Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 2: Perestroika

Previously, on Angels in America...

I can joke but while I may have seen the two parts of Angels in America a week apart, Phill, who could only get tickets two months apart, wondered if he'd need a "Previously..." at the start of Part 2 to refresh his memory. And it turns out the National have thought of people in that predicament, as my reminder email about Perestroika included a short YouTube video summarising the major events of Millennium Approaches. These included the brief appearance by Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown,) a woman convicted of treason decades earlier, whose execution Roy Cohn ensured by dubious means. Her ghost continues to appear to Cohn (Nathan Lane) as a patient, ominous harbinger of his own much slower death from AIDS. There's also a bigger role now for Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett,) who's got the unenviable job of being Cohn's nurse, and whose acidic put-downs make him the right man to stand up to the notorious lawyer's vitriol.

Theatre review: Angels in America, a Gay Fantasia on National Themes Part 1: Millennium Approaches

For the second year in a row London's hottest theatre ticket, with reviews to match the level of anticipation, is an epic play in two parts with a supernatural element. But far from the obvious appeal of Harry Potter, this year it's a 25-year-old American play about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s that was the instant sell-out. Tony Kushner's Angels in America comes in at well over seven hours, the first three acts of which are haunted by a sense of dread at something apocalyptic on the way - hence its subtitle, Millennium Approaches. Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) is a flaboyant gay man who's just found out he's got the virus. His boyfriend of a few years, Louis Ironson (James McArdle,) is still deeply in love with him but very quickly realises a fact he hates himself for: He can't handle staying with Prior to watch him get sick and die.

Theatre review: The Pitchfork Disney

"This is going to be one of those we disagree about, isn't it?" was the first thing I said to Richard as we got up after The Pitchfork Disney. And it most definitely was. I knew a lot of people had really disliked the 21st anniversary production of Philip Ridley's breakthrough hit, while a minority had liked it. I found myself in that minority though. Bob Bailey's raised stage in the middle of the Arcola's Studio 1 reflects the imaginary world the Stray twins find comfort in: A dark tower rising out of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where Haley (Mariah Gale) and Presley (Chris New) are the sole survivors. Aged roughly 28 (they're not sure how much time has passed since they last made a note of it) they remain infantilised, subsisting on chocolate and gruesome fairytales. Presley is marginally more in touch with reality, to the point of being able to leave the flat; his sister is prone to panic attacks he has to ease with a combination of retelling their apocalyptic fantasy, and a noxious drug left behind by their parents, administered via a dummy. As Haley sleeps, Presley spots a handsome man on the street who seems to be in pain, and invites him in. He's Cosmo Disney (Misfits' Nathan Stewart-Jarrett,) an "entertainer" in a sequinned red jacket, who makes his living eating live cockroaches for an audience.