Tony Kushner’s two part play is now playing at the National Theatre with an all star cast directed by Marianne Elliott. But does it impress the critics?
The Independent: **** “Marianne Elliott’s mighty, cast-to-the-hilt production sweeps you through the well-nigh seven-and-a-half hour experience.”
Londonist: ***** “spectacular revival from Marianne Elliott.”
The Telegraph: ***** ” The show’s a start-to-finish sensation.”
WhatsOnStage: ***** “The National deserves enormous credit for bringing it back to the stage with such conviction and power.”
The Guardian: **** “Kushner’s apocalyptic view of American politics now looks amply justified.”
Culture Whisper: **** “For all the undeniable brilliance of the writing, production and performances, the experience is an ordeal. You leave, bleary eyed, reeling from all the suffering and spiritual upheaval.”
Time Out: **** “What Elliott really brings is efficiency and discipline, the master general’s power to marshal and guide innumerable elements, to allow the audience a route though the boundless wilds of Kushner’s imagination.”
Variety: “Garfield is outstanding as Prior: brittle but stubborn and self-aware; fearful but mordantly funny throughout.”
Exeunt Magazine: “Marianne Elliott’s Angels in America is brilliant enough. It’s masterful, yes, but it’s not daring.”
London Theatre1:**** 1/2 “Angels In America is without doubt a modern masterpiece.”
Broadway World: ***** “Elliott’s production likewise maintains humour in the face of horror and honours his combination of visceral and intellectual, spiritual and sexual, political and personal.”
The Financial Times: **** “A tremendous delivery of a flawed but ambitious and deeply humane play.”
The Upcoming: ***** “It is nigh on impossible to pin down more than a slither of Angels in America; it is less watched than experienced, taking root somewhere inside and never letting go.”
The Reviews Hub: ***** “In Angels In America, the National Theatre has indeed produced a great work, a modern masterpiece masterfully revived for our time.”
West End Wilma: *** “Angels In America is brilliant. But it doesn’t need to be anywhere near as long as seven and a half hours.”
Hollywood Reporter: “this triumphant production also seems timely, identifying exactly what we need in our own, trying times.”
Grumpy Gay Critic: ***** “You can throw every hyperbole you’d like at it, and it still wouldn’t do this production of this crucial play enough justice. Simply, you can’t not see this.”
The Gay UK: ***** “Marianne Elliott brings it all together in excellent fashion – but it’s all about the acting (and the message) in Angels in America, the message is loud and clear – this show is history in the making and relevant to all of us now, even 25 years after it was written.”
London Box Office: **** “Whatever topicality the play may have lost it’s still an unforgettable, if long haul, theatrical experience in this luxuriously cast revival of a modern classic.”
Theatre Bubble: **** “The National Theatre run of Kushner’s epic is long awaited, but well timed, as many of the issues it addresses reflect on the current US government as much as that of the ‘80s.”
Radio Times: ***** “When it comes to scale, scope and ambition, there is nothing quite like Angels in America.”
Angels in America continues to play at the National Theatre until the 19th August. For more information on how to see both parts for the sold out production visit: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/angels-in-america