When Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play (of which this is notably only the first half) was first staged in America, it received many accolades, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, for its brutal and surreal portrayal of the AIDS epidemic. Twenty years ago, when New York was at the centre of both this crisis and the movement toward gay rights, audiences on Broadway must have seen in it a terrifying realisation of events and tragedies that had unfolded (and still were unfolding) around them. Two decades later and well into the new millennium, AIDS, although still one of the most important humanitarian issues facing the world today, no longer has the same shocking prominence, at least not in Cambridge. Perhaps, then, this is why Hugh Wyld’s production packs such a resounding punch. It is unlike anything I’ve ever seen at the ADC, both in style and subject.

With a stark white stage and the set stripped bare of all furniture bar a hospital bed everything about Angels in America channels attention towards the drama. The initial atmosphere of dystopia unfurls as the production continues: sharp bursts of uncomfortably loud music give way to bodiless voices, climaxing in a huge black angel descending from the rafters. I will not attempt to explain the intricacies of the plot, which is distorted to say the least, though to great effect. In summary, Angels in America is a story about love, death and guilt. All of the bizarre hallucinatory interludes aside, it a depiction of a series of relationships at various stages of development and demise.

These are carried by a profoundly moving collection of performances, most significantly by the central male characters. Julian Mack’s nervous Mormon is witness to a slow, unsteady and unwilling sexual awakening that is captivating to watch. Equally obsessed with the maintenance of an image is Max Upton’s cynical, power-hungry lawyer, who spits poison at anyone who might threaten his career. In his final scene, collapsed on the floor in the full grasp of his disease, there is a certain element of devastation as he lashes out at his own body, ridden with denial.

The couple that deserve the most recognition, however, are Guy Woolf and Jack Mosedale, whose relationship crumbles in the wake of the grim reality of disease. Woolf’s naïve, self-involved Jew, incapable of coping with the reminder of his own mortality embodied by Mosedale's rapid decline, is underlined with an overwhelmingly pervasive guilt, that makes his admittedly reprehensible actions all the more difficult to watch. All the while, Mosedale’s physical and emotional torment is portrayed so unrelentingly that it is almost painful for the audience to watch.

Angels in America is not an uplifting or, arguably, enjoyable experience. It is graphic in its rendition of a disease that has no time for the faint-hearted. It is, however, an intensely emotional production to watch, leaving the audience physically drained. Focussing on an incredibly delicate subject matter, it handles the AIDS crisis with the respectful care and confusing grandeur that it deserves. On one level, it is this shocking subject matter that makes Wyld’s play so powerful, especially given the context within which it is being put on. Yet it is the strength and complexity of the performances that surpass the crisis itself to deal with the intricacies of human emotion, that makes it such an unforgettable production.