Angels in America
Dec. 7th, 2003 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabI saw Angels in America seven times on Broadway over the course of a year. They did this thing with student tickets for the Saturday full-day show, which I preferred to seeing "Millennium" and "Perestroika" seperately, largely because -- like not being able to pause between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi -- I can't leave the boys like that, all frozen in carbonite and waiting for salvation.
So anyway, seven times, at seven and a half hours a stretch with a break for dinner in between. And I don't say this to be all, you know, with the fannish competitiveness that so often inspires us to stake claim on fandoms and characters and say "Mine Mine Mine!" (which, okay, that's part of it too, I mean, it's mine, but it's everybody's), but rather to explain why it's okay I'm typing and watching at the same time, and why, having read the play countless times on top of the Saturdays, I know the story inside and out. So I'm absorbing, you know, other things, this time.
Kind of a shame, really. Not really. I know how it turns out, I know the intimate twists of every character and every scene, but this new school of actors and this new filmic staging still manages to surprise me, impress me. (Al Pacino as the kid at the Rambles! I don't remember that from the show.)
I nearly didn't watch, tonight. I thought I'd be bored. Can you believe that? Thought I knew this show too well. Turns out, kids, Tony Kushner's smarter than me, and this new cast, oh. Man. MAN.
Anyway, cut for spoilers to "Millennium Approaches" and I'll try not to spoil for "Perestroika" till next week...
I won't pretend to know as much about love as Maayan, really, I've only got the most cocktail-partyish knowledge of the history of Romanticism and the Platonic Ideal, but I can fake it like a champ. And this play, you know, it's a Love story, but it's not a love story at all.
What we get here, from Roy Cohn seeking a kindred spirit in Joe, from Harper turning to Valium, from Louis bailing on Prior to Prior finding the Angel, not a single example of what we've come to expect as real, romantic love.
Love, here, is strange and selfish and works only as a kind of self-love, as our boys move through the world trying to find security, identity, peace. Everyone's desperate, everyone's clamoring, everyone's seeking, and they use one another in almost violent physical ways in order to get more in touch with themselves and what it is they're trying to define, their needs, their identities.
Think about it. Harper loves Joe, so she GRABS, CLAWS, sets dinner on fire and pops a fistful full of pills because she wants to find HERSELF. She wants to learn about blowjobs and Antarctica, she wants to MOVE.
Prior needs a healthy body, Louis's, when his own breaks down. Louis needs a healthy body, Joe's. Joe needs to wrestle with the angel -- the closest he comes to identification is an image of muscles and wings and flowing hair and masculine bodies entwined. He goes to the Rambles to watch. He fucks Joe to MOVE, to FEEL, to DO.
Prior and Louis' relationship predates us by four years, four healthy years during which we can assume they had their share of normal lovers' emotional peaks and pitfalls, but that's not the story here and not, I don't think, supposed to be.
We open with a body, we close with a body. "Here, grandma, have a shovelful." "If I could get up now, I'd beat the holy shit out of you." "The great work begins."
It's so purely American, so pioneerish and revolutionary, so much about defining ourselves with no history, nothing but an uncharted country to hike across, and crawl and struggle and climb and bleed.
"There are no angels in America," Louis tells Belize. Which is precisely why Louis and Prior's relationshop before the body is only incidental; history is for Other People. We're new people, here, in a baby country just beginning to wobble on its feet. Finding ourselves; naming ourselves. The world only spins forward.
*
The staging is perfect. The cast is perfect. Al Pacino is a genius. The new kids, Louis, Prior, Joe, perfect.
I was prepared to be snobbish, to miss Kathleen Chalfant, Joe Mantello, Steven Spinella, David Marshall Grant. Sure. Whatever. The new cast is perfect.
I fucking, fucking LOVE this fucking show.
So anyway, seven times, at seven and a half hours a stretch with a break for dinner in between. And I don't say this to be all, you know, with the fannish competitiveness that so often inspires us to stake claim on fandoms and characters and say "Mine Mine Mine!" (which, okay, that's part of it too, I mean, it's mine, but it's everybody's), but rather to explain why it's okay I'm typing and watching at the same time, and why, having read the play countless times on top of the Saturdays, I know the story inside and out. So I'm absorbing, you know, other things, this time.
Kind of a shame, really. Not really. I know how it turns out, I know the intimate twists of every character and every scene, but this new school of actors and this new filmic staging still manages to surprise me, impress me. (Al Pacino as the kid at the Rambles! I don't remember that from the show.)
I nearly didn't watch, tonight. I thought I'd be bored. Can you believe that? Thought I knew this show too well. Turns out, kids, Tony Kushner's smarter than me, and this new cast, oh. Man. MAN.
Anyway, cut for spoilers to "Millennium Approaches" and I'll try not to spoil for "Perestroika" till next week...
I won't pretend to know as much about love as Maayan, really, I've only got the most cocktail-partyish knowledge of the history of Romanticism and the Platonic Ideal, but I can fake it like a champ. And this play, you know, it's a Love story, but it's not a love story at all.
What we get here, from Roy Cohn seeking a kindred spirit in Joe, from Harper turning to Valium, from Louis bailing on Prior to Prior finding the Angel, not a single example of what we've come to expect as real, romantic love.
Love, here, is strange and selfish and works only as a kind of self-love, as our boys move through the world trying to find security, identity, peace. Everyone's desperate, everyone's clamoring, everyone's seeking, and they use one another in almost violent physical ways in order to get more in touch with themselves and what it is they're trying to define, their needs, their identities.
Think about it. Harper loves Joe, so she GRABS, CLAWS, sets dinner on fire and pops a fistful full of pills because she wants to find HERSELF. She wants to learn about blowjobs and Antarctica, she wants to MOVE.
Prior needs a healthy body, Louis's, when his own breaks down. Louis needs a healthy body, Joe's. Joe needs to wrestle with the angel -- the closest he comes to identification is an image of muscles and wings and flowing hair and masculine bodies entwined. He goes to the Rambles to watch. He fucks Joe to MOVE, to FEEL, to DO.
Prior and Louis' relationship predates us by four years, four healthy years during which we can assume they had their share of normal lovers' emotional peaks and pitfalls, but that's not the story here and not, I don't think, supposed to be.
We open with a body, we close with a body. "Here, grandma, have a shovelful." "If I could get up now, I'd beat the holy shit out of you." "The great work begins."
It's so purely American, so pioneerish and revolutionary, so much about defining ourselves with no history, nothing but an uncharted country to hike across, and crawl and struggle and climb and bleed.
"There are no angels in America," Louis tells Belize. Which is precisely why Louis and Prior's relationshop before the body is only incidental; history is for Other People. We're new people, here, in a baby country just beginning to wobble on its feet. Finding ourselves; naming ourselves. The world only spins forward.
*
The staging is perfect. The cast is perfect. Al Pacino is a genius. The new kids, Louis, Prior, Joe, perfect.
I was prepared to be snobbish, to miss Kathleen Chalfant, Joe Mantello, Steven Spinella, David Marshall Grant. Sure. Whatever. The new cast is perfect.
I fucking, fucking LOVE this fucking show.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:09 pm (UTC)and i don't need a tape, i'll catch reruns or be traveling anyway for most of the month. i need an icon with that quote. do you know when they're releasing on dvd? is the sound on yours a little fucked up or is that just me?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:18 pm (UTC)Tell me what you want, I'll make you an icon, baby.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:21 pm (UTC)and a close crop of the feathers, perhaps?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-07 10:37 pm (UTC)Sit tight, I shall make two.
"In the new century, I think we will all be insane."
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:16 am (UTC)This is one of those places where I would say, "Fuck, yeah" if I were in the habit of saying "Fuck, yeah." I can't pretend to know the show as well as you do -- I've read it many, many times, but this is my first time seeing it performed. From my experience with other film versions of plays, I know the effect of this must be completely different from the effect of seeing it live, but it's still... I don't know. Ravishing and ravaging. I didn't sleep much last night, let me tell you. :)
I can't put my thoughts down as eloquently as you did; I don't know if I'm going to try.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:47 am (UTC)I'm not sure about the HBO production, honestly, in spite of Pacino and Streep and the very earnest performances from the supporting cast. Maybe I wasn't geared up for it enough. Am waiting until next week's half to give a full verdict.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 11:33 am (UTC)I need to see this and watch her chew the scenery in her own weird way. I do so love ML.