Tony Kushner is in rewrite mode. He tinkered with his “Angels in America” for the recent London and Broadway productions. His rewrite of Ernest Lehman’s screen adaptation of Arthur Laurents’ book for “West Side Story” will hit movie theaters next year. And now he has revised his first play, “A Bright Room Called Day,” written in 1985.
A revival of “Bright Room” opened Monday at Off Broadway’s Public Theater, and the production’s director, Oskar Eustis, calls it “a radical rethink.” The operable word here is “radical.” We’re told from the stage that Kushner’s first play “never worked.” Jonathan Hadary plays the writer and apologizes, “I didn’t trust the play,” and he’s there to do rewrites, especially on a problematic character named Zillah (Crystal Lucas-Perry), who calls the original work a “dramaturgical boondoggle.”