In Theater 101 courses, instructors say that drama needs conflict, and an elemental form of conflict is two dogs and a pork chop. In other words, tensions arise when two people want one thing. And, indeed, Tony Kushner's "Perestroika" has its share of such personal tug-of-wars.
But what makes "Perestroika" a true tour de force is the internal conflict raging within each character. Roy Cohn (played by David Spencer) is the sleaze-ball mouthpiece of presidents who finds his power at war with the debilitating illness AIDS. The young Mormon wife, Harper (Annie Kleczkowski), is torn between illusion and reality while Prior Walter (Mark Larson) finds himself stretched on the rack between the natural and the supernatural world.And all of those internal forces are looking for one thing: fulfillment.
"I feel wonderful and horrible at once," cries Prior, "like there's a war inside!"
All the split personalities, of course, parallel the division that Kushner puts in Joe Pitt, the internal splitting of sexual identity. That, in the end, is the battle that engages the playwright most.
We met all these characters in Part One of "Angels in America." There's willy-nilly Lewis (Jason Novak) who can't commit, tortured Prior, Mormon Joe (Todd Scurr) full of his dark duplicity and catty but wise Belize (Rene Thornton Jr.). Describing their various relationships would be fruitless since Kushner mixes and matches the characters in a Mulligan stew of tension and resolve. The truth is, all the characters tend to bump against each other like flint and steel. And the sparks created make for some emotional flash points and a kind of burning poetry.
The lives of Kushner's characters are cries from the heart Tennessee Williams could have never imagined. And at heart, the play is a rallying cry for aknowledgment and liberation of the gay community.
Because of that cutting-edge nature of the play, several cast members seem to embrace their roles as moments of destiny. Spencer, especially, delivers a primal yelp as Cohn. And Thornton goes way over the top as fey Belize.
Are the portrayals definitive? Not really. Too much of Scurr's version of Joe has the look and feel of a Yuppie on a cheap drunk, for instance; and for all her gifts, Anita Booher's Mormon mother is more like a dried matriarch from Garcia Lorca's plays than a woman of steel forged in Mormon Utah.
Still, it will be hard for anyone who sees this play in Utah to imagine other actors in the roles. The cast drives each character home with vigor.
And the lion's share of credit for the play's power goes to Kushner. Nancy Borgenicht and Allen Nevins direct with a lightness and resilience that matches the tone of the writing. And the gray, building-block stage props are handled deftly and cleverly, as is the lighting.
But in the end, the play is swept along by Kushner's language. Yes, in "Perestroika" he undercuts much of the human drama by overindulging himself in ghosts and fantasy. And his winking philosophy voiced by the Angel (Trish Reading) sounds like a misguided monologue by a New Age military intelligence officer, but for the most part the playwright's ability to take life and death issues and offer them up with both heart and a cheeky self-awareness keep "Perestroika" from sinking under its own weight or drowning in its own tears.
It is the same ironic stance that likely led to the use of the word "gay" in the first place.
Needless to say, some theatergoers will leave shaking their heads, recalling the song from that old Broadway chestnut "Oklahoma" - "They've gone about as far as they can go."
But as anyone who's seen "Oklahoma" knows, that wasn't true for turn-of-the-century Kansas City and - in 1996 - it's likely not true for turn-of-the-century Salt Lake City either. As the young actors stood on stage at the end, basking in the applause, the song they seemed to be singing to each other was "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet."
- Sensitivity rating: When Kushner's plays are made into movies they'll be rated "R" for language. Also, for theatrical effect and to heighten tensions, the playwright uses racial epithets, provocative sexual situations and sacred religious icons.