‘Angels in America’ is still speaking to us
Bedlam’s Eric Tucker, directing the play at Central Square Theater, says Tony Kushner’s drama set during the depths of the AIDS crisis transcends its time and place
“Angels in America,” says actor Zach Fike Hodges, “has everything to do with being gay and nothing to do with being gay.”
While Tony Kushner’s much-lauded drama is set in the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, and debuted on Broadway in 1993, Eric Tucker, who is directing and appearing in the play at Central Square Theater, says Kushner’s honesty about humanity, and our struggles to connect in the face of nearly overwhelming heartbreak, allow the story to transcend any one segment of the population.
“This play couldn’t be more relevant today,” says Tucker, artistic director of the award-winning New York theater company Bedlam, who returns to Cambridge after popular productions of “Saint Joan,” “Twelfth Night,” “What You Will,” and “The Crucible,” at Central Square, and “Sense and Sensibility” at the American Repertory Theater.
“It was one thing when the play told the story of a plague that affected the gay population, but we just experienced a pandemic that touched everyone with the same fear, loss, and uncertainty,” he says. “The parallels between the federal responses to COVID and AIDS are so similar.”
“Angels in America” is a two-part epic that, while anchored by the AIDS crisis, is driven by the actions of a collection of deeply human characters. In “Part 1, Millennium Approaches,” we meet the couple Louis Ironson (Hodges) and Prior Walter (Eddie Shields) in the mid-1980s, just as Prior is diagnosed with AIDS. The young men’s fear — as Prior confronts certain death and Louis faces his responsibilities for his partner and their relationship — is leavened with Prior’s self-deprecating humor. Their struggle is placed in context with a plot line involving Harper and Joe Pitt, a Mormon couple. Harper is addicted to Valium and Joe is coming to terms with his homosexuality, while being mentored by the ruthless lawyer Roy Cohn. When Harper’s hallucinations intersect with Prior’s dreams, the overlap among strangers serves as a reminder of the common humanity that unites us.
“I’m petrified and thrilled to take on this role,” says Shields, who most recently appeared in another two-part epic, SpeakEasy Stage’s production of “The Inheritance.”
“I’ve been inundated with books that explore the political realities for gay men at that time,” he says. “Several trace the tragedy of the situation but infuse it with wit and sarcasm. That’s what Prior does. You have to show the lightness to get through it.”
At the same time, he says, “there is an iconography to this play. Everyone has an idea of what it should look like. I think it’s most important that I make it clear that Prior falls in love every night and then experiences deep heartbreak. Ultimately, he just wants ‘more life.’”
While Prior is flamboyant and funny and tragic, Louis is more complicated.
“Louis wants to be a person that he isn’t, no matter how much he tries,” says Hodges.
“Other actors who’ve played the role say be prepared to have the audience hate you,” he says. “I have to let go of that and let the audience like him or not based on their own sense of what they might do in a similar situation. Louis is full of contradictions. I have to just embrace that.”
Both Hodges and Shields say Tucker’s ensemble approach keeps the focus on the characters and the text.
“We are always in it, in front of the audience,” says Shields. “This is ‘Play’ with a capital P.”
Tucker says Kushner’s script serves as a blueprint for how to write for the theater. The playwright’s language, he says, comes from a “heightened, emotional place, but it’s very funny, which makes it accessible.”
“The focus is on complicated individuals and how they connect, while encouraging bare-bones technical choices that engage the audience’s imagination in the action,” he says.
“I have a phenomenal cast,” Tucker says, “and in making those choices it was essential that all the points of view were represented — religions, race, and sexual orientation. With this ensemble, I also have the advantage of Debra [Wise], Nael [Nacer], Eddie [Shields], and Maurice [Parent], who have worked together before and can create a safe environment for the ‘newcomers.’”
The biggest challenge for newcomers to Bedlam, Tucker says, is preparing actors for how physical his work is. Actors not in a particular scene are often still visible on the stage and are called upon to move props or contribute in other ways to the action of the play.
“No one can sit quietly in the green room to wait for their cue,” he says. “I think that helps keep the actors invested in every moment, which helps the audience stay in it, too.”
His movement-based approach, he says, keeps the actors and the audience vibrating.
“The emotional journey of this play is big, and not subtle,” he says. “Everything cracks open.”
ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES. PART 1, MILLENNIUM APPROACHES At Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. April 20-May 21. $16-$69. 617-576-9278 x1, www.centralsquaretheater.org
Terry Byrne can be reached at trbyrne@aol.com.