Play in two parts a nice package

THEATER REVIEW

Many Columbus-area theater troupes have produced Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America, Part One (Millennium Approaches).”

Fewer have taken on “Part Two (Perestroika).”

In an ambitious production making use of some extraordinary puppets created by Dayton’s Zoot Puppet Theatre Company as well as a uniformly talented group of actors, the Short North Stage is now presenting the two parts of the play in repertory — so that theatergoers can see them on different days or, for the truly ambitious, both in one day.

Together, the parts amplify both the strengths (spectacle and depth) and the weaknesses (self-indulgence and lack of plot development) of Kushner’s work.

Under the sharply defined direction of J.J. Parkey and Edward Carignan, the production brushes off any potential historical fustiness by keeping the emphasis on universal predicaments and emotions such as shame and guilt.

The play follows a group of characters whose lives are affected by AIDS in the mid-1980s. Although it takes hours before some of these lives begin to intersect, the staging, which deliberately crowds characters from different scenes together in the same space, hints at interrelationships before the play articulates them.

Moving at a clipped pace and unafraid of broad gestures, the production sweeps the viewer along.

Taking full advantage of the possibilities for uninhibited drama, Todd Covert makes Roy Cohn, the reallife lawyer who is the closest the play comes to a villain, into a surprisingly appealing figure, misguided and destructive but full of vitality even as he is dying of a disease he denies.

Parkey is charismatic and relatively unsentimental as Prior Walter, whose descent into sickness and death sends the play into motion; and Danny Turek is engaging as the guilt-ridden, verbose lover who abandons him. Josie Merkle solidly grounds the many characters she plays, and Melissa Hall is touching as the fragile wife of a closeted Mormon.

The puppets — their faces frozen into single, chilling expressions — are effective when they play otherworldly characters such as the angels and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, less so when they play human characters.

Jonathon Sabo’s set for Part One, with dust-toned moving panels and a high, mirrored ceiling, enhances the dreamlike mood; his more traditional Part Two set, which subtly evokes a cemetery, is less dramatic.

Part Two, which previewed on Thursday, would not be recommended for those who haven’t seen Part One.

With even more angels and angst than in Part One, Part Two might wear on some nerves. Still, it nicely completes the story begun earlier.