How Well Did ‘Angels’ Fly on Opening Night? : Theater: The Broadway debut of “Angels in America” attracted celebrities and made its investors happy, but the playwright skipped most of the show.

Minutes before the curtain rose on “Angels in America” on Broadway Tuesday night, playwright Tony Kushner was trying to explain the meaning of the Yiddish word kinnehora . He had just used it to describe how he felt as swarms of excited well-wishers greeted him as he stood in front of the mobbed Walter Kerr Theater, a blue Tiffany box in his hand.

“It’s like a combination of anxiety and panic,” he said, looking remarkably cool as paparazzi flashbulbs exploded all around him and television cameras whirred at the arrival of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. ‘It’s sort of like. . . .”

“Wait,” he said, pulling a tuxedoed gentleman with a halo of gray hair out of the crowd. “My uncle will know.”

“A kinnehora ?,” said Richard Manoff, who’d come in from Brooklyn for the long anticipated opening of his nephew’s play. “It’s a congratulations. But it’s a congratulations that you don’t want in case you jinx whatever you’re congratulating someone about. So you say, ‘Don’t give me any kinnehoras .’ ”

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Few productions have arrived on Broadway with as much need to fear “ kinnehoras “ because of the advance fanfare as “Millennium Approaches,” part one of Kushner’s seven-hour epic “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” (The second part, “Perestroika,” will begin previews on Broadway in September, playing in repertory with “Millennium Approaches.”)

The big question in the theater world was whether this grand finale of what has generally been considered a dismal Broadway season would live up to the avalanche of hype that preceded it and carry a renewal of American dramatic theater aloft on its wings.

No small mandate. But then the play itself has never shrunk from grand ambitious themes, even from the beginning in 1988, when Kushner accepted a commission from San Francisco’s Eureka Theater and started to write what would evolve into an epic.

Workshopped first at the Mark Taper Forum and then at the Eureka, the play earned raves and awards during an 11-month engagement at London’s Royal National Theatre in 1992. But the hype intensified last fall when the full two-part epic was presented at the Mark Taper Forum. The critical praise set off a bloody bidding war among New York producers for the rights to bring “Angels in America” to Broadway, co-produced by the Taper, among others.

That war, in effect, scuttled the originally slated February production at New York’s Public Theater. And not too long after the Jujamcyn Theaters had won the show away from the Shubert Organization, sweet spoils came in the form of the Pulitzer Prize for drama awarded to “Millennium”--which only upped the hype.

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Indeed, perhaps not since “Miss Saigon,” which opened in 1991, has a production generated so much unpaid publicity. But then “Miss Saigon” had producer Cameron Mackintosh, a helicopter and an $37-million advance sale. “Angels,” by contrast, is a 3 1/2-hour play about gays, AIDS and Reaganism--hardly the escapism of middle-of-the road Broadway.

And while opening night advance sales for the $2.2-million production had totaled about $1.1 million--respectable for a drama--Kushner’s track record remained unproved. His only other previous New York production, “A Bright Room Called Day,” had been a critical flop at the Public Theater in 1991.

Furthermore, although many of the heavyweight critics had praised the production either in London or Los Angeles, they had yet to weigh in on George C. Wolfe, the new director who had been brought in to replace Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone, who had mounted the production at the Taper. In fact, previews were not going smoothly until the last week before the opening, causing both a postponement of the planned April 29 opening, and a cancellation of one matinee because of technical problems with the thunderous descent of the angel at the show’s conclusion. (At the end of the first preview, Ellen McLaughlin, who plays the angel, was left dangling like a skewed Christmas tree ornament while the stage manager’s screams were clearly audible throughout the theater. There were reportedly some boos and walkouts as well.)

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However, as Tuesday’s opening approached, the buzz on “Millennium Approaches” got more and more favorable. On Tuesday night, even as the police barricades to protect the crowds from traffic were being put into place, the box office racked up its best single day of sales yet: $81,000, close to the record take of $100,000 set by “The Real Thing” in 1984 after it opened to critical raves.

On Wednesday, “Angels in America” nearly bettered by half the “The Real Thing” record, taking in about $150,000, according to a Jujamcyn spokesman. The surge came on the heels of near-unanimous raves for the play, the production and the actors, including an unqualified paean from the all-important New York Times, although some New York dailies quibbled. “Gay Epic Fails to Take Wing” was a headline of one review.

Word of the favorable notices spread like wildfire at the opening night party at Roseland, where blown-up color slides from the production flashed above the happy milling crowds. “I can hardly wait for America to see this, especially the President and Hillary,” said an exultant David Mixner, the President’s political liaison for the gay community. “I think of this as our ‘Raisin in the Sun.’ People can see an emerging civil rights movement reflected in its powerful series of messages. It’s all part of a new beginning.”

Yet, despite the overwhelmingly successful opening and expressions of relief washing over the investors and half-dozen producers listed on the program, Rocco Landesman, president of Jujamcyn, was still warding off “ kinnehoras ,” even as his guests were beginning to head for the exits, angel feathers and glitter sticking to their Playbills. Best not to tempt fate, particularly if you’re also one of the producers of the surprise hit “The Who’s Tommy,” Broadway’s other late-season opener, which is also showing all the earmarks of becoming a phenomenon.

As revolutionary as “Angels in America” promises to be for the theater--with its melding of fantasy and reality, its gender-blind casting and its bold political themes--it also appears, on the other hand, to support the most traditional of Broadway’s values: spectacle, riveting drama and rich characters. Little wonder, then, that the spontaneous standing ovation that greeted the actors at curtain call on opening night was accompanied with a chorus of “Author! Author!”

Kushner, however, was nowhere in the theater. After listening from the back of the theater for the first laugh at the top of the play, he and a friend snuck out to chow down on Chinese food. The Millennium approached without him.