Part I of Tony Kushner’s classic ’90s play about AIDS, Roy Cohn, Mormons and an angel finally has its first professional theatrical run in Cincinnati, directed by Cincinnati Shakespeare’s Brian Isaac Phillips.
Rob Jansen (pictured) plays Prior Walter, the central character, a gay man with AIDS who has premonitions of a world-changing event; Know Theatre resident actor Joshua Murphy is his neurotic partner Louis. Christopher Guthrie, another Cincinnati Shakespeare regular, is Joe Pitt, a Mormon attorney conflicted regarding his sexuality; former Know Theatre performer Courtney Brown returns to Cincinnati to play Joe’s unhappy, drug-addicted wife Hannah.
Michael Bath, seen most frequently at Ensemble Theatre, is the vicious conservative attorney Roy Cohn, while another professional who appears all over town, Amy Warner, is Joe’s Mormon mother. Two more of Know’s resident actors, Darnell Benjamin and Liz Vosmeier, round out the accomplished cast.
Millennium Approaches runs in repertory with Part II (Perestroika), directed by Drew Fracher and featuring the same cast, through May 15. Both plays can be seen on same-day “doubleheaders” May 1, 8 and 15.
Read Rick Pender’s reviews of Part I: Millennium Approaches here and Part II: Perestroika here. Tom McElfresh writes about the experience of attending the doubleheader performances here. Find links to showtimes and Know’s box office in each story.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2010.
