Review: ‘Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches’ Takes Flight in New Production at Arena Stage

By D.R. Lewis
April 2, 2023

In the penultimate scene of Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches, a distant 17th century ancestor of main character Prior Walter laments, “The twentieth century. Oh dear, the world has gotten so terribly, terribly old.” More than three decades after its premier (and in a new century), Arena Stage’s impressive production of Millennium Approaches, playing in the Fichandler theater through April 23, proves again that Tony Kushner’s masterpiece is a timeless work.

In his sprawling two-part opus (Part One: Millennium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika), Kushner lays bare the effects of Reaganism, AIDS, religion, racial politics, and queerness as they pertain to the intersecting lives of several characters in the mid-1980s. At the center of this group is Prior Walter (Nick Westrate), a gay man living with AIDS, who learns from an Angel (a terrific Billie Krishawn) that he has been chosen as a prophet. As Prior becomes increasingly ill, he is abandoned by his boyfriend, Louis (Michael Kevin Darnall), who takes up with closeted Mormon lawyer Joe (John Austin), despite Joe’s entanglements with his pill-popping wife Harper (Deborah Ann Woll) and his severe mother Hannah (a versatile Susan Rome). Supporting manifestations of good and evil are delivered by drag queen nurse Belize (Justin Weaks) and soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Roy Cohn (Edward Gero), respectively. 

Restaging a beloved play is a daunting task for any director, but surely more so when that work, if staged in full, approaches eight hours (Arena’s production of Millennium Approaches runs 3.5 hours). In addition to the 2003 Mike Nichols-directed HBO miniseries, Angels in America (both parts) has found recent productions on Broadway (a 2018 transfer from the UK’s National Theatre, also filmed and broadcast across the US) and locally at Round House Theatre in 2016. Director János Szász uses the Fichandler’s in-the-round orientation as a launchpad for his Angels, which is realized in a welcome departure from any of the aforementioned iterations.

Szász’s Angels magnifies the line between reality and fantasy that lies at the heart of Kushner’s play by stripping the confines of a large and literal set, and instead relying on stark visual metaphors to underscore the text. The centerpiece of Maruti Evans’ design is a large hole in the floor, which occasionally serves as a portal for set pieces, entrances, and exits. As the audience enters the theater, the Angel slowly rakes a wide circle of sand surrounding the hole (as if a world-scale zen garden), forming a maze-like pattern while the names of people who died from AIDS-related complications are read overhead. As sand pours from the ceiling or provides physical resistance to the actors’ movement throughout the play, it evokes a montage of deeply moving images: the shrinking balance of an hourglass; the ashes of those who died from AIDS-related complications; the earth worked by the generations of ancestors who are paid tribute in the play’s opening prologue.

Much of the theater, including the chandeliers that provide the majority of the stage’s lighting (designed by Christopher Akerlind), is draped in plastic, including a large central overhead swath with a tattered center (conjuring the betrayal of a broken condom). Even the movable furniture and set pieces are covered in plastic, as if to remind us of those not-so-long-ago days when people living with AIDS faced (or, in some cases, still face) social stigma and physical isolation.

Though the production suffers slightly at times from moments of self-indulgence that shake the balance of the production (in a phone scene between Joe and Hannah, for example, the director employs distracting and unnecessary physical staging), the production is buoyed by near-universal standout performances. Szász has wisely cast actors who skew younger than their counterparts in past productions. Particularly in Darnall, Weaks, Woll, and Austin, their richly innocent youthfulness is effectively juxtaposed against the mounting struggles their characters face. 

Darnall’s exquisite Louis is pathetically tender and shockingly sympathetic, given the character’s penchant for self-absorption. Weaks seems to never depart from the verge of tears, and in their measured performance delivers each sharp barb and pearl of wisdom with maximum impact. Woll recites some of Kushner’s most difficult text with both a childlike wistfulness and maturity beyond her years that is a joy to watch. Experiencing Austin’s sympathetic Joe unravel from a sheltered Best Little Boy in the World to a man on the brink of self-destruction is gut-wrenching. And finally, Westrate, who over the course of three and a half hours appears to age 20 years as AIDS takes its toll on Prior’s body, gracefully embodies the character’s essential camp without transcending into caricature. 

The much-anticipated arrival of the Angel in the play’s final scene left this reviewer hungry for the second installment of Kushner’s mammoth work. To date, Arena has not announced a staging of Part Two: Perestroika, despite recently announcing its 2023-2024 season. Though critical consensus is that Millennium Approaches is the stronger of the works, Millennium Approaches was constructed and crafted by Kushner on the understanding that a second part would complete the work (as opposed to a work like Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, which originated as three individual works that were later combined into a Tony-winning trilogy). To not complete the series by staging Perestroika, one wonders what the goal in staging this work was, no matter how successful the outcome.

Even so, Arena’s admirable production of this taxing play is worth the watch. Particularly on the eve of Artistic Director Molly Smith’s departure, it seems appropriate to revisit this most American of plays, which embodies Arena Stage’s mission to, “galvanize the transformative power of theater to understand who we are as Americans,” as much today as it did when it premiered in 1991. It feels as though the Angel is warning the audience, as we look to Arena’s future following Smith’s transformative artistic guidance, when she warns Prior: the great work begins.

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches runs through April 23, 2023, in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission.

Nick Westrate (Prior Walter) in Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater running March 24 through April 23. Photo by Margot Schulman.