Epic play is monumental endeavor: ‘Have I had any sleep?’
Actor Ben Gaetanos sums up the feeling after spending five months of learning and performing one of the most celebrated — but most demanding — plays in modern theater: "Where are we? What's happening? Have I had any sleep?"
The play in question is "Angels in America," Tony Kushner's epic story of a disparate group of people facing love, sexuality, mortality and the ability for humans to change, set during the Reagan years of the 1980s.
It's two plays, really, with about seven hours of performance time spread across two parts, "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika." The length, scope, marketing challenges and technical requirements — in one climactic scene, an angel crashes into the human world — make it a herculean task for theaters.
That might explain why only a couple of "Angels in America" productions have been staged in metro Orlando in the past decades. Valencia College Theater staged part 1 in 2022 and then part 2 in 2023. Before that, the show was performed at the old Civic Theatre (now Orlando Family Stage) — but that was more than 20 years earlier, in 1998 and 2000.
Those two theaters waited more than a year between the play's halves.
But Theater West End in Sanford has made the "Angels in America" challenge even more daunting by scheduling the two parts in succession. Its production of "Millennium Approaches," which opened in January, won critical acclaim . The second half, "Perestroika," is running through March 8 — with a chance to catch up with or revisit the first half on March 7.
"We definitely thought it was a risk," said executive director Quinn Roberts, who opened Theater West End in 2018 with artistic director Derek Critzer. "Especially doing the two parts back to back."
But Roberts and Critzer believed in its eight years, the theater had grown to a strong enough position financially and artistically to mount the work. And it fit with their mission of adding more plays to their schedule; the theater originally concentrated solely on musicals.
"It felt like this was the time," Roberts said. But there was trepidation: In addition to the workload for the actors and creative team, the leaders wondered how theatergoers would respond to a season with two non-musicals and containing subject matter that could fall "outside their comfort zone."
Kushner's play, premiered in 1992 in London and then in 1993 on Broadway, where each half won the best play Tony in successive years. It faces the AIDS crisis head on, with several of the main characters affected by the disease.
To Roberts' surprise, audiences responded favorably: "We sold more subscriptions this year than we ever have." He expects the theater will at least break even on the production.
But the satisfaction of striking a chord with audiences doesn't make the work any easier.
Kushner's story involves pages and pages of dialogue, both realistic and poetic, for its characters — which range from a closeted gay Mormon and his pill-popping wife to real-life figures such as power-hungry lawyer Roy Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg, the woman he got convicted of spying and sentenced to death during the Red Scare of the 1950s.
At Theater West End, Hunter Rogers is co-directing both parts, joined by Gabriel Garcia on part 1 and Bryan Jager on part 2.
"Eight acts, 59 scenes and an epilogue," said Rogers, detailing the play's mammoth structure. "The magnitude really requires two folks working in tandem."
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He, Gaetanos and co-star Thomas Muniz previously acted in another epic and emotionally complex two-part play, "The Inheritance," directed by Matthew MacDermid and produced by the Ensemble Company in Oviedo in 2023.
That experience helped prepare them for tackling "Angels in America."
"It gave us a really strong understanding of what's involved, from learning the lines to the emotions," said Gaetanos, who plays Prior, a New Yorker whose relationship implodes when he's diagnosed with AIDS.
"So much of 'The Inheritance' informed my approach" to directing "Angels," said Rogers. "My focus was on supporting the actors. The emotion of trying to be present onstage with all the work behind it is really difficult. The weight of this is so much."
The undertaking also required an aggressive rehearsal schedule, which began Nov. 11. In recent weeks, the company rehearsed part 2 on their night off from staging part 1. At some points, the cast would perform the more than three hours of the first part, and then stay another hour or two after the audience departed to work on the second.
"I felt like a crazy train conductor for much of this process," Rogers said. "Go! Go! Go! Go!"
There was a short break for the Christmas holiday period, but it has been hard not to feel fatigue.
"I'll be honest," Rogers said. "This cast is incredible, but they are exhausted."
Gaetanos drew from his "Inheritance" experience to frontload as much memorization as possible.
"I started learning my lines as eariy as I could," Gaetanos said. "Because by the time you get to the middle of part 2, your brain is in a different state."
He "muttered lines under my breath" while his son played on the playground, recorded scenes and played them back during the commute from his Winter Garden home to Sanford.
"In the car, I would just replay the scenes over and over and over again," he said.
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For many in the cast, Gaetanos and Rogers agreed, being part of the unique production has been a labor of love.
Gaetanos first read the play in high school; the chance to act in it was irresistible.
"It was honestly a role I never thought was in my sights, because a lot of theaters don't do the play," said Gaetanos, who lost weight to make Prior's illness appear more realistic. "It really has been a gift and an honor."
The actors certainly aren't doing it for the money. Theater West End pays a stipend, negotiated in individual contracts, to those involved with the production onstage or behind the scenes. But as with many small theaters, "it's not a living wage," Roberts said.
Everyone has another, full-time job: Gaetanos, for example, works in the corporate world. Rogers is a middle-school teacher.
"I am on the go from 7 a.m. to midnight, and that's been my routine for months," Rogers said. "It's insane."
Both are relying on help to make the production happen. Rogers' roommates walk his dog for him. Gaetanos gets an assist on the homefront from his "incredibly supportive" husband and mother.
Yet both say they wouldn't trade the experience.
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"This is a play that means so much to so many people, and it's a story that needs to be told in today's world," Rogers said.
The actors are equally committed to sharing Kushner's work and giving it its due.
"No matter how tired we are, we lift each other up," Gaetanos said. "This story is deserving of everything we can give it."
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com . Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter .
'Angels in America'
• What & When:Theater West End's production of the two-part play's second half, "Perestroika," runs through March 8. The first half, "Millennium Approaches," will have an encore presentation at 2 p.m. March 7, before "Perestroika" takes the stage that night at 7:30. There's also a video recapping the first part available at the theater website.
• Where:Theater West End, 115 1st St. in Sanford
• Cost:$28 and up; note that those who book both part 1 and part 2 save up to $20 on the 2-show package
• Info: theaterwestend.com
