West Side Story?! Why oh why try to remake the sublime? Me thinks only a very fat paycheck would tempt Mr. Kushner to get involved in such a typically Hollywood re-invention of the wheel type of project.
4
This reminds me of Woody Allen's joke about a big producer spending untold millions to hire Noel Coward to remove the songs from "My Fair Lady" and turn it back into "Pygmalion".
4
I'll take Tony Kushner over Jared Kushner any day of the millennium.
6
My only response to this article is, "to each his own". Greatness is in the eyes of the beholder. There are many great things in "Angels in America", especially Part 1, but I definitely thought Part 2 needed editing of much of the polemics. But give credit where credit is due....it's a good play.
1
Sam Hunter is a tall, tall man.
Kushner and his play are utterly irrelevant to the main theater-going public and the general population. His appeal is relegated to a very small subsegment of audiences.
3
On what grounds are you able to claim this? Having just gotten home from the second night of the revival, held in a packed house, filled with a diverse crowd... it seems to me like the play has more widespread appeal than ever. How many other nearly eight-hour plays do you see selling out?
16
Maybe David G prefers"Frozen".
5
Reagan will be remembered as a great President, who hastened the demise of the Soviet Union.
Like most political screeds of the Left, "Angels in America" will fade into irrelevance and then oblivion.
Can anyone imagine a revival of this play in 50 years ? I didn't think so.
2
"The Boys In The Band" is 50. It's a new Broadway revival.
Reagan ISN'T remembered as a great president... too many still alive who remember!
17
Great works of art do not fade into irrelevance when they address timeless principles and aspects of the human condition. Angels does all that and more, and it is why 25 years after it was created, audiences are packing theaters to see it once again. It is easy to imagine this being the case in another two decades.
18
"Can anyone imagine a revival of this play in 50 years?"
The current revival is halfway there. Just how little do you know about "Angels in America"?
8
I'm surprised how nasty these comments are. my two thoughts -- I'm not sure he's so busy, since pondering, debating, and considering are not really activities. in fact it's surprising how little he's written over the years; and regarding support for Clinton, I honestly don't think a president should be chosen based on one issue and more specifically one attempt to pander to the enemy on that issue. she's highly imperfect but so are most of us. I'm looking forward to seeing the plays bookended by winter's tale and King lear, you are lucky to live in new York..
2
poins: "I'm not sure he's so busy, since pondering, debating, and considering are not really activities."
Good heavens, you surely haven't spent time with writers! Pondering and using every resource (including debating and considering) to polish a work in progress or one conceived is part of the professional process.
8
Maybe Charles McGrath and Jesse Green can get together now and resolve Green's claim that all the great gay plays canon are conceived and created in NYC. Now that McGrath has reminded all the narcissistic NY'ers the Kushner's play was commissioned by a San Francisco-based theater (Eureka Theatre) and premiered there (I was in the front row for the 3rd performance where Roy Cohn's spittle landed on me numerous times). Then Jesse Green can look up Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco's long-term gay theatre company (among others) and peruse the list of their original gay plays, not to mention the Angels of Light (rest in peace), before he decides that everything "theatre" and "gay" are "New York."
8
It was ordained by Fate that this comment would come from New Jersey. Thank you, Fate; you slay me.
2
As in his Munich script, Kushner can write insightfully about complex issues, but can also veer into hypocrisy. By overlooking Hillary Clinton's reflexive pandering and lies -- even on the history of AIDS, the issue that catapulted his career! -- Kushner made a deal with the devil and unwittingly helped get Trump elected. No wonder his blood boils. He needs to face the real costs of his public compromises. If he can't stand by his principles he should at least shut up, or better yet, apologize.
In March 2016 when Hillary Clinton applauded the Reagans' AIDS policies, everyone who lived through the 1980s was rightly horrified. Clinton soon apologized -- exhausted by the campaign and so eager to please fans of the Reagans, she was essentially dishonestly pandering in her sleep.
Instead of reflecting on how such character and tactical flaws might keep Clinton tied with a psychopath, Kushner doubled down in his support and within days was busy attacking Bernie Sanders' principled supporters. Even now, every poll shows Sanders' popularity leading, while Clinton's is beneath even Trump's.
Kushner's politics of expedient cowardice vividly shows what needs to change.
https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/11/hillary-clinton-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idQ1v-OLJxk
2
As in his Munich script, Kushner can write insightfully about complex issues, but can also veer into hypocrisy. By overlooking Hillary Clinton's reflexive pandering and lies -- even on the history of AIDS, the issue that catapulted his career! -- Kushner made a deal with the devil and unwittingly helped get Trump elected. No wonder his blood boils. He needs to face the real costs of his public compromises. If he can't stand by his principles he should at least shut up, or better yet, apologize.
In March 2016 when Hillary Clinton applauded the Reagans' AIDS policies, everyone who lived through the 1980s was rightly horrified. Clinton soon apologized -- exhausted by the campaign and so eager to please fans of the Reagans, she was essentially dishonestly pandering in her sleep.
Instead of reflecting on how such character and tactical flaws might keep Clinton tied with a psychopath, Kushner doubled down and within days was busy attacking Bernie Sanders' principled supporters. Even now, every poll shows Sanders' popularity leading, while Clinton's is beneath even Trump's.
Kushner's politics of expedient cowardice vividly shows what needs to change.
https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/11/hillary-clinton-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idQ1v-OLJxk
His eagerness to overlook Hillary Clinton's stunning pandering on behalf of Nancy Reagan was an assault against reality of the AIDS and the Reagans' actual
5
When did 61 become “middle aged”? Are people living to 120?
13
It takes many folks a lot more than 61 years to understand the answer to your (graceless) question.
13
So, how tall is he if he's "surely the tallest major American playwright since Arthur Miller"? And why should we care?
8
What does the weasel phrase "arguably the most important play of the second half of the 20th century" mean -- other than the writer wishes to be credited for raising this possibility, but knows the claim is indefensible and, in any case, a silly formulation (the arts are not competition, least of all for importance)?
You'd think, in the Age of Trump, we wouldn't still be looking for heroes, including writers with beards who happen to share our beliefs. And yet the beat goes on....
3
To jrd,
You've obviously never seen or even read the play and must not know theater very well: if you did, you'd know that this IS the most important play of the second half of the century and possibly of the entire century. (And the writer didn't raise this dear heart, his audience - which includes Pulitzers and Tonys - did.) I still recall the absolutely stunned feeling I had when the curtain came down the night I saw this play in 1993, so alive with ideas and emotion and beauty and yes hope. It's the same feeling I get every time I see and hear the Prologue to the opera Boris Godunov (which, come to think of it, also looks behind the veil of political corrosion). Great art makes heroes of us all, imbuing in us the power of possibility. Kushner, beard or no beard, is a hero and his art is exactly what we need right now.
Margalo
30
@Margalo
"Obviously"? I have indeed the seen play. And the movie. Capitalization ("IS") does not constitute proof, least of all for a contention for which no proof could ever exist, "arguably" or not. Is Lear more "important" than Othello? What an absurd notion.
As for Pulitzers and Tonys -- do we really need to go down the list of over-hyped unforgotten works?
"Great art" makes heroes of no one, least of all its consumers (witness human behavior, if you don't believe me). You're welcome to your opinion of "Angels", but making your view out to be a universal truth, and the author a "hero", is better suited to Coca-Cola advertising, and Trumpism, than the arts.
8
To jrd,
Great art isn't consumed: it engages, it demands, it inspires, it provokes a dialogue between the creator and the "reader" (whether that's an audience member in a theater or someone w a book in their hands or looking at a painting) and through that dialogue we are transformed. Whether you like Kushner's work or not, we are all the better for it.
Margalo
15
I aw the two plays on March 2 & March 3. I had previously seen them in 1994 & 1995 when F. Murray Abraham had replaced the original Roy Cohn. The staging now is quite different, as is the music, sound effects & of course, actors. I was much more aware of the nuances of the plot & enjoyed exploring them with my two gay sons, one of whom had seen Angels multiple times.
For me, Nathan Lane was Roy Cohn, the nasty, terrible person I remember from the Army-McCarthy hearings(I was 14).
I would go back to see it again in a minute!
Elizabeth
22
Back in the day, playwrights like Ben Hecht would look on writing a script for a film like The Flintstones the same way as The Front Page: a work assignment. And they were all the better for it.
8
Angels in America revealed nothing about the suffering of AIDS patients. It was just a group of melodramatic characters thrashing around the stage spewing Kushner's shallow, incoherent philosophy. To prepare to write a play, Kushner spends the morning browsing the Wikipedia, then dashes off the play in the afternoon, stuffing every irrelevant issue into his overwrought prose. He continually rewrites because he realizes he has failed, but is too shallow and lacking in intelligence to be able to express a truly profound, enlightening thought. A Kushner play is like going to a restaurant expecting a seven course meal, but instead being served cotton candy. Kushner is the Kim Kardashian of playwrights.
1
You do realize Wikipedia did not exist when Angels in America was being written? Hence your empty comment is even more empty.
26
How much of this comment is really about Kushner and Angels in America? The Kim Kardashian of playwrights? Really?
13
Guess which famous American playwright refused a date with Krenshaw.
2
The picture labelled as part of "Millennium Approaches" was part of "Perestroika". Roy Cohn has a key around his neck, which only appears in the second play.
4
We cannot thank you enough, Mr. Kushner.
Your Great Work is back in town (looking more and more like the Greatest American Play)and it's still an astonishing, heartbreaking wonder.
Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane are both extraordinary-could the Tony Committee make an exception and split the Best Actor Tony between them? I think the Angel Bethesda has arrived in NYC to start the healing in our new Dark Age.
16
The publication of "Intelligent Homosexual's Guide..." seems a perfect indication of Tony Kushner's obsessive tinkering. After I saw a wonderful production of the play in 2015 at the Shaw Festival in Canada, I wanted to buy the published play, but it was not due to be published until the end of the year. However, every time I tried to order it, the publication date was delayed by an additional two months or more. A few weeks ago, seeing it was due to be published in March, I ordered a copy from Amazon, only to be notified a few days later that it was now due in May. Even though the play was first performed in 2009, I have to wonder whether it will ever be published. Perhaps that's worth a follow-up Times story.
10
Well, the version I saw two years ago in London was not very good, verging on very bad...
1
I saw the original iHo at the Guthrie and the next production at the public. Both were excellent and featured some of the actors Kushner has repeatedly cast.
2