The story woven in Angels in America finishes in Part Two: Perestroika. Part Two is definitely far more understandable if you’ve seen Part One. You can read about it here.
Pryor Walter is still ill, but, as Monty Python sang, not dead yet – I suspect that sort of humor might appeal to Pryor – and so is Roy Cohn. (Cohn, by the way, seems to have not one but two documentaries about him opening soon.) Pryor continues to have visits from the angel, something he’s rather come to accept. Joe and Hannah Pitt have separated and Joe runs into Louis, Pryor’s former lover, in a glade in Central Park. Mother Pitt is volunteering at the Mormon Visitor Center in Times Square, and if the play weren’t already about three hours long, one might wish for a scene displaying her response to that neighborhood. Meredith Baxter’s a whiz with Mother Pitt’s curt lines, throwing them out as sharply as if she were flapping a sheet before hanging it on a clothesline. (The miking of her when she’s wearing a beard, this time as Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik, is unfortunately still a problem, though.)
Now, too, we wander the foggy world between reality and delusions. Hannah is off to Antarctica where she chews down a tree. Belize, the nurse, loyal and tough and sympathetic, talks about why America isn’t as free as it claims to be. Ethel Rosenberg (whose execution as a Russian spy was a questionable event in which Cohn played a major part) visits Cohn repeatedly as he is dying and says kadish for him after he dies. Joe strips off his very Mormon temple garment as an offering to Louis. It’s all capped off with Pryor wrestling with the angel – yes, literally – as Mother Pitt watches.
The second part is as mesmerizing as the first. It’s not easy theatre, but it’s superb theatre. In a venue like this, to be able to see the actors work from a relatively short distance is an added bonus. If you saw it at the Fox years ago, this is an entirely different experience, and worth the effort if you’re serious about art.
Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika
through October 6
The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves
Comments