The original pre-Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s ANGELS IN AMERICA was staged in 1992 at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, in the thick of the plague years. The culture wars of that time are still with us, and in a macabre twist, the White House is temporarily occupied by a mentee of one of ANGEL’s key figures—the corrupt, closeted right-wing attorney Roy Cohn.

The play, an epic that remains unsurpassed, is at the end of a sold-out revival at the National Theatre in London, directed by Marianne Elliott, and starring Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter. (Nathan Lane plays Cohn.) As part of National Theatre Live, the production will be broadcast this month at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA.

(A Broadway transfer is set to begin performances in February 2018.)

“Garfield….is splendid in the central role of the ailing Prior Walter….With his razor-edge cheekbones and eyes of fire, this gaunt Prior brings to mind Maria Callas as Medea, which he would surely take as a compliment. Mr. Garfield has the florid mannerisms of a vintage drag queen down pat. But he wields them as part of an intricate defense system born of both fear and defiance. This Prior is palpably as scared as hell, and as mad as hell, too.” — Ben Brantley, New York Times, May 5, 2017

ANGELS IN AMERICA, National Theatre Live broadcast.

PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES, Sunday, August 20, at 4 pm.

PART TWO: PERESTROIKA, Sunday, August 27, at 4 pm.

JAMES BRIDGES THEATER, MELNITZ HALL, UCLA, 235 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles.

ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/61490-angels-in-america

From top: Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter in Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, at the National Theatre in London, 2017; Garfield in rehearsal; Garfield and Amanda Lawrence; Garfield and Denise Gough. All photographs by Helen Maybanks.