美国国家公共电台 NPR New Oral History Captures The Magic Of 'Angels In America'

 

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

A Broadway revival¹ opens this month - the landmark² two-part theater event "Angels In America." The plays, which deal with AIDS and homosexuality, have been produced and published and taught all over the world in the last quarter century. Now there's a new tool for understanding them - an oral history called "The World Only Spins Forward." Critic Bob Mondello calls the book a fascinating backstage tour.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE⁴: By the time "Angels In America" got to Broadway in 1993 after workshops, a pair of West Coast stagings and an ecstatically received London production, it played like the smash audiences had heard it was.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "ANGELS IN AMERICA")

JOE MANTELLO: (As Louis) Well, oh, boy, a gay Republican.

DAVID MARSHALL GRANT: (As Joe) Excuse me.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) Nothing.

(LAUGHTER)

GRANT: (As Joe) I am not - forget it.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) Republican - you're not Republican.

MONDELLO: Playwright⁵ Tony Kushner had created what he called a gay "Fantasia" on national themes, a play that explored the AIDS era with characters real and fictional⁶ in situations that were seriously out there.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "ANGELS IN AMERICA")

MARCIA GAY HARDEN: (As Harper) What are you doing in my hallucination?

STEPHEN SPINELLA: (As Prior) I am not in your hallucination. You're in my dream.

HARDEN: (As Harper) You're wearing makeup⁷.

SPINELLA: (As Prior) So are you.

HARDEN: (As Harper) But you're a man.

SPINELLA: (As Prior, screaming).

(LAUGHTER)

MONDELLO: A winged angel flew in at the end of the first half, and that was after the action had leapt from Manhattan to Salt Lake City to Antarctica. Imagine the performers' reactions at that first read-through. Actually, you don't have to imagine because in their book "The World Only Spins Forward," Isaac Butler and Dan Kois got them to talk about it.

One actress from an early "Angels" workshop remembers the script being more than 200 pages, and that was just the first half. Others talked of the play's crazy mix of laughter, fury, poetry, drag queens, closeted lawyers, Mormons and especially politics. Would an audience get it? No one knew for sure, including, the author's learned, playwright Tony Kushner.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TONY KUSHNER: Opening night, which is critics night, they all sit there. It's like performing at a stenographers convention. Nobody laughs. And it's horrible, and they all go home and write their reviews. And the reviews come out.

MONDELLO: Here he's talking about the first London production before there was any talk about bringing "Angels" to New York. Kushner and director Declan Donnellan had disagreed strenuously⁸ about the staging. Emotions were high.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KUSHNER: The whole cast and Declan and I were going to meet at a bar, and Declan said to the cast, I don't want anyone to read the reviews.

MONDELLO: But actors being actors, one went to a newsstand on the way to the bar.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KUSHNER: And then he comes in with this armload of newspapers. And I said, Jeffrey, what is - what's - he said, it's all the reviews, darling.

MONDELLO: And once they'd been plunked on a table, Donnellan forgot all about his instructions and started reading them aloud sight unseen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DECLAN DONNELLAN: And Tony was sort of shriveling on the other side of the table. And I read all these reviews, and they're all total raves⁹. And then I realized in a way what an awful and risky¹⁰ thing I had done. It just never occurred to me that anybody could say a word against it.

MONDELLO: The book weaves together this sort of in-the-moment remembrance with the reactions of everyone from critics to gay Congressman¹¹ Barney Frank, more than 200 interviews in all not just to show how this play found its voice but also to place it in context. "Angels" was in and was dramatizing a moment when the purple splotch of Kaposi's sarcoma, evidence of a compromised immune system, amounted to a death sentence.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "ANGELS IN AMERICA")

MANTELLO: (As Louis) That is just a burst blood vessel¹².

SPINELLA: (As Prior) Not according to the best medical authorities.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) What?

SPINELLA: (As Prior) KS, baby - lesion number one, the wine-dark kiss of the angel of death.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) Oh, please.

SPINELLA: (As Prior) I'm a lesionnaire in the foreign lesion, the American lesion, lesionnaires' disease.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) Stop.

SPINELLA: (As Prior) My troubles are lesion.

MANTELLO: (As Louis) Will you stop?

SPINELLA: (As Prior, laughter) Don't you think I'm handling this well? I'm going to die.

MONDELLO: The actor sobbing¹³ through that passage is Joe Mantello, now celebrated¹⁴ as the director of the smash hit musical "Wicked" but completely unknown before "Angels" opened on Broadway in 1993.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MANTELLO: I was virtually unhirable.

MONDELLO: He tells the authors he was unskilled at auditioning¹⁵.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MANTELLO: It wasn't like a natural progression of somebody who'd been working a lot off Broadway. It was really, like, very few acting¹⁶ jobs, "Angels In America."

MONDELLO: Today the play attracts much bigger names. Movie star Andrew Garfield, who not long ago was Hollywood's Spider-Man, will wear the wine-dark kiss of the angel of death in this month's Broadway revival. The book's authors spoke¹⁷ with him, too, about how his own sexuality affects playing a now-iconic gay character.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ANDREW GARFIELD: I, as far as I know, am a heterosexual male in a heterosexual male's body, and I'm not confused about that. And of course the responsibility of taking on this role in a seminal¹⁸ play - a seminal gay play - filled me with joy because I knew deep down that it was going to be fine. But just above that deep down was a layer of terror...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Laughter).

GARFIELD: ...Of I'm the wrong person for this.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Right.

MONDELLO: He does have big shoes to fill, as have the dozens of other actors who have played this part. Even after a quarter century, memories of Stephen Spinella standing³ up to AIDS and an unreliable partner and the arrival of that problematic angel remains¹⁹ strong.

(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "ANGELS IN AMERICA")

ELLEN MCLAUGHLIN: (As The Angel) And lo, the prophet was led by his nightly dreams to the hiding place of the sacred implement²⁰.

SPINELLA: (As Prior) You cracked the refrigerator. You probably release a whole cloud of fluorocarbons.

(LAUGHTER)

SPINELLA: (As Prior) That's bad for the environment.

MCLAUGHLIN: (As The Angel) My wrath²¹ is as fearsome as my countenance²² is splendid.

MONDELLO: Performers told the book's authors about one time the angel's countenance was less splendid. Her wig²³ caught in the rigging as she was flying in, and the director came home to a phone message from a patron who raved²⁴ about the moment, quote, "when the angel turned upside down screaming and her wings fell into the audience and the stage manager came out. It looked so real," he said, "but I knew you'd rehearsed it." Theater magic - you got to love it. And Dan Kois and Isaac Butler have captured a lot of it in their "Angels In America" oral history, "The World Only Spins Forward." I'm Bob Mondello.

1 revival   

n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振

参考例句：

• The period saw a great revival in the wine trade.这一时期葡萄酒业出现了很大的复苏。
• He claimed the housing market was showing signs of a revival.他指出房地产市场正出现复苏的迹象。

2 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

3 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 playwright   

n.剧作家，编写剧本的人

参考例句：

• Gwyn Thomas was a famous playwright.格温·托马斯是著名的剧作家。
• The playwright was slaughtered by the press.这位剧作家受到新闻界的无情批判。

6 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

7 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

8 strenuously   

adv.奋发地，费力地

参考例句：

• The company has strenuously defended its decision to reduce the workforce. 公司竭力为其裁员的决定辩护。
• She denied the accusation with some warmth, ie strenuously, forcefully. 她有些激动，竭力否认这一指责。

9 raves   

n.狂欢晚会( rave的名词复数 )v.胡言乱语( rave的第三人称单数 )；愤怒地说；咆哮；痴心地说

参考例句：

• She raves about that singer. 她醉心地谈论那位歌手。 来自辞典例句
• His new play received raves in the paper. 他的新剧本在报纸上受到赞扬。 来自辞典例句

10 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

11 Congressman   

n.（美）国会议员

参考例句：

• He related several anecdotes about his first years as a congressman.他讲述自己初任议员那几年的几则轶事。
• The congressman is meditating a reply to his critics.这位国会议员正在考虑给他的批评者一个答复。

12 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

13 sobbing   

<主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的

参考例句：

• I heard a child sobbing loudly. 我听见有个孩子在呜呜地哭。
• Her eyes were red with recent sobbing. 她的眼睛因刚哭过而发红。

14 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

15 auditioning   

vi.试听（audition的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• She was auditioning for the role of Lady Macbeth. 她试演了麦克佩斯夫人的角色。
• Which part are you auditioning for? 你试音什么角色？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

17 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

18 seminal   

adj.影响深远的；种子的

参考例句：

• The reforms have been a seminal event in the history of the NHS.这些改革已成为英国国民保健制度史上影响深远的一件大事。
• The emperor's importance as a seminal figure of history won't be diminished.做为一个开创性历史人物的重要性是不会减弱的。

19 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

20 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

21 wrath   

n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒

参考例句：

• His silence marked his wrath. 他的沉默表明了他的愤怒。
• The wrath of the people is now aroused. 人们被激怒了。

22 countenance   

n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同

参考例句：

• At the sight of this photograph he changed his countenance.他一看见这张照片脸色就变了。
• I made a fierce countenance as if I would eat him alive.我脸色恶狠狠地，仿佛要把他活生生地吞下去。

23 wig   

n.假发

参考例句：

• The actress wore a black wig over her blond hair.那个女演员戴一顶黑色假发罩住自己的金黄色头发。
• He disguised himself with a wig and false beard.他用假发和假胡须来乔装。

24 raved   

v.胡言乱语( rave的过去式和过去分词 )；愤怒地说；咆哮；痴心地说

参考例句：

• Andrew raved all night in his fever. 安德鲁发烧时整夜地说胡话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They raved about her beauty. 他们过分称赞她的美。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》