Angels in America - TNT

Having only intended to review Millennium Approaches (Part I of Tony Kushner's 7 hour Gay Fantasia On National Themes) I found myself so caught up in the troubled, overlapping lives — of guilt-ridden Jewish Louis and Prior, the terminally ill lover he deserts when he succumbs to A.I.D.S., and of Mormon Joe (a repressed homosexual) and his Valium-popping wife Harper — that I cancelled my evening plans and stayed to the end of Part II, Perestroika. Premiered in the early '90s, together they form an escapist phantasmagoria and a critique of America during the Reagan years - a time when, as Greg Hick's corrupt, real-life McCarthyite lawyer states (whilst flagrantly denying his own sexual proclivities) gays had "zero clout". Daniel Kramer's production isn't a total success and the less focussed Perestroika, in particular, suffers from several longueurs. But, overall, Kushner's imaginatively ambitious scope and witty one-liners (especially from Obi Abili's outrageously camp nurse-cum-drag queen Belize) make this revival well worthwhile.
Lyric Hammersmith, King St, W6, 08700-500 511. Until July 22