by Tony Kushner
directed by Arnaud Desplechin
18 January 22 March 2020
"Tony Kushner. Jew, homosexual and Marxist." This was how the author of "Angels in America" introduced himself to Pierre Laville, the French translator of his play.
Earning a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award in 1993, subsequently adapted for television and opera, Angels in America stages American society of the Reagan years, mixing intimate stories and political events, realism and the fantastical while following the dark narrative thread of the AIDS epidemic. This was the disease that, in 1986, ended the life of Roy Cohn, an unscrupulous lawyer who was a disciple of McCarthy, a homophobe, racist, "bully, coward and victim" as described on the Washington Memorial Quilt. Kushner makes him one of the twenty-three characters – played by eight actors – of his Gay Fantasia on National Themes divided into two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. The setting is New York between 1985 and 1990. The Republicans are in power, the Chernobyl catastrophe is imminent, the collapse of the Berlin Wall is about to overturn cold war politics and HIV, still synonymous with certain death, is reduced to the definition of homosexual cancer.
After Strindberg's The Father, this is Arnaud Desplechin's second production with the Troupe and also marks the American playwright's entry into the Repertoire. The director emphasises the contemporary nature of Angels: "A hundred echoes of yesterday's struggles resonate in the here and now. From Trump, for whom Roy Cohn was an early mentor, to Fukushima, the passing of time does not make distant but provides us with lessons." The play's hybrid writing borrows from cinema, television, American comedy and classical theatre: "it was this 'theatrical impurity' that I fell in love with", he says. "I'm enthralled with Kushner's mix of genres: it's Shakespeare meets Brecht with Broadway thrown in!"
NEW PRODUCTION
REPERTOIRE ENTRY
French text: Pierre Laville
Scenic version and staging: Arnaud Desplechin
Scenography: Rudy Sabounghi
Costumes : Caroline de Vivaise
Light: Bertrand Couderc
Sound: Léonard Françon
Artistic collaboration: Stéphanie Cléau
Scenography and video assistant: Julien Soulier
Currently being casted
Viala
See biography
Vuillermoz
Hervieu-Léger
Montenez
Kamilindi