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Cosmos of Kushner, Spinning Forward
by Andrea Stevens, The New York Times
A few minutes before the fifth preview of Tony Kushner's new play, a three-and-a-half-hour family drama of operatic heft with a matching title - "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures" - Mr. Kushner, looking like a slightly unnerved graduate student, addressed the audience from the stage. Some actors, he said, would be holding pages of new dialogue. "Yesterday was my day off," he told the audience, "and I did a lot of rewriting."
"At the end," he added, "there will be a talk back. You'll give me your opinions, and afterward we'll all go out and have breakfast."
The joke seemed to sum up the state that Mr. Kushner, 52, has found himself in here at the Guthrie Theater, where since April 18 (proclaimed Tony Kushner Day by the mayor of Minneapolis) he has been at the drumbeating heart of a festival occupying the Guthrie's three theaters and various ancillary sites, celebrating him and his work. That includes the 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning epic "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes"; the 2001 meditation on Afghanistan "Homebody/Kabul"; and the 2003 musical (with Jeanine Tesori) "Caroline, or Change," which is being given its first Guthrie production as part of the event.