In post-Cold War Russia, “perestroika” meant restructuring and reform. In Forum Theatre’s production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Part II: Perestroika—onstage at Round House Theatre Silver Spring—the loosely overlapping storylines of Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches are restructured and woven into a tightly knit web of tangled relationships.

The action picks up where Part I leaves off. Prior (Karl Miller) is battling AIDS, heartbreak, and a complicated, sexual relationship with an angel (Nanna Ingvarsson). Bombastic real-life lawyer Roy Cohn (Jim Jorgensen) is rejecting an AIDS diagnosis along with any help from nurse Belize (Ro Boddie) and guilt for his own ethically questionable actions over the years. Louis (Alexander Strain) and Joe (Daniel Eichner) are dating, and Hannah (Jennifer Mendenhall) is tending to her emotionally disturbed daughter-in-law, Harper (Casie Platt).

Each actor takes full advantage of the opportunity to dive much deeper into his or her character in Perestroika. Miller, Platt, and Strain continue to shine. Part II also put others in the spotlight. Boddie’s Belize has just the right air of wisdom and conflicting affection for Roy and Louis. Mendenhall effortlessly slides from playing cold Hannah Pitt to the smug accused spy Ethel Rosenberg—another character taken from history.

Jorgensen hit the jackpot when he won the rich and complex role of Roy Cohn, but he never quite pulls it off, pushing to act the part he seems to imagine will strike the most nerves instead of really feeling the character as his costars do.

Director Michael Dove’s staging echoes the play’s emotional climate. The starkness that fueled Part I’s emotional intensity (under the direction of Jeremy Skidmore) expands here with an opened stage draped in the crisscrossed gauze of the angel’s wings—reminiscent of a cobwebbed attic.

At 3½ hours (seven for both parts), Angels in America is a little too long. But playwright Kushner packs in a lot to think about—from dizzying questions of faith, love, and sickness to a vision of a world where heaven is like San Francisco and there’s still hope for a restless mankind.

Note: Angels in America contains nudity, violence, and overt sexuality.