angels gallery

"Charlotte Rep proves that it can plumb the intricacies of an expansive work."
Charlotte Observer (of Millenium Approaches)
...


Angels in America: Millenium Approaches and Perestroika 
by Tony Kushner 

 Director: Steve Umberger; Scenic: Joe Gardner, Costume: Johann Stegmeir, Lighting: Eric Winkenwerder, Music/Sound: Fred Story



In 1996, Charlotte Rep had the rare distinction of being one of only six theatre companies in the U.S. licensed to produce these plays (8 hours in 2 parts) after their groundbreaking Broadway run. Long before being an award-winning HBO film, but already widely regarded as among the most important new American plays of the decade, Angels presented a singular, and logical, opportunity for the Rep to raise its profile and its production level, as Charlotte was growing into being the country's 17th largest city and its second largest banking center behind N.Y. The production was one of the most successful - and the single most lucrative - in the Rep's 29 year history, and the Rep's sales increased 20% in the following season due to Angels, according to surveys. Playwright Tony Kushner joined the company for the opening week. The production also made international news because of a widely-reported local debate about the plays' themes, and the Charlotte experience became a noted part of Angels' history, referenced often in the frequent global coverage over the years as Angels became a time-tested classic. The story is included in the 2018 book The World Only Spins Forward by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, published with Angels' 25th anniversary and Broadway revival, and chronicling its impact through interviews with 250 people world-wide who worked on the plays in their first quarter-century, including the Charlotte Rep team. 


"The production takes the company to a new level, and it has given us an experience worth debating."
1996, The Leader (Beasley)

"The successful opening of Charlotte Rep's Angels is, on one hand, about the intersection of morality and art, but it is also about the cultural tensions created when a Bible Belt town tries to move quickly into the first rank of American cities." 
1996, The New York Times (Sack)

"'It changed my life,' says Willie Repoley (about the Charlotte Rep production), a straight actor still in his teens at the time and contemplating a life in the theatre. It taught him the power of theatre to convey the reality of people he had never even met."
2010, Newsweek (Hirshman)

"I still regard Angels in America: Millenium Approaches as the best theatre production - local or touring - I've ever seen in Charlotte."
2014, Perry Tannenbaum, Theatre critic for Charlotte Creative Loafing


The World Only Spins Forward (Bloomsbury, 2018) cover: James Chiang