‘Angels’ script works best as valuable educational tool

DP Productions' "Fallen Guardian Angels" is more of a troop rally cry than a good play.

Las Vegas director and playwright Edward D. Padilla penned this piece in 1985, during the early stage of the AIDS epidemic. Curiously, he's chosen not to update much, so that the characters don't have current knowledge about the disease.

Padilla places us backstage with six actors getting ready for a show. Their bantering is split between what they actually say to one another and what they're thinking. Much of the talk centers on sexuality, decency, friendship and fear. Afterwards, the conversations take on a surreal form, with quick, panicky phrasing that leads the actors to discover what may be the only possible -- or at least, least devastating -- solution.

Padilla's script is a valuable educational tool, especially for those born after the epidemic was in full swing. It offers a feel for what sexual freedom was like prior to the '80s and how confused the world was as this indiscriminate killer first appeared on the scene.

But Padilla's writing explains rather than dramatizes the subject matter. As a director, he encourages most of his cast to get emotionally hysterical at every opportune moment. Don't people ever discuss AIDS without having nervous breakdowns?

Ani J. Darcey, as the former streetwalker Robin, easily internalizes her character. She comes across as a startlingly beautiful young woman growing in self-confidence who's aware she hasn't always made the right choices. ("My nickname in high school was Winnie Bago," she says, "because I could easily sleep 12.") Robin shows you her character's bafflement in discovering it's not she, but her young, innocent brother, who's become ill.

And Ginger McCann, as the kindly, maternal Helen, incorporates the dialogue into her personality so that you feel she is speaking her own words. She never steps out of character.

For all its faults, "Fallen Guardian Angels" is the sort of thing that should be produced in high-school auditoriums for its historical perspective of a world-wide disaster and its pleas for kindness. Unfortunately, it's also the sort of play a high-school wouldn't touch.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat @aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.