production was. After all, Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner adapted his play for the miniseries. I cannot vouch for any changes, but again I figure this production is as close to how a stage production would play out.
If so, I would have been howling with laughter during several scenes. I probably would have started chuckling at the beginning, when we see Meryl Streep in drag playing an old rabbi. You can clearly see that it is Meryl Streep through the makeup, and I was genuinely wondering if Angels in America was a comedy, her Hebrew manner a bit exaggerated for my tastes.
During Perestroika, I would have been on the floor rolling with laughter when Prior and Hannah see the Dark Angel come to castigate the Prophet for refusing his command. A previous scene where Prior and the Angel have something close to angelic/human sexual intercourse was already making me chuckle at the absurdity that I was watching. I thought Thompson was hamming it up to the Nth degree as the Angel, as if playing a heavenly figure gave her permission to go over-the-top. The Angel's penchant for referring to itself as "I...I...I..." did not help clamp down on my laughter. The grandiose nature of it all, coupled with the acting of Thompson, Streep and Kirk made everything hilarious, at least to me.
Part of me gets that sometimes things had to be a bit exaggerated. Gambon and Callow (whom I initially thought was Peter O'Toole) being quite exaggerated as Prior's foppish ancestors, I get. I can even roll with Thompson's Angel being grand. I cannot quite roll, however, with another of Thompson's roles as Prior's Southern nurse. I thought her Southern drawl was a bit forced.
There are essentially three good performances in
Angels in America. Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Jeffrey Wright and Mary-Louise Parker all won Emmy Awards for their performances. As I said that there were three, I would remove Parker. I understand that her whacked-out Harper was meant to be almost comatose. However, I found her too comatose to where I never believed that she could be a real person, let alone a character. Her final scene where, looking out of an airplane window, she addresses the audience was a bit off-putting to me. I found it a touch theatrical.
Wright was strong and effective as Belize, balancing a flamboyant manner while not being cartoonish. He recreated his Tony Award-winning performance, and I think he had many excellent moments. A highlight is a scene where he puts Louis in his place for lecturing him about his moralizing while justifying leaving his dying lover. In equal turns bitchy and compassionate, Belize was an interesting character worth following thanks to Wright's performance. He was not as good when playing Mr. Lies, but my sense is that he was meant to be a little absurd, so it is not a dealbreaker.
Streep was strong playing both Hannah and Ethel Rosenberg. Major credit should be given to the Emmy Award-winning makeup work, which made Streep look eerily like Rosenberg. She managed to make the two different people look as if they were being played by two different people. Hannah is firm in her faith and worldview, but she is also sensible and a genuine mother figure to Prior. I would say less so with Joe, for whom she seems to almost harbor a dislike. However, it is to Streep's credit that her performances were very strong.
If only she had not played the rabbi. She just looked goofy in that makeup and her accent. I found it a poor way to begin.
Unlike Streep and Wright, Al Pacino played only one role. His Roy Cohn is arrogant, cruel, vindictive and a liar to both others and himself. In his rages and defiance against his metaphorical and literal ghosts, Pacino held your attention. It is to where when he manages to outwit Ethel Rosenberg at his literal deathbed, I actually found him almost likeable. I think that was helped by how Ethel's smug face delighted in Cohn's death. I do not expect anyone to offer sympathy for the devil. I do hope that people, even ghosts, can be better than that.
The other main cast members, all of whom received Emmy nominations, were not in my view good. Shenkman was at times laughable and insufferable as Louis. Yes, I suppose that Louis was meant to be laughable and insufferable. However, at times it felt as though Shenkman was attempting to do a Woody Allen impersonation. Patrick Wilson was pretty as the closeted Joe. However, he was also pretty blank, not making his internal struggle good. Kirk's Prior was acceptable but not great. He too had some of Shenkman's whining manner. However, given that his character was dying of AIDS, I can be more flexible on the matter.
I confess to both falling asleep and falling on the floor laughing at certain parts of Angels in America. I do not think that was intention. The performances from Pacino, Streep and Wright make it bearable. I would, however, not want to sit through all this again just for them. Ultimately, I think that Angels in America carried too much of its theatrical roots to make a fully formed transition to television. What works on the stage does not necessarily work on television. I know the stage play and television adaptation are both highly praised. For myself, I could not go along with the adulation Angels in America has received.
I would not want this Angel at my table.
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