ECU SCREENS open its fourth season with “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,” starring Andrew Garfield, at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 7, in the Raymond J. Estep Multimedia Center of the Bill S. Cole University Center.
Open to the public, the screening is $10 for members of the community. ECU SCREENS will be sponsoring free admission for students.
This new staging of Tony Kushner’s multi-award winning two-part play, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” is directed by Olivier and Tony award winning director Marianne Elliott. Elliot also directed “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and War Horse,” both popular hits from previous ECU SCREENS seasons. “Angels in America: Millenium Approaches” was recorded live at the National Theatre in London on July 20 of this year.
Set in 1986, during the AIDS crisis and Ronald Reagan’s presidency, “Angels in America” dramatizes the struggles of New Yorkers who grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. Part One: “Millennium Approaches” was first performed at the National Theatre in London in 1992. It was followed by Part Two “Perestroika” in 1993. ECU SCREENS will present both dramas on successive Thursdays, with “Perestroika” scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 14, also in the Estep.
Garfield (The Amazing Spider Man, Hacksaw Ridge) plays Prior Walter in a performance that London’s Sunday Times describes as “spectacular.” In a five-star review, The Daily Telegraph characterizes the drama as “a start-to-finish sensation,” and the Evening Standard confirms that the production is “a true theatrical epic.” WhatsOnStage praises the “superb” cast, led by Garfield and Nathan Lane, who plays the real figure of Roy M. Cohn, who became Donald Trump’s lawyer. Cohn was once the “right-arm of Joe McCarthy” and boasts that he made a career of persecuting "commies and homos.” But as the drama begins, he is himself dying of AIDS, while claiming he has liver cancer.
This production contains scenes of a sexual nature and is not recommended for children.
NT Live is the National Theatre's groundbreaking project to broadcast the best of British theatre to cinemas around the world. Following the Angels in America presentations, ECU SCREENS will be presenting NT Live’s production of Tom Stoppard’s classic comedy ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) on Wednesday, November 15th at 1 p.m.
To learn more about ECU SCREENS, like the ECU SCREENS Facebook page or visit www.ecuscreens.blogspot.com. For more information about the Royal National Theatre in Great Britain and the NT Live screenings, visit www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/. Dr. Rebecca Nicholson-Weir, co-director of ECU SCREENS, may be contacted at (580) 559-5929 or rnichlsn@ecok.edu.
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