Stephen Spinella in Angels in America- Page 2

[Jane2]

Posted: 3/11/14 at 6:18pm

For me, Justin Kirk was the antithesis of queeny as Prior, yet I thought he was great. The role can be played in different ways.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/11/14 at 11:08pm

Just getting around to seeing this thread, which had been described to me by friends earlier today as one of the great crackpot lunatic threads of all-time BroadwayWorld history.

YOU SPINELLA-HATING PEOPLE ARE NUTTY McNUTCAKE NUT-JOBS IN A NUTBALL FACTORY.

Stephen Spinella defined the role.
Stephen Spinella was living the role.
Stephen Spinella brought life to every moment and every word of the script.
Stephen Spinella doesn't deserve to be abused and gay-shamed in this this thread.

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 11:08 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/11/14 at 11:08pm

Yeah, I saw him, and he was great.

Updated On: 3/11/14 at 11:08 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/11/14 at 11:52pm

I would like to thank PJ for allowing this thread to almost spoil his anniversary, but for stepping in and schooling some of the folks here who definitely need it.

[Steve721]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:08am

For me, one good thing about this thread is that it caused me to take down the scripts for Parts 1 and 2, and I'm now reading them again. When it comes to Prior's lines, even after 20 years, in my mind I can still hear Spinella delivering them. He was just delicious in that role.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:18am

Are you like me? Do you feel like you have to buy them again for the post-Signature revival tweaks?

[Steve721]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:26am

I saw Part 1 of the original Broadway production three times, and Part 2 two times. I live in Houston and I saw the production here at the Alley Theater and the one at the Dallas Theater center. I also saw the Signature Theater Company revival in NY with Borle as Prior. So yeah, I've seen lots of productions as well as, of course, the film. But the original Broadway cast is what I always think of when the play comes to mind.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:32am

Me too. Borle and Quinto gave Spinella and Mantello a real run for the money, I will say.

But the OBC will always be the standard.

Also, that poor Parker woman on HBO. It was mostly all wrong. I saw Cynthia Nixon in Millennium once. She was great.

[Steve721]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:37am

I really liked the Signature production, and IMHO the quality of the Signature cast is the closest to the original actors. Angels is principally about the words, so I think the play could be successfully performed in almost any space if the director and actors are up to it. But seeing the original production in the Walter Kerr with those elaborate sets was very special--when the angel came crashing through the ceiling at the end of Part 1, it was a very "wow" moment.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:43am

It was very, I dunno, like something a movie director with excellent special effects would do.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 1:33am

I have the originally published scripts, but have been interested to read the revisions--are there any major ones? I guess I'll have to pick them up at some point. Anyone know if only one version is licensed?

[Steve721]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 8:39am

All I have is the originally published scripts. If there are newer revised versions, I would be very interested to know that.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 9:19am

The role may be able to be played different ways, but a thread that has people pining for "butcher" Priors really confounds me.
Updated On: 3/12/14 at 09:19 AM

[Jane2]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 9:40am

When I saw Urie as Prior, Louis was played by Adam Driver, the actor who plays the boyfriend on GIRLS. I don't watch GIRLS but I loved Driver in ANGELS.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 9:47am

^I also loved him in that. It was the first thing I ever saw him do, and my crush on him was instantaneous.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 9:49am

It doesn't necessarily confound me since a lot of gay people hate "queeny" gay guys. I just see the criticisms against Spinella as another extension of that, which drives me insane. Prior is not supposed to be a butch gay guy--I think in the post-WILL & GRACE world, gay people assume that the gay lead of the story should always the butcher one, what they believe to be the "normal" one. That's so not what Kushner was interested in, you just have to read the play and he tells you at every turn that Prior is indeed from a type of gay culture that is not afraid to be effeminate, not afraid to refer to himself as a "she," or do drag, or be campy. It's part of his character and it's part of what Kushner is trying to do. To criticize Spinella's performance as too effeminate is not only presentist, but shows a real lack of understanding about the play. The problem with Justin Kirk for me is that he was not always able to capture that camp sensibility that Prior calls for, he often comes across as a straight man playing gay. I'm actually surprised to hear Christian Borle was any good in the role, as he suffered from a case of the Justin Kirk in his atrocious take on a gay man in SMASH--then again, that shouldn't be the work by which anyone's acting skills are measured.

[darquegk]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:08am

If I recall, I read an interview with Kushner in my undergraduate days, and (offensive language ahead, be warned), Kushner said something like "You're missing the point. The big thing isn't that a gay man can be the hero, the sympathetic protagonist. The big thing is that a FAGGOT can be the hero, the sympathetic protagonist." He went on to describe how he made the character the most polarizing extreme away from heteronormativity possible, to fight the way swish, camp and effeminacy had been demonized. The character is meant to never be someone who could pass, because he shouldn't have to. There is a place for Prior.

(It may have been one of the directors, if not Kushner. I remember the quote better than the attribution. But it wasn't Ryan Murphy.)

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:09am

To criticize Spinella's performance as too effeminate is not only presentist, but shows a real lack of understanding about the play.

THIS. And to everything else you said. Well, except the Christian Borle part, because I thought he played gay well on SMASH.

But that people's distaste of femme gay men is so strong that even a character written as - for lack of a better word - flamboyantly as Prior Walter turns off certain audience members when played appropriately is deeply unsettling.

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 10:09 AM

[The Other One]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:29am

Spinella was remarkable. Remarkable. Good as the HBO version was, I missed his bitingly gay sense of humor terribly.

Prior was battling the gay plague in a world of people who wanted to suppress everything about him. The whole point is that he fights back on his own terms and doesn't give a hoot about what society expects of him.

I must ask, though I am going slightly off topic, if I am the only person who found Emma Thompson, the usually brilliant Emma Thompson, excruciatingly bad as the Angel in the mini-series. She damn near sank the entire venture. I watched a second time hoping I just needed to get past my memories of Ellen McLaughlin, but, no, I truly think she is awful. Fine in the other roles she plays, but, dear God, AWFUL as the Angel.

Perhaps the role is just too much of a theatrical device to work on the small screen.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:36am

For a little while, I thought I was living on another planet. How people can find fault with Spinella's almost-perfect performance is something I will never understand.

And I will never defend the HBO movie. I know people love it, but Nichols couldn't locate the one thing that helped us all survive the plague: a biting, lacerating, life-affirming sense of humor. That movie was humorless.

[newintown]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:45am

Spinella was, indeed, perfection in a role that was (wait for it) created for him. He and Kushner were long-time friends, and Kushner always intended the role for Spinella.

To say that he was too gay or too flamboyant is an old saw, as wrong-headed today as it was when the play came out - and we heard it a lot then from uptight queens who objected that "regular gays" (like themselves, presumably) weren't represented in the play, as if every gay narrative has to be populated by "regular guys."

As for the HBO film, I can't imagine comparing it to the play, because it was an entirely different thing - edited, shot realistically (rather than magically theatrical), a different piece of work. IMO, Justin Kirk was, as he always is to me, bland, lazy, laconic, and grey (I thought that worked for him in Love! Valour! Compassion!, but never again since).

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 10:48am

Phyllis, you're just saying that because you wanna bone him But I couldn't agree more with this part: that people's distaste of femme gay men is so strong that even a character written as - for lack of a better word - flamboyantly as Prior Walter turns off certain audience members when played appropriately is deeply unsettling. It really is. I experience it so often: "if I wanted to be with a woman, I'd be straight," or "I'm not gay, I'm just a guy who likes sleeping with men." I even was guilty of this when I was a teenager (which is ridiculous, since I'm a total bottom and not manly in any way whatsoever), but it's something I quickly got over, but that I don't see my friends getting over; in fact, I just see it more and more, and I don't think it's even a generational thing at this point.
Really though, this conversation just calls attention to the fact that Prior Walter is still an extremely important character in today's scene.
darquegk, that's a great quote, and so perfectly describes what Kushner is going for with this play.

[Owen22]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:06am

In "Perestroika" there is a line, when meeting a sickly frazzled Prior, Hannah asks him (and I may be paraphrasing), "Are you a homosexual? Are you a hairdresser?" and Prior retorts, "Well, wouldn't it be your lucky day if I was!". This line, which apocryphally Mel Brooks called Kushner to tell him he'd written the funniest line of the year, was totally thrown away by Kirk in the TV movie. Obviously, Spinella leapt onto the line and brought down the house. This may have been directorial, but I have always used this as a marker when comparing the performances.

It should also be noted that Borle didn't do half of what Spinella did with the line either.

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 11:06 AM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 11:29am

The problem with Prior being "too" camp is that it pushes the character into the realm of cartoon. Yes AIA is a "gay fantasia" but you also don't want the character to be so outrageous that he becomes just a comic device rather than a living breathing person. There has to be some truth in the characterization for the audience to want to take the journey. It's like on Will & Grace. Karen & Jack became so outrageous that they became the punchline rather than actual characters in the show.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 3/12/14 at 12:23pm

There was nothing vaguely cartoonish about the performances I saw Spinella give.