It’s two weeks before the opening night of “Angels in America Part One: Millenium Approaches ” at the Gamm Theatre. Haas Regen and Ben Steinfeld are rehearsing a scene with the show’s director, Brian McEleney.
“One of the issues in this relationship is you don’t tell him things,” McEleney tells Regen of his character, Prior Walter, in the show. Steinfeld, who is portraying Louis Ironson, adds that the essential question surrounding the couple’s problems is, “What is the reason why we aren’t talking about it more often? And that’s a two-sided problem.”
Prior and Louis are a gay couple living in New York City in 1985. The “it” Steinfeld is referring to is Prior’s recent AIDS diagnosis. Their relationship is put to the test by this discovery, as “Angels in America” explores the many ugly truths brought to the surface in not only their relationship, but the relationships of the other principle characters in the show, demonstrating the impact the HIV/AIDS crisis brought to millions of Americans in the 1980s and early 1990s.
“Nobody knew what it was, nobody knew how you got it. People were getting sick and then all of a sudden getting really sick, some dying, says McEleney, who was living in New York City in the late 1970s and early 80s when the AIDS crisis began, “At the time, a lot of us in the gay community weren’t out. It was actually AIDS that made us, forced us to be visible.”
“Angels”, as the show is often referred to, was written by Tony Kushner and first performed in 1991. It’s considered to be one of the most important plays written in the last 40 years. In 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In 2003, the show was adapted by HBO into a 6 episode mini-series with a star-studded cast including Al Pacino and Meryl Streep.
McEleney, after living in New York during the height of the AIDS crisis, eventually came to Providence to be an actor at Trinity Rep, where in 1996 he was part of the first regional production of “Angels”, playing Prior Walter.
“Playing Prior was a memorable experience. One of the great experiences of my artistic life, because I mean, as a gay man, certainly in the 80s and 90s, I didn’t get a lot of chances to play someone who was like me. So it was a great kind of artistic coming out, to say, I know a lot about this person.”
Now, in Gamm’s production of “Angels”, McEleney is seeing one of his former students take on the role. Regen is a graduate of the Brown Trinity MFA Acting Program, where McEleney was one of his professors.
"(Prior) is a role that I have aspired to play. Sometimes you don’t like to admit that, sometimes you don’t want to talk about that openly, but when you get the opportunity to do it and when someone like Brian McEleney asks and makes the call, it is the greatest call you could possibly receive in your life.”
As rehearsal continues, the scenes between Prior and Louis get more intense. Prior is getting sicker, and Louis finds himself struggling with the reality of the situation. The couple sits in bed together, holding each other, questioning if their relationship is strong enough to last. McEleney watches, and it’s clear he still carries the emotional weight of having played Prior himself.
“It’s kind of amazing how it all comes back. I mean, the way our memory works is very odd. You just kind of push that button, and all of a sudden, the past is immediately present. And so when he (Regen) is doing things, I’m bringing my experience. And that was an experience that I lived through with a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues. And that’s very personal and very hard to watch, to re-experience because it all comes up.”
Regen says that the rehearsals, much like the show now running at The Gamm Theatre, required a lot of energy, “Rehearsal is very hard work, very concentrated work. The language is so huge. It’s like Shakespeare, and yet you have to personalize and personalize and specify because it’s natural language. You have to activate all of that. That has to be alive in you, and yet you have to show up and simplify, simplify, simplify. I can’t just show up and do a silly voice or have my costume tell the story. I’m the story.”
Due to the success of “Part One: Millennium Approaches”, the Gamm Theatre has extended the show’s run through June 22. “Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika” is scheduled to run from September 25 through October 10.
