A Red Orchid Theatre will stage a one-night-only reading of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches on June 18, with a cast including some of Chicago theater’s finest stage actors. Spearheaded by director Shade Murray, an AROT ensemble member, and Will Von Vogt, who will appear in the cast, the reading is “conceived as a response from Chicago theater artists to the current political climate,” with proceeds split between A Red Orchid and the ACLU of Illinois.
Murray’s cast for the reading includes 18 actors as of this announcement, with the possibility of more to be added; Kushner’s play is written for a cast of eight each playing multiple roles. A Red Orchid Theatre ensemble members Jennifer Engstrom, Kirsten Fitzgerald, Mierka Girten, Lawrence Grimm, Steve Haggard, Doug Vickers and Natalie West are all set to participate, joined by Charin Alvarez, David Cerda, Esteban Cruz, Emjoy Gavino, Meigan Gerachis, Ricky Harris, Ike Holter, Niko Kourtis, Caroline Neff, Liz Sharpe, Kristina Valada-Viars and Von Vogt. Doug Peck serves as music director.
UPDATE: Here’s who’s playing who:
Charin Alvarez The Angel
David Cerda Sister Ella Chapter
Jennifer Engstrom Roy Cohn
Meigan Gerachis Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz
Mierka Girten Emily
Steve Haggard Joe Pitt
Ricky Harris Mr. Lies
Ike Holter Belize
Niko Kourtis Louis Ironson
Liz Sharpe Harper Pitt
Will Von Vogt Prior Walter
Natalie West Hannah Pitt
Lawrence Grimm, Doug Vickers, Kristina Valada-Viars, Caroline Neff, Esteban Cruz, Emjoy Gavino Ensemble
The first half of Kushner’s two-part epic, subtitled A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1993. (Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika joined part one in repertory on Broadway the following season and won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1994.) Set in the mid-1980s, as the AIDS crisis began to break through to mainstream consciousness while Republican operatives worked to make the Reagan majority permanent, Kushner’s work bridges politics, history and a kind of American mythology.
Both parts of Angels in America are currently onstage in London, in a high-profile, sold-out production at the National Theatre featuring Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane and Russell Tovey among the cast. As Time Out London’s critic Andrzej Lukowski wrote in his review earlier this month, “its view of an America fractured along lines of gender, race, wealth and political outlook has scarcely dated.” (That production will be recorded live and broadcast to movie theaters internationally, including several in Chicago, with Millennium Approaches on July 20 and Perestroika on July 27.)
Angels in America was last fully staged in Chicago by Court Theatre in 2012; it also had a Hypocrites production in 2006 and was first produced locally by the Journeymen in 1998. The touring version of the original Broadway production ran for several months at the Royal George Theatre in 1994 and ’95.
Tickets for A Red Orchid’s reading, taking place at 6pm June 18 at Victory Gardens, are $50 and include a post-show reception, and are on sale now.
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