Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

When: Sundays, 2 p.m. and Fridays, Saturdays, 7 p.m. Continues through March 3 2019

Tony Kushner's monumental drama Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches refracts the early days of the AIDS crisis through the prism of politics, religion, sex, the Red Scare, drugs and Antarctica. All of the characters and places are created by a smallish cast that must play young and old, dying and dead, and fantasy and reality. At the heart of all of this is a series of love stories that smash into the cold philosophy of its 1980s setting. "It's everyone for themselves" is a horrible way to live and a worse way to die. The Washington University Performing Arts Department presents Millennium Approaches at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (February 22 to March 3) at Washington University's Edison Theatre (6445 Forsyth Boulevard; www.edison.wustl.edu). Tickets are $15 to $20.

— Paul Friswold