"Angels in America" by Invictus Theatre Company

         I am immediately reminded that I am in attendance of a preview. Friends chat and call to each other across the theater, poking their heads in and out of backstage. Eavesdropping on the conversations around me reveal the saturation of industry members in the audience. The girl next to me knits unabashedly. The neon sign of God hangs with a barely-there flicker, and I realize I am excited. I had priorly resisted learning the events of the play, merely finding reflections of characters and star-studded casts of returning adaptations. Synth music declares “Ronald Reagan for President!”  while using the slogan of a much more current Republican, both setting us to the scene of the past and reminding us to the relationship of the present.

         What is a “fantasia”? As it describes the fictional style of “Angels in America” , a fantasia denotes a work (such as a poem or play) in which the author’s fantasy roves unrestricted... something possessing grotesque, bizarre, or unreal qualities. And though I typically try to avoid using words I didn’t conceive, these are oddly fitting ways to equate the recently-awarded Invictus Theatre Company‘s production of Tony Kushner’s epic script.

         Scenes are short, characters screaming lines overlap, and we learn the most about our players in the most unexpected and off-plot ways. Enamoring characters, even the evil ones, give us glimpses of their stories, going back and forth with no context. The storyline, not following a structure or plot, is an inspiring testament to scriptwriting possibilities, and translates in giving an on-the-ground realism which can be uncontrollable to master.

         This is my first time seeing “Angels in America”. I haven’t even seen the HBO series, but rather learned of it in my research for this show. A sin, I know, for a so-called playwright. In the lead-up to my attendance at Windy City Playhouse, I lead with the way I usually describe plays to those in my life not in the theatre world. I summarize surface details first, framing it in environmental relevance, then finally divulge the name of the play itself. In this case, it ended more than once with, “Oh, I know that play. Everyone knows that play.”  Over-easy egg on my face, I guess... leading me to wonder if I should avoid writing spoilingly in this reflection, or if I am the only Queer theatre reviewer who hasn’t covered Prior and the gang over a hundred times already. 

         An American prophet emerges in Prior Walter, played by Ryan Hake. Raked with lesions, Hake shows us a person going through immensely isolating and unique experience of medical trauma, while at the same we know he truly represents hundreds of thousands of souls victimized by the same evil. He is an importantly devastating portrayal as we see his fears materialize, as we choke on his struggles, and come to realize that Hake’s casting was imperative to someone who stands for all who fell in the light of the AIDS epidemic. I often sing these praises of actors in these circumstances, but these are not happy qualities, and a sadness comes to think of an actor who can portray it so beautifully. Why is he funny while he hallucinates and suffers? Even as he lays in a hospital bed in the background of other characters’  scenes, dying, how do we feel the danger and sickliness in his body?

Digital artwork by Ella Boyd-Wong, 2025.

         This gay fantasia is, of course, fantastical. The most unavoidably eye-catching relationship can be pointed to with a cosmically-occurring erection, being that of Prior Walter and the hermaphroditic angel who leads him. Truthfully, as I knew the angel was approaching, I was afraid as a theatre-maker. In a smaller venue such as this, the ungodly tone and possibilities required for one of heaven’s angels seemed unlikely. But when Nicki Rossi descended, she was... biblical. She struck fear. I believed in her as she bared her teeth and demanded Prior Walter as her messiah. Stronger still was her devotion to Prior – even as a fountain statue, the angel’s eyes slide to him. Rossi shows us that a legendary creature like this still pines, still has moments of impatience and anger, is abandoned and rejected. Her acting best highlighting not only the strength of the angel and heaven, but her cracks, where she fails her missions and where she grapples with what she does not understand. During “Part II: Perestroika”, she stood over me as I sat in the second row. Pondering over the heaven of San Francisco, I looked up at the angel as Hake declared regretfully that the earth was his home, and I realized she was crying. When she slunk carefully to the exit, I knew the audible tears were inadvertent. These two have made a startlingly otherworldly execution for a story that is so grounded in such a reality.

         We need to discuss Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt. While in Rossi we are masterfully presented with fear in power of another world, Michael D. Graham’s Roy Cohn keeps us grounded in our disgust of power in this world. A devil of this world. Fittingly mentioned, his grotesque capitalism is, again, still somehow funny. Knowing his evil from the get-go, I couldn’t help myself from being excited (writing in my notes why do I love this guy?) whenever he writhed in his comedy on-stage, giving the audience everything to love to hate in this slimy little man. It is a very current and close-to-home rendition and his blasé tone in the face of life, death, and destruction is an unreal reference made by director Charles Ashkenaizer. We are painfully reminded that there are people who would accept his choices and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and are forced to ask ourselves if we would be one of them. 

         Joe Pitt is an entirely other problem. Un-funny, lost, this epic may truly stem from the story here, with the birth of a politically unstable person. Pitt is created from Roy Cohn’s world, but his isolation from the spirit of Roy Cohn could not be more apparent. If Roy Cohn is the devil, brash and evil and full on his golden hoard, what Joe Bushell gives us in Joe Pitt is purgatory under Cohn’s dragon claw. He has nothing, he gives nothing back to the world, and he wanders through the play choosing the wrong things, asking from his surroundings what he should do. Hidden, afraid, stuck. I imagine he, too, represents a wide portion of the journey of the American Queer during the AIDS crisis. Built into the diorama, choiceless. But what lies underneath is a vulnerability that does not match with the others, a black wool among white sheep. The other actors do not seek for help or cloy for love the way Bushell does, and his portrayal of the chasms that can grow inside people is perhaps more terrifying than angels or capitalists. It may be a step that many pass on their journey to personal discovery. Bushell’s link between the evil and the divine is undeniable, and may give the most and receive the least, in the end.

         It is perfectly magical and disappointingly realistic at the same time. It reminds us of our favorite kinds of people, our most reviled, and those somewhere in the middle. For a monumental play that allows such devotion from playhouse, company, and community alike, this bold-faced statement from Invictus Theatre Company fits immediately into the canon of a Chicago summer. I see many braving the trek again and again. Theatre is very carefully presented to the culture of our country, and this is... obligatory.

         “Angels in America” opened last week and was critically recommended within the first public performance. It is not for the faint or young of heart, but it is absolutely required viewing for anyone looking to access the culture of Queer theatre. Invictus Theatre Company’s production runs until early September, 2025. Sometimes, watching a “timely” play, a call to action, is paralyzing and exhausting. But the great work begins. 

Sit in the second-to-first row for best viewing.