Review Roundup: National Theatre's ANGELS IN AMERICA, starring Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane & More

The cast of the National Theatre's 2017 revival of Tony Kushner's landmark work Angels in America includes Stuart Angell, Mark Arnold, Arun Blair-Mangat, Susan Brown, Laura Caldow, Andrew Garfield, Denise Gough, Kate Harper, John Hastings, Claire Lambert, Nathan Lane, Amanda Lawrence, James McArdle, Becky Namgauds, Mateo Oxley, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Russell Tovey, Paksie Vernon, Stan West and Lewis Wilkins.

The production is directed by Olivier and Tony award-winner Marianne Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, War Horse, Husbands & Sons).

Angels in America is designed by Ian MacNeil, with costume by Nicky Gillibrand, lighting by Paule Constable, choreography and movement by Robby Graham, music by Adrian Sutton, sound by Ian Dickinson, puppetry designers Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, puppetry director and movement Finn Caldwell, illusions by Chris Fisher, aerial direction by Gwen Hales and fight director Kate Waters.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, New York Times: Directed by Marianne Elliott, and featuring an illustrious cast that includes Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane in top form, this "Angels" is a rich, imperfect production of a rich, imperfect play. But that's a bit like saying there are bricks missing from the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Mr. Kushner's two-part masterwork, the first half of which was staged by the National Theater in 1992 (opening on Broadway the following year), sees and celebrates aspiration and imperfection as inevitable companions.

Marianka Swain, BroadwayWorld: Though valuable as an evocative history play, Kushner's work is still a powerful call to arms in 2017. Cohn was Trump's lawyer and his virulent strain of Republicanism, so wilfully blind to the needs of others, is evident in the Party that just stripped health care from millions of Americans. The challenges of progress, immigration and integration, prejudice, global warming, and religious and national identity are still urgent topics, here often brilliantly and waspishly articulated.

Thankfully, Kushner wryly leavens those debates. Elliott's production likewise maintains humour in the face of horror and honours his combination of visceral and intellectual, spiritual and sexual, political and personal. If the inflated running time doesn't always feel justified, it's perhaps fitting for our species' contradictory, chaotic, maddening and admirable fumbling - through the darkest shadows of humanity and back out into the light.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: What is one left with at the end of eight hours? Some memorable images, thanks to Ian MacNeil's design. Some astonishing performances from a very good cast. But the prime impression is of Kushner's conviction that, although we live in dark times where both God and Marx are dead, there is always hope in the instinct for survival and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: Director Marianne Elliott orchestrates proceedings with immense rigour. For an idea of their technical complexity, consider the fact that when Prior receives a visit from an angel her massive wings need to be operated by no fewer than six people. True, there are times when the production's intensity drops off. But this is a courageous revival, underpinned by piercingly authentic performances.

Mark Shenton, The Stage: It sometimes feels a bit clumsy: a strange metal dome helmet structure dominates the stage, but is really only used in the play's final scenes, while the early sections are staged head-on with sets on three revolving turntables, before they are trucked back for the Antarctica scene. A hospital ward and office appear from below the stage. What is most fascinating, though, is to see now how mainstream the play now feels. Where once it might have been a radical statement, Angels in America now plays like a raw, truthful documentary of where we've come from, and serves as a necessary reminder of those bleak times before AIDS became a treatable disease.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: The performances and the plays themselves, however, absolutely fly. Angels will serve as a fascinating (if leftist-slanted) history lesson for the younger generation. We're reminded of the Reagan era, embodied most viciously in the closeted (also dying of Aids) figure of legal power-player Roy M Cohn (the superb Nathan Lane, puppyish one minute, a Rottweiler the next, finally pained and emaciated). The collapse of Communism is marked in Part Two (Perestroika). Yet this isn't yesterday's news: the core themes, about the price paid for denial, and the cost of change and acceptance, the end-times sense of foreboding many feel about the state of the planet too, still pulse with urgency; the emotions sear afresh.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: The entire cast are just superb. Lane vigorously endows Cohn with enough charisma, making him a blazing force. You are charmed by his energy - "it was never the money, it was the moxie", he explains - even as you are repelled by his moral emptiness. As Louis, McArdle entirely convinces in his sense of inadequacy in the face of his greatest test; his long, agonised speeches, fluidly written, flexibly spoken are among the best of the night. Tovey catches perfectly each mood along Joe's tortured course; Gough, the catch in her voice as subtle as her performance, rends the heart as the lost Harper. Among the supporting cast, Susan Brown's multiple turns as male characters and her final incarnation as a Mormon mother are all utterly truthful. And Garfield is superb. It is hard to embody this model of high camp, but he brings Prior to full, biting life, never hitting a wrong note, inviting our sympathy but not our pity, and constantly emphasising the character's gallant, open-eyed courage in the face of odds that are always stacked against him. It is an extraordinary, humane performance at the centre of this great epic play. The National deserves enormous credit for bringing it back to the stage with such conviction and power.

Andrjez Lukowski, TimeOut London: The acting company is RIDICULOUS, the sort of ludicrous confluence of talent that impresses simply for the feat of harmonising their diaries, even before we've seen the acting. I'd never been quite sure from his films whether erstwhile Spider-Man Andrew Garfield was anything special, but on stage he is absolutely stupendous as the sprawling show's nominal focal point Prior Walter, a waspish WASP who contacts AIDS, is hospitalised, gets dumped by his boyfriend Louis, and is then visited by a horny angelic bureaucrat that wants him to become its prophet. Garfield steams into the part with savage wit, burning intensity and total commitment - it is a weird, taxing, hilarious role, and he owns it, the best thing here, one of the performances of the year.

Demetrious Matheou, Hollywood Reporter: As Prior, Garfield is something of a revelation; an actor who can be rather earnest on screen, he imbues the play with a gloriously light comic charge, with a touch of queeniness but not too much. Poor Prior has abandonment as well as life-threatening illness to contend with; Garfield rambunctiously conveys his astonishment at the weirder manifestations of his illness, and the sheer doggedness that gives the play its hope.

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