Instead, we had over three hours of theatrical bravura with not a minute wasted – I could have watched more. I certainly didn’t tire of Barney White’s standout turn as dying monster Roy Cohn – rich with emotional depth and, according to my theatre companion, an improvement on Al Pacino’s typically overcooked interpretation for the HBO TV version of the play.
Kushner’s story and script are extraordinary things in themselves, but words alone don’t carry the day. Scenes where characters pop up in each others’ hallucinations or find themselves teleported to Antarcticas of the mind need to secure the conviction of the audience. The performances of the cast went a lot of the way to doing this, but Rebecca Luffmann and her team’s angular, newspaper-covered monoliths coupled with composer Nathan Klein and sound engineer Jay Anslow’s ominous soundscape, kept everything grounded and provided crucial gravitas to the play’s dramatic climax – a supernatural manifestation from above that could, with a single false move, miss the breathtaking profundity for which it’s aiming and tip over into high camp or nativity play silliness.It wasn’t absolutely perfect. The American accents – while for the most part impeccable – slipped occasionally in some of the smaller parts. Although I’ve praised the stage furniture, the decision to have a large portion of it on display most of the time was occasionally distracting. Dugie Young’s restrained anguish as closeted Mormon Joe Pitt overshot on the ‘restrained’ part, making it hard to engage with his struggles and providing nothing in which to root his occasional outbursts, making them seem a touch hollow and shouty.
None of these, though, broke the spell, and all were notable as a result of the overall bravery – they’d have stood out less in a production that took fewer risks. This is a moving piece of theatre whose difficulty means that you probably won’t get many chances to see it, so it’s well worth the investment.