UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Centre Stage will present Tony Kushner's "Angels in America, Millennium Approaches," directed by Rick Lombardo, Feb. 25 to March 5, at the Playhouse Theatre, on the University Park campus.
A quarter-century after stunning the theatre world, one of the greatest theatrical journeys of our time celebrates its 25th anniversary. As politically incendiary as any play in the American canon, "Angels in America" also manages to be, at turns, hilariously irreverent and heartbreakingly humane. In addition, it is astonishingly relevant, speaking every bit as urgently to our anxious times as it did when it first premiered. Tackling Reaganism, McCarthyism, immigration, religion, climate change, and AIDS against the backdrop of New York City in the mid-1980s, no contemporary drama has succeeded so indisputably with so ambitious a scope.
Producing artistic director Rick Lombardo said, "Since I saw the first production on Broadway, this has been one of my 'bucket list' plays. With its brilliant imagery, stunning rhetoric, and heightened theatrical imagination, it is a wonder to stage for a director. With our current fraught political climate, and human rights and respect for all people seemingly under siege, this felt like the time to bring Kushner’s voice to the Penn State stage."
Penn State undergraduate dramaturgy student Freddie Miller writes, "When 'Angels in America' premiered on Broadway in 1993, the country was in the midst of an administration change. Penn State Centre Stage’s 2020 production of 'Angels' comes at the beginning of yet another election cycle. The characters in 'Millennium Approaches' look forward to the Year 2000 with great uncertainty; this same feeling courses through our country as we look forward to November."