Angels

Well, I've just watched the first half of Angels in America on Channel 4, and fuck me it's good. And surprisingly faithful to the stage play.

I saw Millennium Approaches in its first run at the NT back in the early 90s, when the second part wasn't even written (if you've seen it you can probably imagine the frustration of that indeterminate to be continued...). Sometime later I saw the double-bill at the Wharf Theatre on Sydney, but Perestroika was pretty unfinished at that stage and various bits didn't work at all. Eventually a more satisfactory version showed up in London -- and sold out at once. I queued for day seats from the crack of dawn on its very last day, which at a guess was probably in about 1993. For some time after my email sig was (I may have misremembered the exact wording) I, I, I, I have returned, prophet -- and *not* according to plan!

God knows how they'll deal with part two -- Where is your beautiful theory? -- but at least I only have to wait until tomorrow night to find out.

It still seems to me one of the most brilliant plays of the twentieth century -- and certainly the only truly great gay play to date, a whole universe away from, say, The Normal Heart or Torch Song Trilogy or Beautiful Thing (though I loved all of those). I'm amazed by how much of it still rings true -- Roy Cohn's speech about clout seems as raw and apposite as ever -- and just random lines of dialogue are still lodged firmly in my memory:

This last was the only time I noticed something missing in the TV version -- it came out of nowhere this time, but I'm sure there was some lead-in originally, something about whiteness and cold and purity, before the drastic theatrical transition to Antarctica. Never mind.

Anyway, it's marvellous. The sort of thing I'm glad to be alive to see, and on prime time TV as well.

One stupid thing, though -- a result, I suppose, of an accidental proximity in time, having posted the story only a couple of days before seeing this -- Time Travel was written in 1990. Its half-baked idea was undoubtedly stolen from someone -- possibly Adam Mars-Jones? -- but not from this. If I'd seen Angels in America before writing it, I never would have dared.

On a completely different note, I did my first tap class today in the best part of a year. It was fun. I've missed doing that sort of thing; where did it go?
Posted by matt at February 8, 2004 01:54 AM