At a glance
“Angels in America” Short North Stage Garden Theater’s Main Stage, 1187 N. High St. 614-725-4042, www.shortnorthstage.org Part one: 3 p.m. Saturday, June 24, July 1-2; and 8 p.m. June 29; part two: 8 tonight (preview) through Saturday night, June 22-24, June 30 to July 2; 3 p.m. Sunday and June 25 $32 to $37, or $30 for tonight’s preview we’re just leaning into the fantasia part.”
Todd Covert plays manipulative Manhattan attorney Roy Cohn.
“He creates chaos and deflection as part of his egotistical power trip,” Covert said.
A Republican power broker, Cohn served as chief counsel to Sen. Joe McCarthy and helped prosecute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 after being convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union.
“Cohn wanted power and influence and thought Washington was the hotbed of where a lawyer needed to be,” Covert said.
“I have to step into a darker side of myself to bring him to life.”
Parkey, meanwhile, plays the central role of Prior Walter, a gay New Yorker dying of AIDS. After his diagnosis, Walter’s lover, Louis Ironson (Danny Turek), leaves him.
“Prior is the everyman, cloaked in mascara,” Parkey said.
“He’s the guy that everyone knows and everyone likes, but bad stuff keeps happening to him.”
As his disease progresses, Walter begins to experience prophetic visions.
“It’s up to the audience whether he’s truly a prophet or his fantasies are hallucinations,” Parkey said.
“Kushner leaves the interpretation open because he wants people to take away different messages.”
Short North Stage added performances to allow theatergoers to see the entire two-part, six-hour-plus work as a one-day marathon on Saturday, June 24, and July 1-2.
“I’m most excited to do both halves in one day because it will be the most trying and rewarding theatrical experience I will ever have,” Parkey said. Covert agreed. “It’s like standing and looking at Mount Everest and wondering how we’re ever going to climb it,” he said.
“But then we’re halfway there. … It’s such an epic play that theater companies often just produce the first half, but part two completes the story … that we’re all people going through some struggle.”