"I feel like the queen on the 'Prior' float..."
June 1, 2018 12:11 PM   Subscribe

Andrew Garfield currently has a TONY nomination for playing Prior Walter in the Broadway revival of “Angels in America”. As it happens, Stephen Spinella - who originated the role in 1993 - is in another revival of the same play in Berkeley, California, only this time he's playing the part of Roy Cohn. The New York Times asked the actors, who have never met, to correspond by email during a week’s worth of shows.

Other oral histories of Angels in America previously; A study of Roy Cohn in the show also previously.

Elsewhere: Andrew Garfield in an interview claiming that the role of Prior is "the privilege of his life."
posted by EmpressCallipygos (22 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is great to read. I saw the play a couple of months ago and “being driven nearly to tears by Andrew Garfield’s performance” was not something I saw coming and yet it happened on two nights.
posted by griphus at 12:16 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


I saw the play last Saturday, and I'm still reeling, processing, in love. This is a fantastic read, and I'm so happy that the NYT arranged it. I wish it were twice as long.

(I'm in the middle of watching/listening to this interview with Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane and Marianne Elliott, and it is similiarly lovely and delightful in all ways.)
posted by kalimac at 12:23 PM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


I saw the Berkeley production last month. It was really impressive, and Stephen Spinella was excellent. (Hateful! But excellent.)
posted by suelac at 12:23 PM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


I saw it in Berkeley a month or so ago and I felt like it was a test of stamina just to be in the audience - I can't imagine being on stage and doing the full days of both parts back to back.

Spinella was indeed powerful and loathsome as Cohn.
posted by GuyZero at 12:30 PM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also this is just trivia but I found out the first Roy Cohn of the complete play as presented as two parts on Broadway in 1993 was played by Ron Leibman who won the Tony for it. Rob Leibman was also Rachel’s father on Friends, Ron Cadillac on Archer, and Jessica Walter’s husband of 35 years (and Linda Lavin’s ex-husband).
posted by griphus at 12:37 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've probably mentioned this before, but seeing Millennium Approaches and Perestroika on the same day over Thanksgiving break in 1994 was probably the most amazing theatrical experience of my life. That show is so good.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:40 PM on June 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


This is great and fascinating. I don't know that I'm built to sit through the length of the whole show(s) but I'm glad the National Theatre recorded the West End version of the revival at least.
posted by colorblock sock at 1:56 PM on June 1, 2018


This was spectacular. Thank you for posting.
posted by merriment at 3:01 PM on June 1, 2018


Also this is just trivia but I found out the first Roy Cohn of the complete play as presented as two parts on Broadway in 1993 was played by Ron Leibman who won the Tony for it. Rob Leibman was also Rachel’s father on Friends

I'm pretty sure this is the actor I had in my head when I first read this play in either a feminist theater class or an American history class in college (I can't remember which) in the late 90s. Which is perfect but also hilarious, since this was before the days of an internet that made things easy to look up, so I don't think I actually knew he originated the role. But he is exactly right for it.

I was obsessed with this play for years. I would read it at least once a year. It is so rich and complex, and yet so accessible and entertaining at the same time. I've actually only seen the whole thing once. (I haven't seen the movie/miniseries and I'm not sure if I ever will - I'm sure it's great, but this play just seems so designed for the theater, and the inside of my own head)

I also didn't realize Roy Cohn was a real person when I first read the class. As I recall, much of my class thought he was a fictional character (callow youth!) and were amazed to learn he was real.
posted by lunasol at 3:08 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


were amazed to learn he was real.

I googled him during an intermission of Perestroika and holy cow, he's so real that if you wrote the real Roy Cohen as a character he would read as a ridiculously exaggerated.
posted by GuyZero at 3:12 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Roy Cohn was Donald Trump's go-to guy until the day he died of "liver cancer" (AIDS). That tells you all you need to know about Roy Cohn.

"In a moment of desperation, President Donald Trump called on his top fixer to come to his aid as Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the move to recuse himself from the Russia investigation—the only catch, his right-hand man was dead.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” the president demanded in March, calling on his former personal lawyer who once served as Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s chief counsel into the 1950s-era communist investigations, according to The New York Times."
posted by tzikeh at 3:36 PM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


Stephen Spinella wins Best Featured Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Prior Walter in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches - 1993

Stephen Spinella wins Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Prior Walter in Angels in America: Perestroika - 1994

This kind of thing never happens, but the two plays were not originally produced simultaneously, so he was eligible both years.

My money's on Andrew this year.

(Ron Liebman wins Best Actor in a Play for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches - 1993)

My money's on Nathan this year.
posted by tzikeh at 3:43 PM on June 1, 2018


colorblock sock, if it helps push you towards the stage show any, I absolutely wish I'd seen the productions on different days. They're very different plays, and I would have liked to have a little come-down time between them, to fully absorb Millennium before tackling Perestroika.

(To echo others -- I found just watching the shows utterly exhausting. I cannot imagine performing in them. Hilton Als, in his review of the Broadway production, observes that Andrew Garfield is a little too cut to convincingly be dying of AIDS, but I'm not sure how you do this show for months on end and not get cut.)
posted by kalimac at 4:22 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm very much looking forward to the Berkeley Rep marathon on 6/22. This post gives me perspective that adds greatly to the depth of my upcoming experience. Thanks!!
posted by janey47 at 4:25 PM on June 1, 2018


From the original production: the press reel from both plays in one video. Runs about an hour. It's like time travel.
posted by tzikeh at 4:28 PM on June 1, 2018


I saw both plays last week, so I was really pleased to see this article. Among the many things I wondered was how the performers could do this everyday: the plays are long, very physical, and emotionally exhausting. It speaks to their professionalism as much as their enormous talent.

Amazing how much of the play is so very current and thought-provoking, paricularly the Roy Cohn character. He was a monster who received his “training” from another monster and is a direct line to our present horror show. The play probably had a bigger affect on me today that it would have, say, three years ago just because of him.

I don’t envy the people who need to decide who to give awards to this year. There were a number of great performances in this and other shows this season. Good for me as a theater-goer, though.
posted by AMyNameIs at 4:37 PM on June 1, 2018


I still get chills thinking about seeing Angels in America in 1993. I was a freshman in college and had never seen professional theatre before. It was an amazing, transformative experience.
posted by pombe at 5:41 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


I saw the original production as well and it really moved me. Maybe the only plays I own because I wanted to read it.

I grew up in he suburbs and while I went to a very liberal university I didn't really know ... any ... gay men. I moved to New York City around 1991 at the height of the AIDS crisis and was a few years sober so I knew more gay men in the recovery community more intimately than I would have as a junior Wall Street functionary.

That background cemented by Angels in America made me see the gay community as heroic.
posted by shothotbot at 6:53 PM on June 1, 2018


I grew up in he suburbs and while I went to a very liberal university I didn't really know ... any ... gay men.

Well, but you probably did, though. "Not knowing any gay men" and "not knowing that a man you know is gay" are two very different things.
posted by tzikeh at 7:18 PM on June 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


I wondered was how the performers could do this everyday: the plays are long, very physical, and emotionally exhausting. It speaks to their professionalism as much as their enormous talent.

It's also that rehearsing a play is like 8 or more hours of internal training every day for several months so by the time you're doing it for real you've really built yourself up to doing it.
posted by hippybear at 9:27 PM on June 1, 2018


Roy Cohn was Donald Trump's go-to guy until the day he died of "liver cancer" (AIDS).

You're giving Trump too much credit. Trump dropped Cohn like a hot potato as soon as he got sick. There's a couple of different places I've read the anecdote of Cohn being heartbroken from his sick bed that Trump no longer returned his calls.
posted by PMdixon at 11:18 AM on June 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Trump dropped Cohn like a hot potato as soon as he got sick.

Yeah, you're right--I remember that now.

Somehow I'd forgotten the one unkind thing Donald Trump did in his life.
posted by tzikeh at 2:51 PM on June 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


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