More Life!

It’s taken me two weeks to write this. Two weeks since I personally said goodbye to this production, and to this play for whoever knows how long. Long before I got on a plane and traveled halfway across the world for it, I asked myself how do you say goodbye? To a production that’s spent two, almost three years nestled in my brain. Two years of it in production. Of writing about it again. Of finding a love for it again. I think the answer is you don’t. I think I never have, much like Prior’s prophecy this play has become part of me. Except I didn’t reject it. Which I think legitimately means I can declare ‘Fuck you I’m a Prophet’ whenever I feel like it. What I will do instead, is write my own Epilogue.   But of course, it’s longer than these two, almost three years. I’ve lived with this play for fourteen years. I’ve grown up with this play. I’ve grown into it. When I started I was over a decade younger than Prior and Louis. This time around I was their age. Per

“More Life” Revisiting revival It’s a rare luxury to revisit any theatre production later in its life. More so to see an evolved production. That’s what visiting Angels on Broadway feels like. They are of course the same production…but not. This is a production that has ‘flown home’ and now exists before a home crowd audience. One which knows not only the nuances of the play, but the world in which it lives. Theatre is a living breathing thing, the play we watch on stage is created with the audience. And so, the Broadway production is a unique entity- the same production but different in many respects. “I live in America Louis” on audiences In terms of audiences, this is a critical thing to address- both in terms of the play’s place with Broadway audiences and how they engage with it. But I’ve been going to Broadway for about 15 years, and I’ve never seen a play greeted with such rapture as this one. It was more like watching a musical- applause after every scen

Fair warning, this blog is a bit of a cop out while I avoid actually writing about Angels. But it occurred to me as I was writing a review blog about The Destiny of Me   that actually it was worth writing about the trip to New York as a whole. Because unlike normal holidays, this turned into something of a pilgrimage. My "journey" for want of a better word to my PhD and therefore with Angels, is very much tied up with New York City, and my relationship with theatre, both with Broadway and Angels. I'm also, in my research slightly obsessed with theatre and place- both the physical theatre spaces, and the 'ghosts' of shows past, and the fictional physical places of these plays. My PhD then was dominated by Angels in America and Rent, both plays which are tied to New York as a place. Both filled with places I've been able to visit in the 'real world' over the years, and both with places that no longer exist either (such is the world, and New York). Th