REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
When you are seeing a show in the theater, it is most commonly a one off experience. You spend the night out for an hour or two to see some facet of the human condition be put on stage, whether that be through a gut wrenching drama or a flashy musical, and you go home moved, finished with the experience. In some more intense cases, you may be watching a show that borders on the 3 hour mark which is not for the faint of heart, but at the end of the production, however long it might be, you have seen all there is of it to see. In the most extreme case however, there is a piece that in total sums up to about 7.5 hours in length. Insane? Yes. Achievable? You’d certainly think not. Ladies and gentlefolk, I am here to inform you it can and has been done. In two 3 hour long sections, something you’d only ever imagine in cinema, the prolific stage play Angels in America by Tony Kushner emerges.
This journey of a theatrical production started its creation in the tail end of the 1980s, premiering its first part Millennium Approaches in 1991, followed by its second part Perestroika in 1992. Angels in America tackles the earth shattering effect of the AIDS epidemic through the intertwined lives of a gay couple, Mormon spouses, and a conservative lawyer with ties to the Reagan administration. Starting grounded in reality, we slowly descend with the cast into mind boggling surrealism as they battle what this affliction means for themselves and those they love. Both parts made their Broadway debut in 1993, merely one year after AIDS was deemed the leading cause of death for men aged 25-44, rendering the show not only a behemoth to tackle in length, but categorizing it as an observation on a defining moment in queer American history with the freshness of an open wound.
There are very few theaters I would find equipped in the Valley to take on such an intense project, but if you held a knife to my throat with the notion that my life depended on this show's success on an Arizona stage, unwaveringly I would place it directly into the hands of Stray Cat Theater. For those unfamiliar with this company’s work, whether it be through farce, science fiction, or tragedy, they specialize in leaving their viewers unsettled in a way that good theater of such a persuasion is meant to achieve. When this show debuted on their announcement for their 2025-2026 season, it was safe to presume that those who felt up to sitting in the audience, were in for the ride of their year. Stray Cat has chosen to approach this show by premiering Millennium Approaches in the run’s opening week, Perestroika in its second, and in its final week alternating between the two. The more committed viewer can catch part 1 of the show on its closing day in a Saturday matinee, and then view its successor later that evening. As much as it pains me, to review both parts in one go, would be a poor choice. As I’m sure you all are starting to learn, my insight tends to be in depth and lengthy at best. So for the sake of my readers' sanity, I have chosen to approach this review in kind to Stray Cat’s premiering strategy in two different sessions. With all of that now prefaced, let us finally delve into this theater's iteration of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.