DATE: Thursday, October 16, 1997            TAG: 9710160079

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  127 lines

AMONG THE ANGELS ``GAY-ORIENTED'' PLAY AT ODU TACKLES TABOO TOPICS

A HUGE, FEATHERY cloud in the shape of an angel's wing hovered over Norfolk on Saturday evening.

Too weird. It was National Coming Out Day, and an Old Dominion University production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play ``Angels in America'' was in rehearsal.

A sign from God?

Certainly not in the context of the show. In Tony Kushner's ``Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika,'' subtitled ``A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,'' God has flown the coop and is being sued by the real-life, closeted homosexual, died-of-AIDS-in-1986 lawyer Roy Cohn.

Cohn, a lead demon in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Commie-hunt hearings, rises from hell to stick the Big Guy for abandonment.

``Perestroika,'' opening Friday, is that kind of show - funny, serious, political and fabulous, in the flamboyant gay sense of the word.

``It takes all of these taboo dinner topics - sex, religion and politics - and those are its themes,'' said Norfolk actor Jay Lockamy, who plays Roy Cohn.

The play follows ODU's fall 1996 production of ``Angels in America: Part One, Millennium Approaches,'' which ended with an eye-popping cliffhanger. A fearsome angel crashes through a bedroom wall of a main character, Prior Walter, a gay man with AIDS who wins our sympathy through his courage and campy humor.

``God, almighty . . . very Steven Spielberg,'' says Walter, awestruck.

Angels appear at death, right? But this angel bears cryptic tidings. Hers are the last words spoken in part one: ``Greetings, Prophet; The Great Work Begins: The Messenger has arrived.''

So what happened? ``Most people think Prior died. When I first read the play, I thought he died, too,'' said Bruce Hanson, who portrays Prior Walter.

But Walter didn't die. It was merely a visitation by a very earthy Angel of America, who flies down upon his bed to wrestle with him and tries to make him into a prophet. Walter eventually is sent to heaven and is offered a rare option to return to Earth.

Perestroika'' isn't exactly a sequel to ``Millennium Approaches,'' argues director Christopher Hanna, who teaches theater in ODU's department of communication and theater arts. ``I think of it as the concluding half,'' he said.

It's a fine distinction. While Part Two picks up on relationships established in Part One, Hanna's point is that each play holds up well when viewed independently.

The productions are quite different. For one thing, Hanson is the only actor continuing in a role from Part One. And there is an entirely new set, from last year's postmodern design by Konrad Winters to this year's pastiche by Woody Robinson of black-and-white swatches of Manhattan scenes.

In Part One, Prior Walter's lover, Louis, leaves him after his diagnosis and eventually seduces Joe, a closeted homosexual who, in turn, abandons his Valium-addicted wife, Harper. Alarmed, Joe's Mormon mother, Hannah, leaves Salt Lake City to attend to her wayward son in New York.

Meanwhile, Cohn, a fire-spewing paragon of self-hatred, learns he has AIDS. In the spectrum of People With AIDS, Walter and Cohn occupy opposite ends. They are antithetical characters, as different as heaven and hell.

Though situations worsen in ``Perestroika'' - Russian for ``new freedom'' - the play's tone grows more comedic, even uplifting. The show opens with a speech by the World's Oldest Bolshevik addressed to a group of Soviet political reformers in January 1986: ``Are we doomed? Will the past release us? Can we change? In time?''

``And then,'' wrote New York Times theater critic Frank Rich upon the Broadway opening of ``Perestroika'' in 1993, ``even more dazzlingly, come the answers, delivered in three and a half hours of spellbinding theater embracing such diverse and compelling native legends as the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Mormon iconography of Joseph Smith and the MGM film version of `The Wizard of Oz.' ''

The show has many layers, a major one being Walter's journey, which is a classic hero's journey. Think of Dorothy en route to Oz.

Both parts are peppered with references to the 1939 film. Not so coincidentally, ``The Wizard of Oz'' is a gay symbol.

And in ``Perestroika,'' Hanna said, ``Heaven is very Ozlike, although (Kushner) refers to it as a city very much like San Francisco.''

Likewise, the character of Walter is much like Dorothy, Hanna said, in his wide-eyed amazement at strange new worlds.

``Tony (Kushner) really plays on and with camp in a way that celebrates the form in gay culture but which is completely entertaining to mass culture,'' Hanna said. ``He does that without compromising either.''

Kushner comes from a family of classical musicians, and he told The Virginian-Pilot last year that he sees ``Perestroika'' as a series of duets.

``I did actually intentionally give the play a musical structure,'' Kushner said. ``Basically, the way `Millennium' is structured, it's two stories that start as two separate themes, that echo each other and split apart.''

With ``Perestroika,'' instead of the two-theme structure, he wrote eight stories, each of them happening simultaneously.

``And it's all duets,'' he said, adding that in the course of ``Angels in America,'' ``everybody meets everybody. It's like a waltz, or musical chairs.''

Natasha Bunnell, a graduate student in theater who plays the Angel, said she could hear the music in her lines. ``That was the first thing that struck me,'' she said. As she explored the rest of the play, she also perceived ``a specific musicality to each of the characters.''

In regards to her Angel, she said, ``I think of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.'' That early 19th century piece has been called ``an apotheosis of passionate love'' - a sentiment appropriate to Kushner's vision of an oversexed angelic host.

The angels in ``Angels'' distribute orgasms like candy wherever they go. ``What makes the engine of creation run? Not physics but ecstatics makes the engine run,'' explains the Angel. ``Angelic orgasm makes protomatter, which fuels the engine of creation.''

Kushner's portrayal of the heavenly host ``has one foot in church drama and the other foot in a drag show,'' Hanna said. ``Yes, it's spiritually relevant, but it's also fun in a quirky way.''

The point, he said, ``is that what we find in heaven is not that different from what we find on Earth.''

``Angels in America'' is often thought of as a play about AIDS and homosexuals. While most of the characters are gay, the themes are still universal, Hanna said.

``This is a play about the world as it enters the 21st century,'' he said. ``So many of the assumptions we embraced in the 20th century are being abandoned. `Millenium Approaches' was a wrap-up of that century. Now we enter the 21st century, which Tony sees as a whole new frontier, both frightening and amazingly empowering.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

COURTESY OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY

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