Respect the Delicate Ecology of Your Delusions

[Dual]

[YOUTUBE]_zxtLgROzyc[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

This play (these plays) are chock full of choice lines like that.

If I could find a way, I would bathe in this play.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Dual: I've always regretted not seeing it in a live performance.

Saw the 2-play cycle twice in its Broadway run back in 93-95. Then I read the plays over and over and over.

The film rights were bouncing back and forth for years before HBO and Mike Nichols finally took control. Thank God they waited until someone could really do the play justice on screen.

The script wasn't altered much from stage to screen; the most noticeable edit was the beginning of Perestroika (Part 4 of 6 in the miniseries). where a speech by "An Old Bolshevik" (played by the woman who would handle all the Meryl Streep roles) was cut. I think it was a smart move, as it was more presentational than occurring in the world of the story.

Fucking great work of art. If you hear about some semi-nearby university staging it, go.

 

[Tisiphone]

I finally caught the whole series on HBO a few months back when they re-aired it, and I was floored at how amazing it is. I dont' know if any college here would stage a production of it, but it's definitely worth a looksee.

 

[Dual]

Google says it's being revived on Broadway at the Signature Theatre starting at the end of the year. If it's popular enough to last for a bit, I'll try to see it.

 

[jack]

This is one of my favorite pieces. My daughter did a stage production of Act 2 a few years back when she was in school. I especially like it when Emma Thompson spontaneously orgasms in midair as an angel.

Fantastic stuff.

 

[Tisiphone]

All angels should spontaneously orgasm while in the air. If they did that, maybe they would leave the Winchesters alone.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

"Plasma orgasmata."

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Billy Porter Says He'll Be in NYC's New Angels in America

By Kenneth Jones
21 May 2010

Actor-singer Billy Porter told a recent crowd at Joe's Pub that he has been cast in the first New York City revival of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, Black Voices newswire reported.

The recording artist and Broadway actor (Grease!, Miss Saigon, Smokey Joe's Café) said that he will play AIDS nurse Belize (and other characters) in Signature Theatre Company's revival of the Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-honored Part 1 (Millennium Approaches) and Part 2 (Perestroika) of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

Michael Greif directs; the parts will run in repertory Sept. 14–Dec. 19 at The Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street.

Signature Theatre has not officially announced any casting for Angels in America.

More details here

Whee! Can't wait...

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

OMG SPOCK!

Casting Disclosed for ‘Angels in America’

June 3, 2010, 7:37 pm
By PATRICK HEALY

Initial casting for the September revival of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America” includes Zachary Quinto and Billy Porter, according to two theater executives involved with the Signature Theater Company production.

Mr. Quinto, who played Spock in the 2009 film “Star Trek” and Sylar on the television series “Heroes,” will portray the sarcastic Louis Ironson. Mr. Porter, an actor and singer who has performed in Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, has been cast as Belize, the nurse and former drag queen.

In the 1993 Broadway production of the two-part “Angels,” about politics, AIDS and love, Joe Mantello played Louis and Jeffrey Wright played Belize. Mr. Mantello was nominated for a Tony Award for best featured actor in a play for the role in Part 1 of “Angels,” “Millennium Approaches.” Mr. Wright won the Tony for best featured actor in a play for his work in Part 2, “Perestroika.”

The two theater executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for Signature, said on Thursday that the company was in talks with the actor Christian Borle to play Prior Walter, a gay man with AIDS, whose health causes his boyfriend, Louis, to leave him. Mr. Borle was nominated for a Tony in 2007 for best featured actor in a musical when he played the teaching assistant Emmett in “Legally Blonde.”

A spokesman for the “Angels” production had no comment on the casting.

The Off Broadway revival will be directed by Michael Greif (“Next to Normal,” “Rent”), and will mark the first time that “Angels” has been produced on a major New York stage since the Broadway production of Parts 1 and 2 closed in December 1994.

The two parts of “Angels” will run in repertory at Signature from Sept. 14 through Dec. 19.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Quinto, Borle, Wood, Weigert, Kazan, Heck and More Will Wrestle With Angels in America

By Kenneth Jones
22 Jun 2010

Complete casting has been announced for the new Off-Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America by Signature Theatre Company. Tony Award winner Frank Wood will play Roy Cohn, Zoe Kazan will be Harper, Christian Borle will be Prior, and Bill Heck will be Joe Pitt.

The "gay fantasia on national themes" concerns a closeted Mormon lawyer; his pill-popping wife; AIDS-ravaged anti-gay lawyer Roy Cohn; and a gay couple, Prior and Louis as well as their friends, family, colleagues, caregivers and fantasy-figures.

Performances of the two-part drama, under the direction of Michel Greif, begin Sept. 14 at The Peter Norton Space. Opening is Oct. 28.

Angels in America will feature Robin Bartlett (Prelude to a Kiss, "Mad About You") as Hannah Pitt, Borle (Legally Blonde, Spamalot) as Prior Walter, Heck (The Orphans' Home Cycle, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale) as Joe Pitt, Kazan (The Seagull, A Behanding in Spokane) as Harper Pitt, Billy Porter (Smokey Joe's Café, Five Guys Named Moe) as Belize, Zachary Quinto ("Star Trek," "Heroes") as Louis Ironson, Robin Weigert (Noises Off, The Good German, "Deadwood") as The Angel, and Wood (Side Man, August: Osage County) as Roy Cohn.

Angels in America will feature scenic design by Mark Wendland, costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Ben Stanton, sound design by Ken Travis, projection design by Wendall K. Harrington, original music by Michael Friedman and fight direction by Rick Sordelet. Production stage manager is Monica Cuoco, and stage manager is Joshua Pilote.

According to Signature, "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is set in late 1985 and early 1986, as the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in America is escalating and Ronald Reagan has been elected to a second term in the White House. The play's two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, bring together a young gay man with AIDS (Christian Borle) and his frightened, unfaithful lover (Zachary Quinto); a closeted Mormon lawyer (Bill Heck) and his valium-addicted wife (Zoe Kazan); the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn (Frank Wood); an African-American male nurse (Billy Porter); a Mormon housewife from Utah (Robin Bartlett); and a steel-winged, prophecy-bearing angel (Robin Weigert); as well as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, an ancient rabbi, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik and a Reagan administration functionary, among many others – all played by a company of eight actors. The lives of these disparate characters intersect, intertwine, collide and are blown apart during a time of heartbreak, reaction and transformation. Ranging from earth to heaven, from the political to the intimate to the visionary and supernatural, Angels in America is an epic exploration of love, justice, identity and theology, of the difficulty, terror and necessity of change."

Millennium Approaches and Perestroika will begin alternating in repertory from the start of performances. Subscriptions for the Kushner season are sold out. Single tickets for Angels will go on sale Aug. 3 at 10 AM.

Both parts of Angels in America won Tony Awards in 1993 and 1994 for Best Play, and Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Kushner adapted the plays for an HBO mini-series, directed by Mike Nichols, which premiered in 2003 and won Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for Best Miniseries.

The 2010-11 Signature season is devoted to the plays of Kushner. For more information, visit www.SignatureTheatre.org.

I hope I can get a ticket...