WHAT WOULD RANDY SHILTS HAVE SAID?

Yeesh, once again I disagree with everybody, even the redoubtable Jan Herman. The reason ANGELS IN AMERICA never worked for me, in ANY medium, was simply because it’s a) too long and b) unfocused. I’ll give any show SIX HOURS, but Kushner’s original EIGHT were anything but poetically structured, even though I admired his a) humor (which is a BIG compliment) and b) pretension. I worry that because this work is simply too “politically correct” to criticize, it’s much easier for everyone to simply jump on the bandwagon.


Here’s the original lead I wrote for this entry (last week):

The only thing more inane than Tony Kushner’s incomprehensible homilies (“Nothing unknown can really be known”) is the hype he’s bathed in around ANGELS IN AMERICA. Here’s Nancy Franklin in a recent NEW YORKER: “There is wide agreement, and no compelling counterargument, that Tony Kushner’s ANGELS IN AMERICA is the most important play of the last decade.” Maybe if everyone bangs it over our head again and again it will simply become true, since counterarguments are either uncompelling or beside the point. (Franklin has lost me before, but now I seriously question the judgment of someone who sides with Kushner over an actress like Mary Louise Parker.) What is it about ANGELS that inspires such hyperbole? And it’s not just this one play, it’s Kushner himself, who’s now a brand name Gay Jewish Intellectual. Here’s John Lahr in the same issue: “There are moments in the history of theatre when stagecraft takes a new turn…” We can’t have anything new from Kushner, it has to be a how his new musical transforms all of stagecraft. This is all a very bad sign for both Kushner and the theatre: when critics get intimidated into lofty stuff like this, you should be wary. Pacino, Streep, Parker are genius, but don’t overlook much of the underplayed support from the others, especially Patrick Wilson, who knows how to let Pacino steal scenes and still deliver the emotional goods.