Angels in America to Get Off-Broadway Revival at Signature Theatre

Signature Theatre Company will present the first New York revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The epic two-part work, which consists of Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, will be presented in repertory during the company’s 2010-2011 all-Kushner season, plus two more plays to be announced. Michael Greif will direct.

“It seemed to Jim [Houghton, founder of Signature] and me that this is a good moment to bring Angels back to New York, and I’m delighted that Michael Greif has agreed to direct it,” Kushner said in a statement. “Michael and I have worked together and known each other for most of our careers. He’s a serious, generous, incredibly smart and superbly talented artist; I love his passionate commitment to actors, to plays, to the theater. I think the Signature’s the perfect space for the demands of Angels, which is both epic and intimate. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out!”

“Mounting Tony’s exquisite play in the intimate Signature Theatre will be an extraordinary challenge but will offer even more extraordinary rewards,” Greif said in a statement. “I know I’ll be aided by an astonishing group of actors and designers anxious to wrestle with this masterpiece.” No casting or creative team members have been announced.

Part One of Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, opened on May 4, 1993, at the Walter Kerr Theatre and Part Two, Perestroika, opened on November 23, 1993, with the two parts playing in repertory. Both parts won Tony Awards in 1993 and 1994 for Best Play and Millennium Approaches won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Kushner adapted the plays for an HBO miniseries, directed by Mike Nichols, which premiered in 2003 and won Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for Best Miniseries.

Angels in America is set in late 1985 and early 1986 as the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in America is escalating and Ronald Reagan has been elected to a second term. The play’s two parts bring together a young gay man with AIDS and his frightened, unfaithful lover; a closeted Mormon lawyer and his Valium-addicted wife; the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn; an African-American male nurse; a Mormon housewife from Utah; and a steel-winged, prophecy-bearing angel; as well as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, an ancient rabbi, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik and a Reagan administration functionary, among many others, all played by a company of eight actors. The lives of these disparate characters intersect, intertwine, collide and are blown apart during a time of heartbreak, reaction and transformation.

Signature’s 2009-2010 Season will feature the world premiere of The Orphans’ Home Cycle, a three part theatrical event by the late Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Horton Foote, co-produced with Hartford Stage and directed by Michael Wilson.