"Charlotte Rep proves that it can plumb the intricacies of an expansive work."
Charlotte Observer (of Millenium Approaches)
Charlotte Observer (of Millenium Approaches)
Photography: Donna Bise
Click on images to open gallery / Tap for captions
Scroll below gallery for more information
...
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
Millenium Approaches and Perestroika
by Tony Kushner
by Tony Kushner
1993 & 1994 Best Play Tony Awards, 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Charlotte Repertory Theatre, March 20-May 5, 1996
Booth Playhouse at NC Blumenthal Performing Arts
Director: Steve Umberger, Scenic: Joe Gardner, Costume: Johann Stegmeir, Lighting: Eric Winkenwerder, Music/Sound: Fred Story
The Cast: Mary Lucy Bivins, Kevin R. Free, Scott Helm, Angus MacLachlan, Alan Poindexter, Tamara Scott, Graham Smith, Barbi VanSchaick
In 1996, Charlotte Rep had the rare distinction of being one of only six theatre companies in the U.S. licensed to produce these two plays after their groundbreaking 1993-1994 Broadway run. Long before being an award-winning HBO film, but already broadly regarded as among the most important new American plays of the decade, Angels presented a singular opportunity for the Rep as the area's leading professional regional theatre to raise its production level while engaging its 20 year audience with the plays' unique if unconventional spirituality. The city had grown to be the country's then-17th largest, and second largest banking center behind N.Y., with a growing profile as a leader of the progressive New South. Angels was the single most lucrative production in the Rep's history, and it drove the company's ticket sales increase in subsequent seasons. Playwright Tony Kushner joined the company for the opening week, and the event also made international news for the widely-reported local debate it created about the plays' themes. Ultimately the Charlotte experience became a noted part of Angels' history, referenced often in the frequent global coverage over the years as the work became a time-tested classic. The story is also included in the 2018 book The World Only Spins Forward by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, published by Bloomsbury with Angels' 25th anniversary and Broadway revival, chronicling the plays' impact through interviews with 200 people who worked on them in their first quarter-century, including members of 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 Charlotte Rep production proved symbolic of a kind of turning point in the way that the Culture Wars played out nationally in the 90's."
2018, Dan Kois, co-author of The World Only Spins Forward in an interview linked below
The World Only Spins Forward (Bloomsbury, 2018) cover: James Chiang