Theater review: Nelson Pressley on Forum's 'Angels in America: Perestroika'

When we last saw Prior Walter, the gay man suffering from AIDS and widespread social decay in the age of Reagan, his lover had abandoned him in a panic. Prior had hallucinated himself into the grief-driven visions of Harper Pitt, a young Mormon whose husband had left her, too. And a terrifying angel had just crashed into Prior's room.

That's how the cliffhanging "Angels in America" ends its three-hour-plus first part, "Millennium Approaches," and the lean, aggressively acted Forum Theatre production made it a great dramatic ride. It's joined now by "Perestroika," with Michael Dove's cast incisively probing the angles of Tony Kushner's luscious ethical adventure.

Forum, late of H Street NE, has taken up residence at the Round House Theatre's Silver Spring venue, and the space is tailor-made for "Angels." The theater is a high-ceilinged cube, cozy enough for the actors to do subtle work in the saga's soap-opera scenes, yet large enough for cosmic scale as Kushner combusts history, religion, law and love.

The script itself is so deliriously grand and beautiful that at times you may find it hard to stifle a laugh of pure delight. It's a heady comedy, a gripping melodrama and a high-wire political act written with sass and purpose. "Lawyers are the high priests of America," declares Roy Cohn, Kushner's two-faced villain (the right-wing, power-mad Cohn had AIDS and denied he was gay). "We alone know how to use the words." Not so: Kushner recognized the amplifying power of the stage and used it beautifully in this play. He thought big and wrote big, and it's a peculiar scandal that so little American drama since has followed suit.

The show, after all, is incredibly playable: The eight actors, anchored by Karl Miller's dazzlingly casual yet deep depiction of Prior, repeatedly make you laugh or choke up as the story charts betrayals and acts of grace, large and small. The plot, in short: The angel calls Prior a prophet and sends him on an obscure mission; Prior's ex, Louis, gets involved with Harper's ex, Joe (a Cohn protege); Joe's strict Mormon mother takes care of the stricken Harper while managing the hilariously subverted frontier diorama at the Mormon visitors' center.

Meanwhile, bad boy Cohn continues to decline while his male nurse, Belize, slips insulting one-liners in as easily as needles. The tale's machinations are familiar and easy as a miniseries, only with God and politics thrown in.

As with Jeremy Skidmore's staging of "Millennium Approaches," Dove's production is physically bare. Actors wheel on the necessary furniture -- a hospital bed, or the ladder with the angel on top -- and the tremendous fabric that hung at the back of the stage throughout most of "Millennium" is now ripped and hanging limp, leaving a dark void in the background. It's as if the characters are all hovering over an abyss.

The actors accordingly perform with a deep sense of urgency and sensational awareness. Alexander Strain excels at anxiety as Louis, the theory-bound idealist who can't handle the reality of Prior's disease, and Daniel Eichner's portrayal seems more grounded now as Joe, the conflicted Mormon Republican who leaves Harper for Louis. Casie Platt is alternately pitiable and fierce as the drifting Harper, Ro Boddie continues to snap off knowing barbs and real wisdom as Belize, and Jennifer Mendenhall delivers yeoman character work as the stony Hannah Pitt and as the dry-witted, bitter ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.

As Cohn, Jim Jorgensen at times falls for the showiness of the character's over-the-top threats and invective, stamping and snorting like the devil himself (a role Jorgensen played with relish in Forum's recent "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot"). Cohn is one of Kushner's brash gambits, a historical face of the Red Scare years and the Reagan '80s, and he's more frightening if he's a bit more real -- even if he is the dark end of the spectrum from Nanna Ingvarsson's golden-voiced, ethereal angel.

The vision of Cohn and a too-contemplative pace late in the evening are all that can be held against this production, though. Where Forum's "Millennium" hurtled, "Perestroika" sometimes lags; but for all its soul-searching, "Angels in America" wants to provoke, not ponder. Forum nearly always gets this right, delivering an epic that throws elbows, lands punch lines and wraps its arms around a broken -- but improvable -- world.

Pressley is a freelance writer.

Angels in America: Perestroika

by Tony Kushner. Directed by Michael Dove. Costumes, Heather Lockard and Ivania Stack; set, Tony Cisek; lights, Colin K. Bills and Brian Engel; sound design/composer, Matt Nielson. About 3 1/2 hours. Through Nov. 22 at Round House Theatre, 8641 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. Call 240-644-1100 or visit http://www.forumtd.org.