Although it was possible to see both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika in one day, I decided to split them across two evenings. I was glad I did as I found Millennium's three and a half hours enough for one day. Not that it wasn't good. But I was beginning to fidget, not helped by the war in the row behind between a couple who eat a constant stream of food and those next to them who wished they's f'ing stop. However, by contrast, the four and a quarter hours of Perestroika had me riveted.
The two parts run together seamlessly, so that seeing Perestroika first or on its own would be a foolish move, I thought. There are only a few main characters and they carry betweem the plays. It is hard to say which of them is central but the audience choice for the very loudest applause seemed to go to Andrew Garfield, playing Prior Walter. In brief Prior is suffering the symptoms of AIDS and his lover Louis cannot take the role of carer and moves out. He meets Joseph Pitt a married repressed homosexual whose marriage is in considerable trouble, his wife being a copious user of valium. Joseph works for Roy Cohn, an unscrupulous attorney. Cohn (played by Nathan Lane) is the only 'real' person in the play and he was in fact one of Trump's mentors. He also suffers from AIDS but insists that it is labelled liver cancer.
The two plays follows the twists and turns of the characters between 1985 and 1990. The second play, particularly, makes extensive use of playing out their dreams and these sequences are incredibly effective and well-staged. Indeed the whole near-eight hours felt like a real event - amazing acting, staging and, of course, writing. I imagine the impact would have been even greater when it was written. As it was, I was extremely pleased I joined some internet queue to get my tickets several months ago.
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