ANGELS IN AMERICA: PERESTROIKA Opens Tonight at EPAC

When the final curtain fell March 16 on the Ephrata Performing Arts Center's critically acclaimed production of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, captivated audiences were left in rapt anticipation of its concluding chapter.

On March 28, the fates of the characters they came to love and hate in that stunning first chapter will be revealed in the darkly comic and dramatically surprising conclusion, Angels in America: Perestroika.

"Perestroika," which plays the Sharadin Bigler Theatre in Ephrata tonight, March 28-April 6, features the same indelible characters that distinguished "Millennium Approaches" under the direction of EPAC artistic director Edward R. Fernandez and assistant director Pat Kautter.

Two antithetical AIDS patients -- young, openly gay Prior Walter (Daniel Greene), and the closeted, ruthless right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn (Richard Bradbury); Prior's inconstant lover, Louis (Bob Breen) who has moved in with attorney Joe Pitt, Cohn's likewise closeted protégé (Equity guest artist Andrew Kindig); Harper Pitt, Joe's deceived, dependent and now drug-addled wife (Amy Carter); and Belize (Adam Newborn, who also plays Harper's hallucinatory travel agent), a black drag queen/nurse who finds himself caring for both his beloved friend Prior as well as the homophobic/racist Roy.

Accelerating this celebrated gay fantasia are Joe's Mormon mother who winds up caring for his betrayed wife (Elizabeth Pattey, who also portrays a Jewish rabbi and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, the woman executed as a spy at Cohn's behest); and Prior's nurse, a street woman, and an Angel who appears to the heavily medicated Prior, commanding him to become a prophet (all portrayed by Kristie Ohlinger).

The unexpected developments, alliances, crises and comic outrages that engage all of them in "Perestroika" again validate this landmark theater work's triple-crown distinction as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play and an Emmy Award for its all-star HBO adaptation.

Angels in America: Perestroika will be performed at 7:30 p.m. tonight, March 28; 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, March 29-30; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, April 3-4; 8 p.m. Friday, April 5; and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, April 6. Tickets are $15-$27.50 at ephrataperformingartscenter.com or (717) 733-7966. Recommended for mature audiences only.