Canonizing Kushner

When The New York Times ’ Frank Rich reviewed Taccone’s seven-hour production of Angels in America in 1992, he wrote: “The show is not merely mind-bending; at times it is mind-exploding, eventually piling on more dense imagery and baroque spiritual, political and historical metaphor than even an entranced, receptive audience can absorb in two consecutive sittings.”

Rich’s raves for the London and Broadway productions of Angels were among the first ripples in a tsunami of critical acclaim that ended up putting a Pulitzer on Kushner’s bookshelf. Looking back, says Rich, “There’s no question that in the past 15 years or so, Tony has been one of the most consistently inventive, exciting, and controversial writers in the American theater. He is constantly bursting the conventions of natural American drama, which is still a fairly dominant form. From Angels in America on, he’s been stretching American theater, exploring not only politics in a very sophisticated way, but issues of spirituality, myth, and social history. He can be quite poetic, and he’s capable of identifying, empathizing with, and creating characters as diverse as Roy Cohn, a black maid in the South, and a troubled Mormon from Utah. At the same time, he is interested in the larger forces of the world—economic, political, and sometimes sexual.”

At the Guthrie, Kushner’s gift for distilling the flow of history into shining moments of dramatic clarity will be particularly evident in Caroline, or Change , the semiautobiographical musical Kushner wrote with Jeanine Tesori. The play is set in 1963 and revolves around the relationship between a black maid, Caroline Thibodeaux, a young Jewish boy named Noah, and his family, the Gellmans. The deceptively simple conflict in the play has to do with the coins left in the young boy’s pockets when Caroline is doing the laundry. In order to teach the boy a lesson about money, Noah’s stepmother tells Caroline she is free to keep the change (“It’ll be like a raise!”), which is a boon for her until the day she finds an uncomfortably large amount of money in Noah’s pocket and must decide what to do with it.

Mind you, Caroline, or Change is a Tony Kushner musical, so the washing machine talks, the radio sings, the moon dispenses advice, and even the city bus has important things to say. The genius in Caroline’s dilemma is that it serves as a prism for viewing conflicts about race, class, and money in the South: the impact of the civil rights movement, the importance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Birmingham and “I Have a Dream” speech, differing perspectives of JFK’s assassination and legacy, and various other issues of social justice.

The Times ’ Frank Rich says Caroline, or Change “is a remarkable work that takes something we think we know so well—the history of the civil rights struggle in America—and makes it seem immediate and personal. It’s extraordinary.” The music—a heady mix of Motown, blues, hymns, spirituals, folk music, klezmer, pop, and classical—reflects that time in American history as well, evoking the artistic ferment of the 1960s. Seen in the context of Barack Obama’s recent election, the cultural echo on the Guthrie’s Wurtele Thrust Stage is likely to be especially loud.

Though his plays are packed with enough ideas and imagery to keep graduate students busy for decades, Kushner seems uncomfortable when too much intellectual freight is heaped onto his plays. “My first job is to entertain,” Kushner insists. “I want people to laugh, to enjoy themselves. I hate ‘message’ plays. If I wanted to send messages, I’d write fortune cookies. I don’t think it’s my responsibility to educate people, either—and I certainly don’t want to be seen as a writer who hides the [intellectual] medicine in a gumdrop and tricks people into eating it.”

Chewing on Kushner’s ideas before swallowing them is more along the lines of what the Guthrie has in mind for Twin Citians with its Kushner Celebration. “The big, bold move for the Guthrie is not just to celebrate the work of one of America’s greatest living playwrights,” says Steven Rosenstone, a Guthrie board member and vice president for scholarly and cultural affairs at the University of Minnesota. “It’s getting deeper into it, to think about a set of plays and the issues they raise in a much more focused, disciplined way—to really take seriously the issues he’s confronting us with in his work, whether it’s about race, class, AIDS, sexual identity, gender politics, foreign policy, economics, spirituality, or history. . . . There’s a lot to talk about.”

But that shouldn’t stop people who just want to have a good time at the theater, insists the Public Theater’s Oskar Eustis: “The biggest misconception people have about Tony’s work is that it’s inaccessible, or too smart. I think people in Minneapolis will be amazed at how accessible he is. He is the funniest writer we have. His writing is so full of heart, and his empathy for human beings radiates off the stage—it’s why audiences all over the world respond so positively to his work.”

The Guthrie’s Kushner event runs April 18 through June 28. Let the celebration (and conversation) begin.