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(The two halves of the play,Millennium ApproachesandPerestroika,will run concurrently.)
Tony Kushner:When I was at Tisch, I was just coming out.
I probably passed Roy Cohn on several occasions.
Cleve Jones (founder, NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt):I remember when that panel was made.
One of the volunteers told me, theres someone behaving oddly here, come check it out.
My hair just stood on end.
The first thing I asked him was Did you actually know Roy Cohn?
and he said, I knew himvery well, and so I said, Fine.
ROY
(Hitting the hold button)Hold.
(To Joe)I wish I was an octopus, a fucking octopus.
Eight loving arms and all those suckers.
Know what I mean?
[In Roy Cohn voice:] Cats!
and can you fucking do it, or cant you?
Roy performs the dance of power for Joe.
His finesse in communication threatening, seducing, charming, and deceiving are also keys to Roy.
It was a joy.
Goddamn, what a feast.
Both Roy and the actor playing Roy are enjoying his performance.
The public face of Roy Cohn is itself a performance, as is his sexuality, et cetera.
You never get to fully lose yourself in the character; its always you whos giving a portrayal.
I dont have trouble playing characters out of literature like Mephistopheles, Richard III, Macbeth.
I can understand them, I can make them as evil or as charming as I want.
Charm is essential to playing evil characters.
I was doing a movie in Europe and I was studying the script on a plane to Paris.
This guy sitting next to me saw the script and said, Thats a great play.
Youre doing Roy, arent you?
And I said yes.
And this guy said, Oh, I knew Roy Cohn.
He had a case against Roy once.
And thats when I said to myself,I GOT IT!
Thats a good story.
Lane:Its easy to find people to talk about how much they hated him.
He was hated by legions of people.
Leibman:I spoke to a lot of people who knew Cohn.
I even had a meeting with [McCarthy hearings figure] G. David Schine.
If he knew what the play was about, he never wouldve seen me.
He picked the worst restaurant in Beverly Hills.
He wanted to talk about his pal.
I dont know if they were lovers or not; thats what the rumors were.
He just gave me boilerplate Republican stuff.
His eyes rolled in his head.
I dont think anyone had asked him that.
He said, When he would come to my house, he would always play with my kids.
I think he missed being a father.
Which is an interesting thing for a stupid man to say.
Suddenly it hit me: Thats the relationship with Joe.
Thats what its really about.
Because he was already sick too.
Stephen Spinella and I went to see it.
Kesting:Id seen the Ron Vawter monologue.
He brought that monologue here.
Vawter really looked like Roy Cohn!
He had these big childish blue eyes.
When you know he is the devil.
Is there anyone who has ever tried to do it really as Roy Cohn, to imitate?
That would be interesting.
I approached it as if I were playing Roy Cohn in a movie.
I was kind of trying to get a documentary likeness of Roy Cohn on the stage.
For example, he had these tremors that came and went.
The first time I heard it, I was like, Whoa, what is that?
Sounds a little bit like Dustin Hoffman.
You cant do that!
But he does, its terrifying.
It became pronounced in the hospital room scenes.
Lane:I think Tonys Roy Cohn is more fun, probably, than the real guy.
Teachout:Im 60.
Roy Cohn is not just the guy who was inAngels in America.
I know people who knew Roy Cohn well.
He was very much someone one knew about.
But Donald Trump did!
Birds of a feather flocked together!
He went to see Alvin Friedman-Kien.
And then of course he went to the NHS and got onto the early AZT trials.
But really this is wrong.
Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men.
Homosexuals are men who in 15 years of trying cannot pass a pissant discrimination bill through City Council.
Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows.
Does this sound like me, Henry?
I found Tonys brutally honest assessment of these peoples psychologies really amazing.
Judd:I remember a day in the rehearsal room working on the hospital scenes with Belize.
I realized it wasnt so much fun to play the true darkness and poison in Roy.
And so that day the job got more interesting.
Wood:Letting your evil hair down can be exciting and rewarding.
Judd:I loved that there was not a beat skipped when Ethel Rosenberg appeared to Roy.
They just started talking.
Aw, hell, Ethel… No Scrooge and Marley theatrics.
Leibman:I had a chance to meet one of the Rosenberg children.
I forget which one it was, I get their names mixed up.
and he said, Younailedthe cocksucker!
And then we had a wonderful conversation.
We had to leave, it was after midnight, they had to wrap up the theater.
He said, Ill come back for Part 2.
There were people in the audience in L.A. who cried when Roy Cohn died.
And the audience was kind of shifting in their seats and thinking Well,shouldwe be crying?
Which is, I guess, the point.
But Tony Kushner doesnt use Roy having AIDS to mock and laugh at him.
He comes about as close as he can come in overcoming it in portraying Cohn.
Some people are really evil, but theyre also really magnetic.
You cant help but jump into bed with them.
You hate yourself in the morning, but its great the night before.
What began to emerge was that there were two strands in the American Right.
They both believe the same thing: that people are selfish and evil.
Thats the Cohn wing.
I knew Norman from the Actors Studio.
Spoke to his wife.
She said, Oh, we were very close friends!
I said, Darlin, its hard for me to conceive of Norman being friends with Roy Cohn.
Hayden:I dont want to make him sympathetic, but I dont want him to just be evil.
Only lazy actors do that.
Judd:Years later I got to play Iago, who I thought initially would be Roy-like.
Roy Cohn is an old-fashioned kind of theatrical villain.
Roys masculinity is never challenged.
He is a masculine force.
Michael Corleone can play Roy Cohn, and everyones fine.
Shenkman:[Laughs.]
You know what, I would not follow Nathan Lane and Al Pacino.
I hope I get to do Roy Cohn someday.
Performances will run April 17 through July 22.
Kushner:Were in the middle of a very strange moment.
The cruelty and the misery at this particular moment.
Were feeling desperate, anxious, emotional, and thats where art comes from, you know?
You cant understand it simply as a lament about AIDS.
You have to deal with Cohn.
Eustis:Now, 25 years later, its Tonys vision of the Right that looks so prescient.
When Tony wrote Roy Cohn, he was a larger-than-life, demonic figure.
Now his pupil is the president of the United States.
Thus proving, as Mark Harris says, that Tonys drag name should be Eera Lee Prescient.
I was laughing because I said, I think youre talking more about your character than the real guy.
Watch a Trump speech in response to an adverse court ruling: It could be written by Roy Cohn.
In a veryAngelssense, everything remains up in the air, and everything can turn on a dime.
Will we choose selfishness and fear and greed, or solidarity and inclusion and love?
It is either the end of the world or the beginning.
Excerpted fromThe World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in Americaby Isaac Butler and Dan Kois.
Published by Bloomsbury USA.
Portions of the book first appeared in Slate.
