"Angels in America". Oxford Playhouse

Angels in America was last staged in Oxford at the end of February 2020 (in the Keble O’Reilly Theatre). Although barely three years ago, it might as well be an eternity. It was the last student production before Covid closed the theatres. The cast and crew back then would have had no idea how chillingly prescient their production was, its focus on the AIDS pandemic foreshadowing the suffering that was, as in the 1980s, just around the corner.

So it’s great to see Angels taking wing once again, this time consciously reflecting on the parallels between those two plagues (both of which are still with us). Tony Kushner’s two-part epic is a breath-taking, bravura, mind-expanding display of theatrical prowess, and the first student production at the Playhouse this year doesn’t disappoint.

The set is simple but effective: an impressionistic cityscape redolent of Manhattan’s Art Deco skyscrapers, but reduced to a dull grey that hints at the bleakness of the characters’ lives. It’s adaptable enough to represent bars, offices, apartments and hospitals, and even conceals the occasional knockout set piece.

More importantly, it provides a fitting backdrop for what is undoubtedly the outstanding strength of this production: the acting. It’s clear that the cast have poured everything into this project, and the dedication and effort has paid off. American accents are almost universally convincing. Tiny details – a glance, a clap, the tender application of some soothing unguent to a diseased back – are telling, moving and even sometimes funny. Daniel McNamee and Will Shackleton give simply tremendous performances as Prior and Louis, the couple whose relationship is stretched to breaking point by AIDS. Shackleton captures Louis’ rambling chattiness that acts as a partial veil to the wells of guilt and anxiety he is trying to conceal, and McNamee’s forced jokiness is heartbreaking as he fruitlessly seeks to avoid the enormity of his own mortality. Immanuel Smith as Roy Cohn also brilliantly channels Al Pacino (who played the role on TV), with a healthy dollop of Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy. Grace Gordon (Harper), Aravind Ravi (Joe) and Essence Lotus (Belize) were all great too. I’m just mentioning them because they really, really deserve a mention.

There are slight grumbles. The music, while interesting and (I think) performed live, drowned out the speaking when both happened simultaneously, meaning the audience was left totally clueless as to what had happened in, for example, a scene in a restaurant at the start of the second half. And the lighting, vivid and imaginative at times, occasionally looked as though it was pointing at the wrong thing altogether, leaving characters either in a spectral murk or semi-illuminated. I must also mention one gripe that has nothing at all to do with the production: the theatre was infested with small flying insects. I have a strong suspicion they were carpet-moths. They were visible on the stage, and they were flying all over the auditorium. The Playhouse needs to address this urgently, or the stage curtain, which looks tired and threadbare at the best of times, will be gone in a matter of months.

I first saw Angels in America at the National Theatre in 2017, and it blew my mind. It would be preposterous to expect a student production to match Andrew Garfield, James McArdle, and a multi-million-pound budget. But this one isn’t too far behind. Perhaps the best reaction came from an audience-member behind me who clearly wasn’t already familiar with the play. At the end she turned to her friend, and just said, ‘Bloody hell.’