'Angels in America' still powerful

ANGELS IN AMERICA, Babcock Stage, Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, University of Utah, through March 12 (355-2787 or 581-7100). Running time: two hours, 50 minutes (two intermissions).

Fifteen years after it was part of the development process at the Sundance Institute Playwrights' Lab, and nearly a decade following its regional premiere at Salt Lake Acting Company, Tony Kushner's landmark "Angels in America" is still an engaging, provocative drama.

Now directed as a student production by Larry West, a professor in the theater department, Kushner's monumental Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning work is an emotionally powerful piece, but it also contains some built-in problems.

West has assembled a strong cast of student performers and backstage crew, such as Thomas George, whose innovative set design — always a problem within the Babcock Theatre's restrictive space — allows Kushner's intertwining plotlines to flow smoothly.

While it's probably not nearly as controversial today as it was a decade ago, there are still several aspects that may offend local theatergoers. Originally subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," it does blend both realism and fantasy.

Josh Pierson delivers a knockout performance as Roy Cohn (one of the drama's true-life characters), a foul-mouthed lawyer best remembered as the attorney who was instrumental in sending the Rosenbergs to the electric chair in 1953. He's in denial about being infected with AIDS, preferring to think he has "liver cancer," although his frequent sexual encounters with men was no secret.

Abraham M. Adams and Cheryl Nichols are also well cast as Joe and Harper Pitt, a highly dysfunctional LDS couple from Salt Lake City who've moved to New York. Joe is struggling with deep-seated homosexual tendencies, and Harper is addicted to Valium.

Their paths cross with an assortment of other characters — Louis Ironson (Benjamin T. Brinton), a low-level employee in Cohn's law firm, where Joe Pitt also works; Prior Walter (Eric McGraw), Louis' longtime companion, who learns he is dying from AIDS; and Belize, a flaming gay nurse, played by Jonah B. Taylor, who also plays the role of Mr. Lies, an over-the-top travel agent who drifts in and out of Harper's wild hallucinations.

Shanna Jones plays two roles — Hannah, Joe's worried mother, and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who briefly taunts the delusional Cohn (he eventually died of AIDS in 1986).

The constant shifting of characters in and out of the interlocked plots may be slightly confusing at first, but things pretty much come together at the finale. The second half of Kushner's two-part drama will further tie things up when the Babcock Theatre stages it next season.

Sensitivity rating: An abundance of vulgarity, including frequent use of the R-rated expletive. Some fairly graphic sexual dialogue.

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