The Illusion

The Illusion, at the Signature Theatre off-Broadway
Gratuitous Violins rating **1/2 out of ****

After being blown away by 7 1/2 hours of Angels in America during my April trip to New York City, I needed another Tony Kushner fix. So I decided to see The Illusion when I returned in June.

Kushner adapted The Illusion from the 17th century play L'Illusion Comique by Pierre Corneille. It concerns a lawyer, Pridamant, played by David Margulies, who drove his son away from home years earlier. Now, near the end of his life and filled with regret, he visits the cave of a magician to see if she can tell him what happened to his child.

The mysterious magician, Alcandre, played by Lois Smith, conjures up different visions of his son's life. There's a lot to show - unrequited love, dashing swordplay, some humorous scenes and some perilous ones. Tying them together is his attraction to a beautiful and high-born woman portrayed by Amanda Quaid.

Kusnher wrote The Illusion while he was in the middle of working on Angels in America and I wish I could say that it was as enthralling but it wasn't. While the play offered examples of Kushner's wonderfully poetic language, too much of it dragged. At 2 1/2 hours, The Illusion, directed by Spring Awakening's Michael Mayer, felt long. The ending in particular seemed to go on and on.

Part of the problem for me was, the supporting cast all seemed more interesting than the main characters. Finn Wittrock, who plays the son, and Quaid struck me as rather bland. But Peter Bartlett was great as a buffonish nobleman. I also liked Henry Stram as a mostly mute magician's assistant and Sean Dugan as a rival for Quaid's affections.

What saved the play were two things: Merritt Wever, a favorite of mine in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie, was terrific as a conniving maid; and there was an ingenious plot twist that I did not see coming. It made me smile and almost made The Illusion seem kind of wondrous.

In fact after it was revealed, I wish I could have gone back and watched some of the earlier scenes again. I certainly would have seen them in a different light. But of course I couldn't, because theatre is temporal and fleeting. I could only see them again in my mind's eye. And perhaps that was the point.

In New York, an exhilarating vote for gay marriage

Despite a lifetime of reading about the civil-rights movement, nothing prepared me for how I'd feel on Friday night during an actual civil-rights victory. I was in New York City when the state Senate voted to legalize gay marriage and in a word, I felt exhilarated.

I'd been checking my Twitter feed all afternoon on the train to New York and before seeing Tony Kusnher's The Illusion, at the Signature Theatre. At intermission, the Senate still hadn't voted.

Well after the play, even before I could turn my iPhone back on, the theatre was buzzing with the news that gay marriage had passed. I heard it standing in line in the ladies room, from women who probably ranged in age from their 70s to their 20s and who were equally elated.

I was excited in 2004 when same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, and in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected as the first African-American president. But this was a different kind of civil-rights milestone. Because of the impact it will have on my friends, it felt more personal.

In The New York Times on Sunday, columnist Frank Bruni spoke for me and for just about every straight person I know when he wrote "how how common it now is for Americans to realize that they know and love people who are gay."

I know several couples in New York, people like my friends Jeff and Matt who've been together for 7 1/2 years, who now will be able to get married in the state where they live. Whatever they decide, I'm so happy that the choice is theirs.

Jeff wrote in his blog, "I'm thrilled that my state now treats me as an equal citizen." And that's how it should be. I think the world of my friends - good people, hardworking, law-abiding and taxpaying. Of course they should have all of the rights that I have. Why is there even a question about that?

On Saturday, I went down to Greenwich Village where preparations were under way for Sunday's Gay Pride Parade, and it felt joyous.

I walked over to the Stonewall Inn, named for the bar where the gay-rights movement was born in the wake of a police raid in 1969. There were lots of people, many with children, posing for pictures. One group held up The New York Times with its banner headline announcing the vote.

During my April trip to New York City I saw Kushner's Angels in America at the Signature, and it was unforgettable. The last scene takes place at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. On Sunday, I saw the towering statue of the angel of Bethesda for myself.

The play's stirring final lines are spoken by Prior Walter, a young gay man who has been living with AIDS for five years. The disease has sapped his strength but his determination to live remains strong. He says, in part, "The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come."

Thankfully in New York, for people I know and love, it has. The law takes effect on July 24.

Tony Kushner, Israel and awarding honorary degrees

As someone who feels a connection to Israel and admires playwright Tony Kushner, I think it's shameful that the City University of New York's Board of Trustees vetoed a proposal by John Jay College to award him an honorary degree.

First, the way the board reached its decision was reprehensible. Members let one trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, make unsubstantiated claims that Kushner had disparaged Israel, using quotes taken out of context that distort his views.

There was no attempt by the other trustees to contact Kushner or verify the information independently, or even to discuss whether there should be a litmus test on Israel when awarding an honorary degree. They allowed Wiesenfeld to hijack the proceedings and voted. That's not how representatives of an institution dedicated to reasoned discourse should operate.

But there's something that troubles me even more. I find it embarrassing when my fellow American Jews try to "defend" Israel by silencing anything they perceive as criticism. It's misguided and, quite frankly, offensive to Israelis. I understand the need to speak up when Israel is unfairly maligned but knee-jerk reactions aren't helpful.

I lived in Israel for a year, from 1997 to 1998. One of the things I admire about the country is that despite the constant threat of terrorism, despite being at war for all 63 years of its existence, it is a robust democracy with the freedom to express every imaginable viewpoint.

I think that American Jews don't realize the raucousness of debate in Israel. I remember going to a peace rally in Tel Aviv and being incredulous that the crowd booed Natan Sharansky, a representative of the Likud government. Booing Sharansky, the man who languished in a Soviet prison camp for the "crime" of wanting to immigrate to Israel?

The idea of American Jews criticizing Israel is always delicate. We don't live there, we don't face the same dangers. If Kushner and I were to talk about Israel we wouldn't be in total agreement but we'd have a good debate. It would start from a place of mutual respect for each other and for Israel's right to exist.

I realize that not every American Jew views Israel the same way I do. Some have questions or reservations similar to the ones raised by Kushner. That doesn't make them extremists. That doesn't mean they should be ostracized. If, as Jews, we are a family then we should be able to talk openly and honestly with each other about the past, present and future.

Well, Tony Kushner can defend himself. Here's part of his letter to the CUNY board:

"I am very proud of being Jewish, and discussing this issue publicly has been hard; but I believe in the absolute good of public debate, and I feel that silence on the part of Jews who have questions is injurious to the life of the Jewish people. My opinion about the wisdom of the creation of a Jewish state has never been expressed in any form without a strong statement of support for Israel’s right to exist, and my ardent wish that it continue to do so, something Mr Wiesenfeld conveniently left out of his remarks."

(Update: according to The New York Times, the executive committee of the CUNY board met Monday evening and approved granting Kushner an honorary degree. The Times says it's not clear whether Kushner will accept but I hope he does.)

Angels in America

Angels in America, at the Signature Theatre Company
Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

I've read Tony Kushner's prize-winning Angels in America and I've seen the 2003 HBO miniseries, so I went into last Sunday's marathon performance at New York's Signature Theatre thinking I knew what to expect.

Well, taking in both parts - Millennium Approaches and Perestroika - on the same day in a 160-seat venue was one of the best theatre experiences I've ever had. I saw a familiar work in a new way and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. What a luminous, transcendent production of a classic American play.

Signature's Angels, which closes on Sunday, is the first New York revival since the original debuted on Broadway in the 1990s. I feel so fortunate that it kept extending, with a new cast, so I could see it on my trip to New York City. If you have a chance to see a production anywhere, just go.

Angels in America is set in New York City in the mid 1980s in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when it was dismissed as a "gay plague." Michael Urie is Prior Walter, diagnosed with kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer associated with AIDS. His lover, Louis Ironson, played by Adam Driver, can't cope with the illness and abandons him.

Kushner could have written a very grim story about that period, but he didn't. It's tremendously life-affirming. He could have written about a man who stands by his lover, as most gay men did when their partners became sick. But his characters are human and flawed. Not everyone, Kushner is saying, can rise to the challenge of a loved-one's illness. (And of course that goes for whether you're gay or straight.)

Some of the dialogue in Angels in America is so lyrical it's like poetry. This is a deeply spiritual, unabashedly political and profoundly moving work. There's also a lot more humor than I remembered - Kushner is a very sharp, witty writer.

Urie, from the TV series Ugly Betty, is amazing. You can see the progression of the disease by the way he moves, how he curls up in bed, the look on his face. There's pain in his voice. He's haunted by strange dreams involving his ancestors and, of course, an angel. He's scared and vulnerable, yet there's this core of strength. And at times, he's very funny.

Driver also impressed me. What Louis does is reprehensible, and he knows it. He's also argumentative to the point of obnoxiousness. Yet with Driver's performance I didn't hate Louis so much as pity him. Kushner also uses Louis as a way to express his outrage at the hypocrisy of gay men who are closeted, powerful and homophobic.

While Angels in America is subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" what also struck me is that it's very Jewish, and not solely because there are Jewish characters and Kushner's Jewish. Just like the story of Jacob in the Bible, almost every character is wrestling with something.

Prior is literally wrestling with an angel, as well as with his illness; Louis is guilt-stricken for leaving him; Joe Pitt, a closeted Mormon lawyer, played by Bill Heck, struggles to accept his sexual orientation; his Valium-addicted wife, Harper, played by Keira Keeley, lives in a fantasy world; and his mother, Hannah, played by Lynne McCullough, rushes to New York after he comes out to her in a drunken late-night phone call; the vile, Red-baiting lawyer Roy Cohn, played by Jonathan Hadary, tries to keep the fact that he has AIDS a secret. He's tormented by a vision of Ethel Rosenberg, whom he helped send to the electric chair.

I think the only person who isn't struggling is Billy Porter's Belize, a former drag queen and friend of Prior's who becomes Cohn's nurse. I especially loved his give-and-take with Driver's Ironson about freedom and democracy and race in America. He and Hannah Pitt are the two most compassionate people in the play - toward those you wouldn't expect, which is another way Kushner circumvents our expectations.

The two parts are so well constructed - about seven hours in all but it moves so quickly, with lots of two-person scenes that under Michael Greif's direction flow seamlessly from one to the next.

At the beginning of Angels in America an elderly rabbi delivers the eulogy for Louis' grandmother and he talks about how she came from the old country, how her grandchildren can't make that journey but will have one of their own to make.

In the end, I did feel like I had been on a journey - with a terrific cast who made their characters so utterly compelling. I'll admit I didn't understand everything along the way. The angel, a glorious Sofia Jean Gomez, still mystified me a bit. But her arrival, in a blaze of light and sound, was thrilling. Even though I knew it was coming, my jaw dropped.

Cohn tells his doctor he can't possibly be dying of AIDS because he's not a homosexual. Homosexuals are people without power. (Although he does want the most hard-to-get, experimental treatment for the disease.) He says, "A homosexual is somebody who knows nobody and who nobody knows."

There are so many memorable lines in Angels but that one especially made me think how different things were in the 1980s and how, thankfully, times have changed - for people with AIDS, in the lives of gay and lesbian Americans and in my life.

AIDS has gone from a death sentence to a manageable illness. I now have many friends who are openly gay, people I know well and admire and love dearly. And while there's a ways to go before we achieve full civil rights for all Americans, we have made progress. The world is spinning forward.

After the end of Millennium Approaches a member of the cast made an appeal for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, as many productions do at this time of year.

In the lobby, Michael Urie was holding a red plastic bucket for donations and when I saw him I started to cry. He was wearing his pajamas from the final scene - the top sweaty from a fever dream. I could barely speak but I managed to tell him "Michael, you were wonderful. I'm coming back for Part 2 tonight."

I gave him $20 and he gave me a red ribbon, which I will cherish. And I will keep his performance in my heart, always.

Wrestling with Angels

Last night, I watched the documentary on playwright Tony Kushner that's airing this month on PBS, "Wrestling with Angels." It's a really illuminating look at Kushner as a writer and as a person.

My introduction to his work came through the 2003 HBO miniseries of "Angels in America." I didn't actually have HBO at the time it aired, so while I was waiting for it to come out on DVD, I read the two plays that make up Angels: "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika."

While Kushner's work is about the AIDS crisis, it's not solely about that. In addition to the angels and the Mormons and Roy Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg what I took away from it was a very thoughtful and perceptive examination of what happens when someone we love falls ill. How well do we handle it?

And I think the final scene, in front of the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, is so stirring and inspiring. It's not an ending about dying from a horrible disease, but rather about living with it, surrounded by people you love. There's a glimmer of hope and a vow not to be silent ever again.

The documentary, by Academy Award winner Freida Lee Mock, touches on most of Kushner's works. But it spends the most time on some of his more recent endeavors, including the play "Homebody/Kabul," the Holocaust-themed opera "Brundibar" and the musical drawing on his Louisiana childhood, "Caroline, or Change." (There must have been a lot of cameras following Kushner at one point, because "Caroline, or Change" is also one of the shows featured in the documentary "ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway.")

Kushner wears his progressive politics on his sleeve, and he talks a lot about the political nature of his plays. We even see him going to Florida to ferry voters to the polls during the last presidential election. He's constantly talking about the need for the individual to take a stand and make a difference.

But it's the personal parts of the documentary that really fascinated me and gave me a fuller portrait of Tony Kushner than I'd ever had before. We see him getting around New York City on foot, by subway and cab, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. We visit his house in the country, and the little shed where he writes. We're guests at the wedding of Kushner and his partner, Mark Harris, in a traditional Jewish ceremony. (I caught sight of Marian Seldes for a brief second in a corner of the screen. That woman is everywhere!)

I especially loved the look at his small-town Southern Jewish roots. Kushner talks a lot about his family in the documentary. We travel with him to his hometown of Lake Charles, La. We see the small brick synagogue where he had his bar mitzvah and the lumberyard that his family owned. We meet his father and his brother.

I think that the title can work on two levels. Obviously, it's an allusion to "Angels in America." But I thought of another possible allusion. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob spends all night wrestling with a mysterious being, or an angel. He's given the name Israel, meaning one who has struggled or wrestled with God and prevailed.

Since then, the idea of wrestling with God has in many ways been at the core of Jewish identity. To me, it's not simply a religious struggle, but a struggle to understand the world and your place in it.

Whether or not you agree with his politics, I think that as a person, and as a playwright, that is what Tony Kushner is doing. He comes across as a very sincere, likable person as he talks about all of his struggles: coming out to his parents and being true to himself as a gay man, what it means to be a good person and a good citizen, and what an individual can do to make the world a better place.