Angels in America – Edinburgh International Festival ★★★★★

If there is a greatest contemporary play, it is probably Angels in America. Tony Kushner’s A Gay Fantasia on National Themes has occupied that position for more than three decades, a work so vast in its ambition and so startling in its humanity that every generation seems to discover something new within it. Set during the AIDS crisis and the Reagan years, it is a play about America, but also about illness, faith, love, politics, identity, mortality and change itself. Very few writers have managed to capture an entire society in motion while simultaneously creating characters who feel profoundly individual. The danger with masterpieces is that directors often feel obliged to honour every corner of them. Ivo van Hove takes the opposite approach. His production for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam strips the play back to its bare essentials in a manner reminiscent of Peter Brook. The stage is almost empty. The visual language is sparse. The production places extraordinary faith in…