Review: ANGELS IN AMERICA PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES at REC ROOM ARTS

ANGELS IN AMERICA by Tony Kushner is a two-part epic play that has not been seen in Houston in the last three decades. There’s a reason for that. Doing it is a huge dare, because the show is so dense, time-stamped, and large in emotional scope that it feels daunting to both theater companies and audiences alike. It deals with Reagan-era America, AIDS, religiosity, and what America means. Yet Rec Room Arts never seems to back down from a challenge, and here they are producing BOTH parts in repertory with each other. They are making a cast and crew produce over seven hours of emotionally charged, high-impact theater! Between now and December 20th, you can see the complete saga either on two separate nights or as part of a marathon day of theater that will have you in the auditorium all day with a dinner break. It seems nuts, but having seen Part One: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES, it promises to pay off in a big way. Rec Room Arts has delivered at least the first half of a miracle. This is something that feels less like a revival and more like a call to arms, and Kushner’s words echo louder and more forcefully than ever. 

The show explores three distinct narratives that intersect in unexpected ways. We have Prior Walter and Louis, a gay couple who have just found out that one of them has AIDS. There is a straight Mormon twosome, with the husband hiding a secret and the wife dealing with an addiction to pills and loneliness. And we also have real-life historical figure Roy Cohn, a ruthless lawyer who is a closeted homosexual who has just contracted AIDS. During the first part of the play, we see these three situations crash into each other, and witness as Prior and the straight wife begin having prophetic visions about something that is coming. 

Kushner’s script is a massive collage of two and three-person scenes that move briskly with humor and razor-sharp intellect. It takes a very strong cast, but Rec Room Arts has scavenged the best of the best in Houston, cherry-picking the top talent from several companies. Susan Koozin is fresh off her turn at the Alley playing Miss Marple, and here she gender bends several times into rabbis, doctors, and Ethel Rosenberg. The opening moments with her preparing to start while Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot” plays sent chills down my back. She's, as usual, amazing. From Catastrophic Theatre, we have Greg Dean, who plays Roy Cohn here. Greg is a consummate character actor, and his Cohn is deliciously slimy and self-loathing to the core. He kills it! From Main Street Theatre comes Nathan Wilson, and his “straight husband with a secret,” here is masterfully played. He's charming, and we ache for him. Avery Vonn Kenyatta is a veteran of the Ensemble, and his Belize and Mr. Lies are comic gold but wholly believable. Belize slays in the best way! Matthew Jamison has been at Rec Room before, and he brings Louis to life with a sparkling wit and sense of general anxiety that suits the role perfectly. Louis is often the "voice of Kushner," and he brings this off the page. Elizabeth Black works damn near everywhere and is one of Houston’s most skilled comic character actors. She brings an awesome presence to any part she steps into, an angel of a nurse, and a literal angel. This is an embarrassment of riches!  

But two actors who stand out with brave choices are Wesley Whitson and Meg Rodgers, playing Prior Walter and Harper. Wesley is fresh off a run as Hamlet at 4TH WALL, and he continues his streak of epic roles with this one. As an actor, Wesley brings himself into Prior, and here it works wonders, making him a living, breathing character who is suddenly facing both death and rapture. He is stunning, funny, and powerful. Meg Rodgers plays Hannah, and she commands the stage by pulling back when other actors might exaggerate. Her slip into another world is heartbreaking and so genuine. I could watch her all day (and some of you will). She plays Hannah in a way I have never seen before, and every choice works. These two carry the soul of the show, and they are surrounded by powerhouse performances that help them amplify everything.  

We have two directors, including Matt Hune and Sophia Watt. Matt handled this first part mostly, and he makes it move at the right pace, often overlapping scenes and shifting quickly from one moment to the next to create the right rhythm. Designwise Rec Room has done nothing more than co-opt the idea of a simplistic Brechtian approach (inspired by the National Theatre revival), which involves no sets, but rather neat lighting and an amazing sound design. Robert Leslie Meek deserves an award for mining the soul of ANGELS IN AMERICA with his sonic landscape of music and noise; it is a revelation. Kushner loved Epic Theatre and always intended ANGELS to echo Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. We see scene changes, and there is never any pretense that what we are watching is not a play in motion. We see the wheels turning, we watch as actors prepare. It’s a way to do ANGELS without the three-million-dollar scenic budget it had on Broadway back in 1993. It also focuses the show on the actors, which in this case, is the wisest move.  The directors and designers get out of their way, and it is a finely tuned work. 

So why this show now? When ANGELS IN AMERICA debuted in America in 1993, it felt like a rearview mirror play. The Reagan era had ended, and Clinton had come into office. The Roy Cohns of the world had faded into the shadows, or so we thought. But now, in 2025, we see a landscape created by men that Cohn mentored. The show is prophecy once more, and that’s the real reason to sit through ANGELS IN AMERICA now. It shows us an America that is rising once again, one where hope is in order. I am glad that Rec Room Arts recognized that and decided to draft Houston’s best to put on a show that is one of the greatest scripts of our time. It could be dismissed as “a show about AIDS,” and that could be that. But ANGELS IN AMERICA examines what America means, how we politicize race, otherness, and even illness (especially illness). Cheers to Rec Room Arts for beginning the great work again. Part one was very strong. So let’s see if the more wordy part two can bring this all home. 

Houston Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. BRIGHT STAR (Spark Theater)

7.6% of votes

2. ROCK OF AGES (Standing Ovation Theatre)

6.4% of votes

3. THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (The Sankofa Collective)

5.7% of votes

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