If you saw "Angels in America" listed in the Deseret News' theater calendar, would you be knowledgeable enough to realize it's Tony Kushner's highly honored, yet controversial two-part, seven-hour drama - or would you simply presume that it's a happily innocent Christmas production (in ample supply this season)?
If, in fact, you did venture into Salt Lake Acting Company in the next few weeks, on the pretext of seeing a Christmas play - you might be in for a shock.While it has been elevated to the status of being one of the most important plays of the decade (the recipient of both a Pulitzer Prize and a brace of Tonys), it has also taken a sizeable share of criticism.
One critic hailed it as the greatest new American drama since "Death of a Salesman," while another categorized it as one more play that is merely "incomprehensible or pretentious or both."
"Angels in America" is of more than passing interest to Utah theatergoers. Kushner worked on part of the script at the Sundance Institute, and he includes four Mormons - all highly dysfunctional - among his characters.
One of the first clues that "Angels in America" may not quite fit what many Utahns consider "main-stream" morality is the play's subtitle: "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes."
- THE PLAYWRIGHT: Interviewed by David Savran for the October 1994 issue of American Theatre magazine, playwright Kushner explained why he used both Mormons and Jews in the play.
"There are interesting similarities between Mormonism and Judaism," said Kushner. "The hallmark of Mormonism is `By deeds ye shall be known.' Ethics are defined by action, and that is also true in Judaism.
"I started the play with an image of an angel crashing through a bedroom ceiling, and I knew that this play would have a connection to American themes. . . . I think the title, as much as anything else, suggested Mormonism because the prototypical American angel is the angel Moroni.
"I wanted Mormons in the play. I find their immense industry, diligence and faith moving. . . . The Mormons I've met, I've actually liked. There's something dear and nice about them."
- REGIONAL REPORT: According to an in-depth, five-page report written by Norm Barlow, director of an LDS Church Institute of Religion in Northridge, Calif., for the Southern California area Public Affairs Department when "Angels in America" was first produced at the Mark Taper Forum, the play does focus predominately on gay themes and it is a fantasy.
"Mormonism is not viciously attacked in any libelous or polemical way, but the four Mormons are all presented as dysfunctional adults," Barlow said.
Reagan-era politics and America's conservative establishment also take some hits as targets of Kushner's characters' scorn and derision, according to Barlow.
However, Barlow later told a Los Angeles Times writer (Don Shirley for his "Stage Watch" column) that he didn't think "Mormon-bashing" was the playwright's intent.
"I don't think (Kushner) was endeavoring to attack the church. He was endeavoring to use the church as a sort of foil to get out his real message," Barlow told Shirley.
A few excerpts from Barlow's report:
- "The principal theme: The true salvation of mankind is in being yourself, especially if you are gay."
- "There is sexually explicit language throughout, without the least attempt that I could see to be tasteful."
- "There are constant, blasphemous references to God - frequently in Part 1 and increasingly so in Part 2."
- "There are two explicit sexual encounters on stage, the first without disrobing and the second in the near-nude."
- "There is one nude scene, where an AIDS victim disrobes for a physical. While brief, it was clearly designed to send a message that there was to be no prudery in the play."
- "Mormonism is presented (through the play's four dysfunctional characters and the writer's dialogue) more as an object for ridicule and humor than vicious scorn."
- "Mormon beliefs are treated as shallow, regressive and anti-intellectual - fruitful only of depression, confusion, social oppression and victimization, gullibility and guilt."
- "The writer spends a good deal of time creating parodies of Mormon ideals, and the play, as a whole, is a `send-up' of the First Vision, the sacred relationship between Man and God, and God and his holy angels."
- "Many of the unique restoration ideals and ideas are made to look ridiculous and laughable."
- SOME OTHER COMMENTS:
- Tim Slover, director of the playwriting program at Brigham Young University and a prominent LDS playwright: "I saw Part 1 twice and Part 2 once in London at the National Theatre.
"I think that Kushner paints what is for him a sympathetic treatment of Mormonism, but I don't know whether or not most Mormons who see it will feel the same way.
"I think much will depend on the production itself. The director at the National Theatre was a man named Declan Donellan, one of the most gifted directors in Britain. The show focused really intensely on the ideas of the script, and it was done with real decorum and taste without compromising anything. Where the script calls for nudity, there was nudity.
"For example, there's a scene in the park where a kind of casual pickup happens and there's sex in the park. From my understanding in the New York production, which I didn't see, that was very graphic, whereas on the London stage the choice was to pantomime and actually be on opposite sides of the stage. The point came across without having an `in-your-face' attitude.
"If Salt Lake Acting Company tries really hard to do the script justice and, well, give the audience a break, then I think a whole lot of people will see it and be really enriched by it."
- Tom Markus, theater professor at the University of Utah: "I think that while it is a highly respected play that is an international hit, it is also a celebration of many aspects of life that will be displeasing and offensive to all but the most liberal of LDS persons."
Markus, who is not a member of the LDS Church and who admits to being quite liberal, noted that Kushner's play "celebrates homosexuality; it celebrates political liberalism; it celebrates nontraditional artistic forms and, along the way, it necessarily mocks existing political structures and many organized religions, particularly the LDS Church.
"I do know sincere and practicing Mormons who have seen it and liked it, but I think they are rare. I believe the play will be so shocking to a large portion of this community that they will be happier if they don't see it."
- Donald R. Marshall, a professor of humanities at BYU, director of BYU's international cinema program, author and a frequent freelance contributor to the Deseret News: "It's my guess that it's going to break records. I think that calling it the best play of the decade or the last 10 or 15 years may be overstating it, but it was the most exciting theater I have seen in some time.
"Both productions I saw got the Mormonism a little wrong; it didn't ring true to me. . . . The Mormon mother from Salt Lake seemed more like a non-Mormon from Arkansas, she didn't strike me like any LDS women I know. It'll be interesting to see if they can get it right in Utah.
"I think what Kushner does know about the Mormons is favorable. I think he was struck by how `American' the church is and he wanted to write a very `American '90s' play with certain `hot' topics, including homosexuality.
"It will offend, but it is also exhilarating because of the way it's put together (several interlocked and interwoven stories going on at once). The various stage devices were breathtaking, but there definitely are some tasteless things in it, unfortunately.
"It's something you definitely have mixed feelings about. You're excited about it, and, in a way, you want to share it - then you have to think twice about who you're going to share it with."
- James Arrington, well-known local playwright and actor, said he saw both parts in New York. "I came out of Part 1 scratching my head and wondering about what was going on. I hoped that Part 2 would provide some answers, but I left Part 2 still scratching my head and wondering."
- In the Wall Street Journal dated May 13, 1993, drama critic Melanie Kirkpatrick had this to say: "Mr. Kushner is just another liberal prophet of doom . . . spewing the rhetoric of decay and decline. That may be what theatrical elites talk about at intermission, but it's not why ordinary folks go to the theater."