Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, as performed by Brandeis Players and directed by Sarah Waldron ’17, makes the audience think deeply about themes such as love and loss in a time when AIDS was just coming into the public’s attention.

Angels in America follows the stories of Joe (Joe Tinianow ’17), Harper (Sarah Duffet ’17), Prior (Sumner Alperin ’18) and Louis (Reno Kersey ’17) as they attempt to reconcile their conceptions of themselves with their experiences with AIDS and sexuality. Prior and Louis are a couple who have been together for four and a half years at the beginning of the play. Harper and Joe are a couple who have been married for several years, but their relationship is strained by Harper’s struggles with addiction and Joe’s sexuality.

The play opens on a somber note when the audience learns that Louis’ grandmother has died. Soon after, it is revealed that Prior has AIDS. The disease strains their relationship and ultimately tests the emotional strength of both of them. In parallel, Joe and Harper’s marriage is strained by Harper’s addiction to Valium and Joe’s homosexuality, something with which he does not come to terms himself until late in the first act.

Duffet portrays the emotional struggles of her character in an extremely moving manner. Her use of her hands and motion in general is remarkable. She wrings her hands throughout, which conveys her character’s uncertainty and mental issues. She uses her voice in a way that shows the insecurity of her character and the sadness that results from her situation. Alperin is convincing as a man struggling to come to terms with his illness. Kersey is both likeable and unlikeable at the same time which is effective given Louis’ struggles.

The set design, created by Jessica Pizzuti ’15 and Harry Furer ’17 conveys the setting of the Bronx while avoiding being excessive or taking away from the acting of the show. The stage changes during scenes add to the show because they help to convey how intertwined the parallel stories of the play are.

Waldron makes many interesting choices in the staging and acting philosophy of the show. There are many times when there are two or more different scenes taking place simultaneously onstage, and while the scenes are distinct, they too convey the intertwined nature of the show. This is also emphasized by the lighting design of the show, through the use of spotlights on certain parts of the stage and not others.

There are many strange aspects of Millennium Approaches as it is written. It has a fairly regular structure in the first act, but it devolves and makes much less sense in the second act. The second act is complicated by the introduction of many characters that seem to play very small roles in the plot. The play features many hallucinations, and it is in one of these hallucinations that Prior, clad in drag, first meets Harper. In the production, the hallucinations were handled very well by the actors and Waldron. There is a dreamlike quality to them, conveyed by the softer lighting and dreamy music, though they manage to maintain some degrees of reality, portraying how the hallucinations seem real to Harper and Prior. “Even hallucinations have rules,” notes a real estate agent (Christian Romero) in one of her hallucinations. In the play, they do seem to have rules, which gives them a quality of both being dreamlike and grounded in reality.

Though there is an air of levity throughout the show, Angels in America is ultimately a tragedy and comes across as such. The actors, especially Alperin and Kersey, balance the humor and the tragedy masterfully. All the important aspects of theater—lighting, set design, acting, sound design—combine in Angels in America to create a very enjoyable and moving production.