Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s powerful two-part drama about AIDS and gay life in the 1980s—in repertory at Roundhouse Theatre Silver Spring—feels fresh and painfully relevant even a quarter century after its action takes place and 16 years after its Broadway debut.

The timing of this Forum Theatre production makes it especially potent. Issues faced when the play opened in 1993 echo today, with another Democratic President taking office after eight years of a conservative administration and gay rights again in the forefront.

Forum is tackling this ambitious project for its first as company-in-residence at Roundhouse Silver Spring’s “black box,” and director Jeremy Skidmore has handled the complicated Part I: Millennium Approaches with great care.

Set in Reagan-era New York City, Angels follows a straightlaced Mormon lawyer and his pill-popping wife; a gay couple wrestling with an AIDS diagnosis; real-life conservative lawyer Roy Cohn; and a handful of other characters—including, yes, an angel—as their lives intersect. The story lines are stitched together in an intricate tapestry of good, evil, faith, love, and ambivalence.

The cast takes the challenging roles head on—chief among them a flawless Karl Miller as the sardonic Prior Walter, recently diagnosed with AIDS; Miller’s effortless grasp on Prior’s dueling pride and vulnerability is searing. Alexander Strain, as Prior’s tortured lover Louis, stands out in his sharp, loaded monologues. As the young lawyer’s wife, Harper Pitt, Casie Platt is mesmerizing in her dazed downward spiral. The slight imbalance among other performances might go unnoticed in a different theater, but in the close quarters of Roundhouse’s black box, some stiffness leads to a few uneven scenes.

Director Skidmore is masterful at working with little more than a stark room and talented actors. The space’s intimacy contributes to much of the show’s punch, pushing the audience to feel almost uneasy for intruding on such intensely personal scenes. The way Skidmore uses the space is spot-on, emphasizing the snowballing relationships through lighting changes and parallel staging. A mixture of classical and jazz music adds to the swelling drama. The 3½-hour running time is noticeable but hardly bothersome.

If Part II: Perestroika—directed by Michael Dove—manages to pick up where Millennium Approaches leaves off without missing a beat when it opens October 26, we can look forward to an experience as dazzling and thought-provoking as this one.

Part I: Millennium Approaches runs October 5 through November 21; Part II: Perestroika runs October 26 through November 22 at Round House Theatre Silver Spring. General-admission tickets are $25 for all performances; $20 for seniors, groups, and Round House subscribers; and $15 for students and patrons under 30.