The Asian Age

Garfield wows critics in UK with Angels...

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One of the landmark plays of the late 20th century, Angels in America is set in a deeply divided United States haunted by premonitio­ns of apocalypse. It still feels completely relevant.

Tony Kushner’s “gay fantasia on national themes” — revived in a sold-out production at National Theatre — is set against the backdrop of the 1980s AIDS crisis, the “Reagan revolution” and the end of the Cold War, but doesn’t feel like a period piece. The epic drama, made up of two plays called the Millennium Approaches and Perestroik­a, running almost eight hours in all, is the London theatre event of the year, with a high-profile cast that includes Academy Award nominee Andrew Garfield and Tony Award winner Nathan Lane.

The Daily Telegraph gave the production five stars on Friday, with critic Dominic Cavendish calling it “a start-to-finish sensation.” He said Mr Garfield — an Oscar nominee this year for war movie Hacksaw Ridge — “gives one of the performanc­es of his career” as Prior Walter, the young New York man diagnosed with AIDS and battling both fear and unsettling angelic visions.

The Evening Standard said the play’s “sheer imaginativ­e reach can be exhilarati­ng and it’s studded with devilish humor.”

The Times of London’s Ann Treneman was a dissenting voice, finding “quite a few moments of tedium” in a production whose “pace is, at times, glacial.” But she joined other reviewers in praising the cast for embodying Mr Kushner’s flawed and human characters.

 ?? — AP ?? In a photo made available by the National Theatre, Andrew Garfield plays the lead in Angels in America in London.
— AP In a photo made available by the National Theatre, Andrew Garfield plays the lead in Angels in America in London.

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