It’s the holidays, folks – that time of year when you share and care and want to shoot your face off as a consequence of hearing “Jingle Bells” everywhere you go. I know I’m not alone in these sentiments. Fortunately, Portland’s theater scene has a remedy for the holiday season.

This December, the Portland Playhouse will be performing Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millenium Approaches, the Tony Award winning tale of AIDS, community, and trying to figure out who the hell you are in 1985’s New York City. “We’ve done very few American classics, but Angels is one,” says Brian Weaver, Artistic Director of Portland Playhouse. “Angels is a play that I’ve always loved. I think it’s one of the greatest plays of American theater.”

Kushner wrote Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes in two parts: Millenium Approaches and Perestroika, totaling seven hours in length. In 1993, Millenium Approaches made it to Broadway and ran for a year and a half with 367 performances, winning nine awards, including the Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play.

“People who are older remember the opening in Broadway,” says Weaver. “A lot of people remember that time, the 80s, when the AIDS crisis was coming to national attention. And then there’s still a whole other group of people who don’t know anything about it, but know it from the HBOmovie.” The HBO miniseries adaptation in 2003 starred a laundry list of heavyweight actors, such as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson, and won the Golden Globe and Emmy for Best Miniseries.

Millenium is thick with examinations of identity and personal character. Who am I? What am I? Should I be what I am? Or should I fight it? One of the characters is a Mormon in a shaky marriage, who struggles with his sexuality. His wife, the Valium-guzzling, neurotic Harper, is played by Drammy Award winning actress Nikki Weaver, who also serves as the Playhouse’s Education Director. “She’s always been a little out of step. It’s hard to keep her up without playing into the Valium too much,” she says. “This is the second time my husband [Brian Weaver] has directed me since starting Portland Playhouse. So in a whole other sense that presents its own challenges – how to live with a character without taking her home with me.”

In addition to playing Harper, Nikki Weaver also plays Martin, an administrator for Ronald Reagan. Each of the eight cast members plays multiple roles, adding to the play’s craziness and questions of identity. The play is a melting pot, a simmering stew of characters constantly fighting for air or shelter or solace or a better metaphor. Brian Weaver explains “Part of the reason I think he [Kushner] puts them in these extreme situations – the lovers dying of AIDS, you have AIDS, your husband leaves you for a man… he creates these really intense situations just to test the human capacity for change.”

These characters are pulsing with life. They laugh, they cry, they love, and they deceive. They are flawed, but still oh so endearingly human. Even the arrogant, McCarthy-ist and most detestable character, Roy Cohn, is likeable for all his flaws. Although Kushner puts his characters through such intense situations, forcing them to react in extreme ways, these people are relatable. The setting is over 20 years old, yet the issues are still the same. Homophobic bigotry, the devastation of AIDs, and the halting hesitation toward change are not artifacts of the distant past. “Coming out” is still a major obstacle and homosexuality, although more widely accepted, is still stigmatized.

But the play is not a complete tragedy. Humor and fantastical occurrences smartly balance the anguish. An angel speaks to a character, strangers appear in each other’s dreams, and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg appears. While these occurrences are sometimes unexpected, they do not appear out of place.

“I think that life just sometimes doesn’t make sense,” explains Brian Weaver. “That’s the ‘gay fantasia’ aspect, having dream sequences where people appear and disappear. I think all of that is space for the realism of human tragedy. It makes it bearable.”

In reality Angels don't crash through roofs on a daily basis and I don’t find myself talking to the ghosts of my centuries old ancestors at night (knock on wood). Instead of taking away from the play's real, gritty themes, these bizarre happenings enhance them. We aren't distracted by angels and ghosts and dreamy visions. We become further engrossed in the play’s action and themes as we are lifted away from the mundane. Our attention is at full alert, marveling at the event and awaiting what happens next.

“It’s a play that’s about breaking open the future,” says Brian Weaver, “So I think at least the people, [whose] holidays and new years are a time to reflect about what you want to do, what changes you want to make in your life, what do you want your life to be, what new territory do you want to go into, I think that [for them], in those terms, it’s a great play to be doing in December.”

“When I watch rehearsal, I find myself wanting to weep in most scenes. It's poetical and true to the heart,” says Nikki Weaver. “I think Portland is ready for this show. I wouldn't miss it.” So finish putting up the holiday decorations and join the Portland Playhouse in a tragic, hilarious, thought-provoking flight with Angels.

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches will be playing at the World Trade Center from December 8 through December 31 at 7:30 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Ticket prices start at $20 for students.

Photo: Courtesy of Portland Playhouse