Timely Once Again

A revival of Tony Kushner's epic Angels In America just opened on Broadway.  It features Nathan Lane, Andrew Garfield and Lee Pace, and is getting solid reviews.

The play is set in the 80s, with AIDS devastating the gay community.  It's understandable Kushner (writing in the early 90s) conjures up a feeling of apocalypse.  Too bad the critics--at least the ones I've read--are so predictable.  All of them feel it's important to tie the play to the world today, as well as how Trump is ravaging it.

Just to pick one example, look at Marilyn Stasio's review in Variety.  Here's an excerpt:

Extrapolating from the poisoned fruits of Kushner's historical plague, substitute Biblically scaled plagues of our times: an autocratic president at home who admires brutal dictators abroad, an epidemic of school massacres, growing threats of nuclear war, unprecedented fires and floods, and the incipient death of the planet from global warming.

Pretty much everything in her list of particulars is stupid, pointless or dishonest.  But even if it were the most accurate appraisal of the situation today, it would still be a political rant that has essentially nothing to do with reviewing the play.

Guess what, Marilyn?  Everyone who has no sense of perspective feels that the world is facing unprecedented threats, no matter when the time.  There's rarely any need to list them unless you want to show your lack of perspective, and likely your ignorance.

The play is about how time can't stop--how we have to move forward.  But the critics seem to be stuck in the same rut they always display in these situations.  Sure, years ago they'd complain about something else, or some other Republican, but it's the same mindlessness, over and over.