Stephen Spinella in Angels in America — Page 2

Just getting around to seeing this thread, which had been described to me by friends earlier today as one of the great crackpot lunatic threads of all-time BroadwayWorld history.

YOU SPINELLA-HATING PEOPLE ARE NUTTY McNUTCAKE NUT-JOBS IN A NUTBALL FACTORY.

Stephen Spinella defined the role.
Stephen Spinella was living the role.
Stephen Spinella brought life to every moment and every word of the script.
Stephen Spinella doesn't deserve to be abused and gay-shamed in this this thread.

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Updated On: 3/12/14 at 11:08 PM

I would like to thank PJ for allowing this thread to almost spoil his anniversary, but for stepping in and schooling some of the folks here who definitely need it.

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Are you like me? Do you feel like you have to buy them again for the post-Signature revival tweaks?

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Me too. Borle and Quinto gave Spinella and Mantello a real run for the money, I will say.

But the OBC will always be the standard.

Also, that poor Parker woman on HBO. It was mostly all wrong. I saw Cynthia Nixon in Millennium once. She was great.

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It was very, I dunno, like something a movie director with excellent special effects would do.

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All I have is the originally published scripts. If there are newer revised versions, I would be very interested to know that.

When I saw Urie as Prior, Louis was played by Adam Driver, the actor who plays the boyfriend on GIRLS. I don't watch GIRLS but I loved Driver in ANGELS.

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It doesn't necessarily confound me since a lot of gay people hate "queeny" gay guys. I just see the criticisms against Spinella as another extension of that, which drives me insane. Prior is not supposed to be a butch gay guy--I think in the post-WILL & GRACE world, gay people assume that the gay lead of the story should always the butcher one, what they believe to be the "normal" one. That's so not what Kushner was interested in, you just have to read the play and he tells you at every turn that Prior is indeed from a type of gay culture that is not afraid to be effeminate, not afraid to refer to himself as a "she," or do drag, or be campy. It's part of his character and it's part of what Kushner is trying to do. To criticize Spinella's performance as too effeminate is not only presentist, but shows a real lack of understanding about the play. The problem with Justin Kirk for me is that he was not always able to capture that camp sensibility that Prior calls for, he often comes across as a straight man playing gay. I'm actually surprised to hear Christian Borle was any good in the role, as he suffered from a case of the Justin Kirk in his atrocious take on a gay man in SMASH--then again, that shouldn't be the work by which anyone's acting skills are measured.

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To criticize Spinella's performance as too effeminate is not only presentist, but shows a real lack of understanding about the play.

THIS. And to everything else you said. Well, except the Christian Borle part, because I thought he played gay well on SMASH.

But that people's distaste of femme gay men is so strong that even a character written as - for lack of a better word - flamboyantly as Prior Walter turns off certain audience members when played appropriately is deeply unsettling.

Updated On: 3/12/14 at 10:09 AM

For a little while, I thought I was living on another planet. How people can find fault with Spinella's almost-perfect performance is something I will never understand.

And I will never defend the HBO movie. I know people love it, but Nichols couldn't locate the one thing that helped us all survive the plague: a biting, lacerating, life-affirming sense of humor. That movie was humorless.

Phyllis, you're just saying that because you wanna bone him But I couldn't agree more with this part: that people's distaste of femme gay men is so strong that even a character written as - for lack of a better word - flamboyantly as Prior Walter turns off certain audience members when played appropriately is deeply unsettling. It really is. I experience it so often: "if I wanted to be with a woman, I'd be straight," or "I'm not gay, I'm just a guy who likes sleeping with men." I even was guilty of this when I was a teenager (which is ridiculous, since I'm a total bottom and not manly in any way whatsoever), but it's something I quickly got over, but that I don't see my friends getting over; in fact, I just see it more and more, and I don't think it's even a generational thing at this point.
Really though, this conversation just calls attention to the fact that Prior Walter is still an extremely important character in today's scene.
darquegk, that's a great quote, and so perfectly describes what Kushner is going for with this play.

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The problem with Prior being "too" camp is that it pushes the character into the realm of cartoon. Yes AIA is a "gay fantasia" but you also don't want the character to be so outrageous that he becomes just a comic device rather than a living breathing person. There has to be some truth in the characterization for the audience to want to take the journey. It's like on Will & Grace. Karen & Jack became so outrageous that they became the punchline rather than actual characters in the show.

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