City Lights evolves as Angels concludes

MercuryNews.com – By Karen D’Souza – Mercury News

The great work begins! The messenger has arrived!

Only she may not be quite as you remember her. In past incarnations of “Angels in America,” the heavenly title character has often been a strangely ethereal creature, winged, asexual and bald.

Not at City Lights Theater Company. Here the Angel has been reincarnated as a bodacious blond sex kitten draped in silver-lame and dripping old-school Hollywood glam. It’s one of the many visionary reinventions of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning epic in this extremely gratifying production of “Perestroika.”

City Lights staged the first half of the two-part drama last fall. Now, after leaving the audience cliff-hanging for a year, director Kit Wilder has reunited the cast for the long-awaited final installment of the greatest play of its generation.