The World Only Spins Forward (Angels 2 years on)

It’s been a minute since I talked about Angels in America on the blog. Partly I think because talking about it becomes caught up in a paralysing fear about the book (we’ll get back to that).

But yesterday was two years since it closed in London. And a few weeks before that marked a year since the Broadway closing. So, it seems a moment to take pause, and talk Angels.

I use that production as a marker in my life. And a reminder. It came along at a moment I was so done with theatre. So, done with my PhD work. So…done. I was in a crappy admin job, that was due to end soon. With no idea what next, but with a strong sense that ‘it’ was never going to happen, no matter what ‘it’ was. So, I might as well give up. And I find it hard to put into words, just how scary and more than that sad, heartbreaking even that was.

And then Angels happened and for a brief moment I felt like some of it was worth it- that what I had to say about something was considered worthwhile. That I was worthwhile to some people as well. And that maybe after all it wasn’t time to throw everything in.

Two years on I still consider myself a failed academic. But a failed academic with some pride. And some hope too. Because I feel like that helped me ‘prove’ I was worth something even without being a ‘real’ academic.

The two years since have been tough. Tougher than anything that went before- even the PhD itself. But there’s been some amazing things too. And I trace it all back to then.

And so back to Angels itself. Yesterday evening I decided to watch the final 15 minutes (how? Let’s not pretend we don’t know where former NT Live broadcasts go to live out their retirement). I hadn’t seen, or even read the play properly since I last heard the words ‘More Life’ on Broadway a year ago. I don’t need to in order to write about it…and I couldn’t. It had stayed in its little box, sealed in that theatrical moment since then.

I watched from Prior’s ‘Louis you can’t ever come back’ to the end. Firstly I strongly believe James McArdle is Pavlov's Tears or something- when he cries I cry- By the time Harper said ‘Night flight to San Francisco’, I was crying. By the time Prior said ‘We won’t die secret deaths anymore’ well…it wasn’t pretty.

But it felt good to revisit it. As ever this production will always be like coming home. But it felt for the first time like looking in on it, not being tied up in it. And there was a strange moment of, to quote another Marianne Elliott production ‘I’m ready, I’m ready now’ …there is a need for a certain amount of emotional and cognitive distance to really do justice to what you love. And I think I’m finally there.

A week ago I said ‘I don’t think I’m ready for another Angels’ but actually, that’s not true. The world only spins forward. I’m a firm believer (in fact it’s in the book) in there being a theatrical time and place for everything. There is a right moment for every production- and both I and the theatrical world needed that version at that moment. But neither I nor theatre is done with that play. Maybe not this year, maybe not next…but when it does I’ll be ready for it. It’ll never be ‘my’ Angels in the same way again. But that’s ok. We all have ‘our’ versions of our favourite plays that take up residence in our hearts…but there’s room for others as well. (Also I'm just saying if Andrew Scott wants to do it while he's still young enough I am here for Hot Priest Angels) 

And what does that mean for me? For project book?

A kind of painful progress as ever. But I’ve accepted that. I’ve also accepted that it might not be a bright and shiny cool book. It might not be the best book ever written. But it will be honest and fuelled by love and passion. And it will be the book I am meant to write.

When I think of that last performance two years ago it’s never for one second been with sadness. Always joy. It was such a wonderful day- rarely do you get the privilege of such theatrical perfection. Rarely do you get to actually simply lock yourself away in the theatre and indulge in something you love. (Rarely also do you nearly knock Benedict Cumberbatch out of the way…metaphorically speaking..sorta)

And you’ll find my friends that the thing you love will take you places you never dreamed you’d go.

Everything I’ve done- achieved since then, every cool article I’ve written, book contract signed, a play commissioned, a play produced…it’s all been a knock-on effect from that tiny part in Angels and I’ll always be grateful and that’s why this play will forever be more than just ‘that thing I did my PhD on’. And as rough as the past two years have been, I’m grateful to my favourite Angel for that.

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