‘Angels’ still stirring controversy as millennium approaches

Lisa Ferguson

Thursday, Nov. 6, 1997 | 10:22 a.m.

If there are indeed angels in America, Georgia Neu doesn't know where they're hiding.

"I haven't seen any, not personally," says the artistic director for Actors Repertory Theatre.

At least, not in a while. Raised Catholic, Neu believed a guardian angel watched over her throughout childhood.

But now, as she prepares to direct A.R.T.'s production of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches," Neu figures it's time to again put some faith in her old friend.

"I guess I'd better pray that I have a guardian angel on this one," she says chuckling.

That's because "Angels," a drama which centers on AIDS, homosexuality, drug addiction and crooked politics, has created quite a stir in other cities where it has been produced. It will be presented at the Summerlin Library and Performing Arts Theatre.

While the play, penned by Tony Kushner ("A Bright Room Called Day," "Slavs"), garnered seven Tony awards, including Best Play, for its run on Broadway, performances in Canada prompted Calgary Herald writer Peter Stockland to call the play "polemic of the worst sort."

The Toronto Sun also reports that Stockland called it "a series of asinine political propositions (that) appeals to our cultural progressives because its pre-chewed truisms eliminate the need to actually seek the truth."

But a little controversy isn't enough to scare Neu, who decided last year to add the play to A.R.T.'s performance roster after learning the national "Angels" tour would not be stopping in Las Vegas.

"I figured it really needed to be done here," she says, "(and) we might as well be the ones to do it. It's the most important play written in the last 10 years. It's won more awards than any play that's ever been produced in New York, so we'd be crazy not to do it."

It's also typical of A.R.T.'s more recent offerings, which have included "Falsettos," William Finn and James Lapine's bittersweet, Tony award-winning musical about a gay, Jewish yuppie, and Terrence McNally's gay-themed works, "Lips Together, Teeth Apart," and "Love! Valour! Compassion!"

After "Love! Valour! Compassion!" -- with its full frontal male nudity -- Neu says "there's not a thing we can do that's gonna freak anybody out."

Not even a play that paints the Mormon church in a questionable light.

Three of the characters in "Angels in America" -- husband and wife Joe and Harper Pitt, and his mother, Hannah Pitt -- are Mormons. As Joe and Harper battle their own demons -- his struggle to accept his latent homosexuality and her Valium-induced hallucinations -- Hannah moves from Salt Lake City to New York to be with them.

Kushner, a gay, Jewish socialist, has said that while most Mormons he's known have been "good-hearted," he penned the characters as such because the church "is notoriously homophobic ... But I do find other apects of Mormon theology appealing. You're judged by your deeds rather than by your intentions. That's something Mormonism and Judaism shares: You have to do good to be good."

Given Las Vegas' large Mormon population, Neu says she considered the nature of the material, but decided to go forward. "Angels" has previously been produced in the Mormon hub of Salt Lake City. "So how daring is it really to do it here?" she asks. "If a person doesn't approve of something, generally they just vote with their feet and stay away. There's no point in worrying about it anymore."

Neu says she hopes to produce the second part of the play, called "Perestroika," next year. "Because then you could see the total evolution of all the characters, including the Mormon characters -- what happens to them and where they go."

Still, actor Jeff Granstrom, who plays Joe, can see how Mormon churchgoers might not be pleased with the piece. "It's not flattering to the church," he explains. "But on the other hand, I know that one of Kushner's points is that the people of the church are good-natured for the most part, and one thing I can say about Joe is that he's very nice."

Tortured by his religious convictions, but nice. "He's beginning to have a sexual awareness that even he's not happy about and that his religion has frowned upon. It's terrible for him to deal with," he says.

The Pitts are one of two couples with failing relationships followed in "Angels." Louis Ironson abandons his gay lover, Prior Walter, who is suffering the ravages of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic, during the mid-'80s Reagan-Bush administrations.

The "insensitivity, ignorance and stupidity" of the Reagan administration "is to blame for thousands of (AIDS) deaths in this country because they did nothing," Neu says. "I don't suppose they'd have found medications and they probably wouldn't have identified the virus any sooner," she says, "but I do know that they certainly didn't throw any money at it."

"Angels," however, is probably best known for loathsome villain Roy Cohn, a New York lawyer and power broker based on the real Roy M. Cohn -- Sen. Joe McCarthy's late right-hand man, who also prosecuted alleged spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Much like his real-life counterpart, Cohn, while publicly homophobic, is an in-the-closet gay in complete denial of his HIV-positive status. He's portrayed by local casting director Ray Favero.

"He is just the epitome of corruption and the way he does it, his M.O., he intimidates and interrogates and charms. It's the way he weaves his web," Favero says. "If you believe in metaphysical theories of life, we find that we bring back to ourselves what we give out and Roy Cohn has given out so much vile corruption that ... he's attracted everything negative to himself. He just lived a lie."

Sounds like he could use a little help from Neu's angel -- or Neu herself, who plays the title character.

Says she: "I've always wanted to fly."