Bright Room Called Day

From Booklist
Even if Tony Kushner had not penned the prizewinning, epic gay fantasia, Angels in America, this earlier work would guarantee him a place in the pantheon of noteworthy living playwrights. Set in the dying days of Weimar Germany among a group of left-wing activists who slowly realize they are losing to the Nazis, the play is, like Angels, a genre-defying mixture of literate comedy, serious drama, and political-philosophical meditation. Again as in Angels, Kushner's remarkable eye for telling personal quirks and his ear for believable dialogue guarantee that every character, even the most minor, comes off as a fully realized, living, breathing entity. Further, the play is as compelling on the page as on the stage. It is based on the rather immature notion that the rise of Reagan and company parallels the rise of the Nazis, but happily, Kushner the artist outstrips Kushner the heavy-handed polemicist; the play easily transcends such simpleminded political thinking. Jack Helbig


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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner's powerful portrayal of individual resolution, irresolution and dissolution in the face of political catastrophe, "A Bright Room Called Day" follows a group of artists and political activists struggling to preserve themselves in 1930s Berlin as the Weimar Republic surrenders to the seduction of fascism. Often exquisitely lyrical, always exhilaratingly intelligent, the poetic world of the play moves beyond the bounds of historical reality with the morally outraged outpourings of a contemporary New York woman. Her fury at the Reagan and Bush presidencies brings into stark relief the discomfiting similarities between then and now, and challenges us to remember that although evil may seem inevitable, it is never irresistible.


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