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Angels in America #1-2
Millennium Approaches
Angels in America is a play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner.
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.
119 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1993
About the author
Tony Kushner
96 books460 followersTony Kushner is an award-winning American playwright most famous for his play Angels in America, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is also co-author, along with Eric Roth, of the screenplay of the 2005 film Munich, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and earned Kushner (along with Roth) an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,980 reviews
January 27, 2008
"Night flight to San Francisco; chase the moon across America. God, it’s been years since I was on a plane. When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause, the great belt of calm air, as close as I’ll ever get to the ozone. I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired. Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so." wow.
June 26, 2022
Sometimes I turn giddy when I sense I am reading a classic. I feel impelled, as if by a great force, by an old god who could perhaps kill me, but it is a god who is ridden by genius, a genius who knows how to ride.
I felt like this when I first read Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. First produced in 1991, Angels is set in 1985 in New York City, during the period when AIDS—a problem in the gay community for at least half a decade—began to be recognized by the general public. It tells the story of four men: openly gay decorator Prior Walter, who is afraid of the process of dying of AIDs, and the loneliness and enlightenment it brings; Louis Ironson, Prior’s lover, who is afraid of the sordidness of death itself and the experience of watching someone die; the recently diagnosed, closeted Roy Cohn, the influential right-wing lawyer, who fears the loss of political influence stemming from the label “homosexual”; and Roy’s protegee Joe Pitt, the unhappy married Mormon lawyer, who is afraid of just about everything: his melancholy wife, his cynical career, his sexual identity, his very self.
From the beginning, the play bursts forth with vivid language and memorable characters, and soon, although it never loses its edge, it breaks the bounds of realism and glories in hallucinatory revelation. Joe’s wife Harper, in a fantasy drug haze, visits Antarctica: Roy Coen converses with the on-stage character Ethel Rosenberg, whose execution he engineered a generation before; and Prior—like a young Ebeneezer Scrooge in a gay “Christmas Carol”—receives visits from two of his ancestors (each named Prior) and The Angel of America herself.
The play is a wild congeries of sensation, filled with searing confrontations, witty dialogue, ambitious expressionistic effects, and almost impossible staging. Yet never for a minute do you sense that Kushner lacks control over his materials: each character is finely etched, with a distinctive voice, and the pace and tone, though continually shifting, always seems connected to the overarching themes, the greater melody.
I look forward eagerly to Angels in America, Part II.
Here is an excerpt that gives a good idea of the poetry and depth of Kushner’s language. Prior, diagnosed with AIDS, tells his lover Louis an old family anecdote:
PRIOR: One of my ancestors was a ship’s captain who made money bringing whale oil to Europe and returning with immigrants—Irish mostly, packed in tight, so many dollars per head. The last ship he captained foundered off the coast of Nova Scotia in a winter tempest and sank to the bottom. He went down with the ship—La Grande Geste—but his crew took seventy women and kids in the ship’s only longboat, this big, open rowboat, and when the weather got too rough, and they thought the boat was overcrowded, the crew started lifting people up and hurling them into the sea. Until they got the ballast right. They walked up and down the longboat, eyes to the waterline, and when the boat rode low in the water they’d grab the nearest passenger and throw them into the sea. The boat was leaky, see; seventy people; they arrived in Halifax with nine people on board.
LOUIS: Jesus.
PRIOR: I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize . . . maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
January 27, 2008
Reading these plays aloud in a high school class created more than a few awkward moments.
August 3, 2024
An almost eight-hour-long play about the AIDS crisis in 80's New York? Yes, please, if it's written like that! The Pulitzer- and Tony-winning text/production is a captivating illustration of the time, rendered in a deep, moving, and frequently very funny tone. Part 1, Millennium Approaches, introduces main character Prior who hails from an old American family. When his health deteriorates due to his AIDS diagnosis, his lover Louis abandons him. Louis, who comes from a Jewish family, then starts a relationship with Joe, a Mormon and Republican who has a Valium-addicted wife and works for lawyer Roy Cohn (a real historical figure who worked for McCarthy and Trump and died of AIDS).
Kushner plays with ideas of transcendence and paranoia when he shows his characters driven to the edge because of fear, shame and anger. Dying Prior, pushed aside by both his lover and society at large, has visions of his ancestors and an angel; Louis wrestles with his guilt and spirals; closeted Joe outwardly submits to his religious and political affiliations while hurting his loved ones and himself, which puts him in constant psychological limbo; Joe's wife, who senses that something is wrong, lives in a Valium-induced haze; and Cohn is haunted by his own ruthlessness: Closeted and unwilling to admit that he has AIDS, he has visions of Ethel Rosenberg, a woman who was, along with her husband, executed for espionage at Cohn's recommendation.
Part 2, Perestroika, then strongly focuses on the idea that change for the better is possible, which, considering that the main character Prior is suffering from AIDS in the 1980's, is quite the strong message (this second part premiered in 1992). Sure, it's messier than part 1, but considering that at the grim time the play was first produced, AIDS-patients came to see how Prior wrestles the angels in order to be allowed to stay on earth and witness a re-structuring of society (which is what Perestroika means and what happened at the time in the former Soviet Union), these are minor flaws. (FYI: Putin is of course ignoring the AIDS pandemic, so much for the motherland of the political Perestroika.)
I listened to the award-winning audio production of the National Theatre, starring the likes of Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, which was great. Here's a clip of the stage version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJT1i...
And here's the famous bench scene in which Prior tells Louis that he has AIDS, starring the fantastic Andrew Scott and Dominic Cooper in an earlier production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRkC6...
Kushner plays with ideas of transcendence and paranoia when he shows his characters driven to the edge because of fear, shame and anger. Dying Prior, pushed aside by both his lover and society at large, has visions of his ancestors and an angel; Louis wrestles with his guilt and spirals; closeted Joe outwardly submits to his religious and political affiliations while hurting his loved ones and himself, which puts him in constant psychological limbo; Joe's wife, who senses that something is wrong, lives in a Valium-induced haze; and Cohn is haunted by his own ruthlessness: Closeted and unwilling to admit that he has AIDS, he has visions of Ethel Rosenberg, a woman who was, along with her husband, executed for espionage at Cohn's recommendation.
Part 2, Perestroika, then strongly focuses on the idea that change for the better is possible, which, considering that the main character Prior is suffering from AIDS in the 1980's, is quite the strong message (this second part premiered in 1992). Sure, it's messier than part 1, but considering that at the grim time the play was first produced, AIDS-patients came to see how Prior wrestles the angels in order to be allowed to stay on earth and witness a re-structuring of society (which is what Perestroika means and what happened at the time in the former Soviet Union), these are minor flaws. (FYI: Putin is of course ignoring the AIDS pandemic, so much for the motherland of the political Perestroika.)
I listened to the award-winning audio production of the National Theatre, starring the likes of Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, which was great. Here's a clip of the stage version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJT1i...
And here's the famous bench scene in which Prior tells Louis that he has AIDS, starring the fantastic Andrew Scott and Dominic Cooper in an earlier production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRkC6...
May 29, 2008
Its like doing lines of cocaine while at a Prince concert then going home and reading Foucault.
or
Angels in America is a grandiose, surrealistic bombast of a play dealing with almost every contemporary American facet of being gay in the U.S. during the late 80's to early 90's. Politics, law, Aids, family, religion are all included. Kushner examines these elements and the nature of Power in the states, how it is used in these relationships, and the effect it has on the gay community externally and internally. Ultimately, all these themes are quickly and hilariously weaved together while still maintain a certain insight and poignancy to his dialogue. Theres a lot going on here and you're not going to catch it all but its still will be fun and even somewhat enlightening.
or
Angels in America is a grandiose, surrealistic bombast of a play dealing with almost every contemporary American facet of being gay in the U.S. during the late 80's to early 90's. Politics, law, Aids, family, religion are all included. Kushner examines these elements and the nature of Power in the states, how it is used in these relationships, and the effect it has on the gay community externally and internally. Ultimately, all these themes are quickly and hilariously weaved together while still maintain a certain insight and poignancy to his dialogue. Theres a lot going on here and you're not going to catch it all but its still will be fun and even somewhat enlightening.
April 17, 2019
Genuinely a bit taken aback by how.....not well Angels in America works as a text. It's really a work that has to be seen, and endured.
Millennium Approaches still quite clearly the stronger of the plays, Perestroika still too meandering and arduous but nonetheless a good counterbalance.
I'd love to do a production of Angels where every heavy-handed symbol is announced by a klaxon and a flashing blue beacon like that one from The Bill. Then at the Oliviers I'd stealthily but gracefully vomit my guts onto Jez Butterworth. Jonathan Pryce would watch on in complete adulation.
Millennium Approaches still quite clearly the stronger of the plays, Perestroika still too meandering and arduous but nonetheless a good counterbalance.
I'd love to do a production of Angels where every heavy-handed symbol is announced by a klaxon and a flashing blue beacon like that one from The Bill. Then at the Oliviers I'd stealthily but gracefully vomit my guts onto Jez Butterworth. Jonathan Pryce would watch on in complete adulation.
April 20, 2020
Iconoclastic & surreal & immediate, this meditation, this fantasia on national themes, probably gets better with age. As the tragedy of HIV/AIDS at its inception in the middle of the Western world becomes more pronounced, even more beautifully terrifying--a seed that will germinate (MUST!) in all members and future members of the LGBtQIA+ community. As Part One ends in a fascinating hyperbolic HALELLUJAH! I cannot even fathom a better link to, a more fanatical search for and more angsty wait for, Part Two of the meteoric American theater God.
August 8, 2023
'Americans pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual: We have no system of universal health care, we don’t educate our children, we can’t pass sane gun control laws, we elect presidents like Reagan, we hate and fear inevitable processes like aging and death.'
Kushner wrote the above well over a decade ago.
Why are we still looking up to America as a global hegemony?
Kushner wrote the above well over a decade ago.
Why are we still looking up to America as a global hegemony?
March 10, 2018
Kushner's overheated - and vastly overrated - opus sent me scurrying for my Yma Sumac CD, "The Voice of the Xtaby." When I want a guest to leave my apartment, I put it on with the admonition, "You must hear her 5-octave pipes!" and, shortly, I am happily alone. You too can hear Yma on YT. She trills from high soprano to basso. The music suggests tweeting birds or a volcanic eruption. Kushner, I read, thought his play might be a musical, initially, and it would have needed Yma. It still does.
Its success is a prime example of how a few mediocre dramer critics, infected w toxic fairy dust or nerve gas, can stampede the public into casting off sane reflection and start belching cheerless huzzahs. Kushner's "monumental achievement" mixes gays and Jews and Mormons (huhh?) in a series of blackout sketches, performed by usually two characters (I dont think he can write for 3 actors onstage). The AIDS crise turned him into a Writer, as it did others, so attention must be paid, as Arthur Miller rumbled. Since Kushner has nothing to say, he deals solely with emotions: mostly agitation and anger. A young man dying of AIDS is abandoned by his lover who becomes involved with a closeted gay Mormon who, in turn, has a shrill, pill-addicted wife. The monstrous lawyer Roy Cohn, also dying, gets a ghostly visit from the pathetic Ethel Rosenberg; amid the hysteria, and juvenile raillery, an angel descends and --- where's Yma Sumac?
Like Brecht, Kushner does not write "characters." He writes "symbols" : Evil, Affectation, Death, The Oppressed. His jabber goes on endlessly. "Our suffering teaches us solidarity; or it should," he allows. "Because Kushner has written a second-rate play...about being gay, and about AIDS, no one is going to call [it] the overwrought, coarse, posturing, formulaic mess that it is," explains a writer in the New Republic. Meantime, essayist Andrew Sullivan, who loathed the play, dismissed it as political agitprop, adding: "Gay life - and gay death - surely awaits something grander and subtler than this."
I saw an early preview c 1991, and the ranting and raging onstage put me to sleep, though I awoke when Roy Cohn (Evil) was dying in pain, which made members of the audience feel Good. I tried to see the Mike Nichols movie, and again I got the snores, especially when Meryl Streep appeared as a rabbi (or was that a bad dream?) It took me a few days to finish a play read, w long naps. The frenzy and yelping agony of passion in Kushner's revue sent me to Yma Sumac, the Peruvian songbird. Skip this theatrical salacacabia and give yourself up to Yma.
Its success is a prime example of how a few mediocre dramer critics, infected w toxic fairy dust or nerve gas, can stampede the public into casting off sane reflection and start belching cheerless huzzahs. Kushner's "monumental achievement" mixes gays and Jews and Mormons (huhh?) in a series of blackout sketches, performed by usually two characters (I dont think he can write for 3 actors onstage). The AIDS crise turned him into a Writer, as it did others, so attention must be paid, as Arthur Miller rumbled. Since Kushner has nothing to say, he deals solely with emotions: mostly agitation and anger. A young man dying of AIDS is abandoned by his lover who becomes involved with a closeted gay Mormon who, in turn, has a shrill, pill-addicted wife. The monstrous lawyer Roy Cohn, also dying, gets a ghostly visit from the pathetic Ethel Rosenberg; amid the hysteria, and juvenile raillery, an angel descends and --- where's Yma Sumac?
Like Brecht, Kushner does not write "characters." He writes "symbols" : Evil, Affectation, Death, The Oppressed. His jabber goes on endlessly. "Our suffering teaches us solidarity; or it should," he allows. "Because Kushner has written a second-rate play...about being gay, and about AIDS, no one is going to call [it] the overwrought, coarse, posturing, formulaic mess that it is," explains a writer in the New Republic. Meantime, essayist Andrew Sullivan, who loathed the play, dismissed it as political agitprop, adding: "Gay life - and gay death - surely awaits something grander and subtler than this."
I saw an early preview c 1991, and the ranting and raging onstage put me to sleep, though I awoke when Roy Cohn (Evil) was dying in pain, which made members of the audience feel Good. I tried to see the Mike Nichols movie, and again I got the snores, especially when Meryl Streep appeared as a rabbi (or was that a bad dream?) It took me a few days to finish a play read, w long naps. The frenzy and yelping agony of passion in Kushner's revue sent me to Yma Sumac, the Peruvian songbird. Skip this theatrical salacacabia and give yourself up to Yma.
November 16, 2017
"This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come."
Angels in America is my favorite and absolutely the most beautiful play I have ever read for many, many reasons. First and foremost, it is a real look at a historical era and crisis so often erased in popular media. The inclusion of real historical figures like Roy Cohn and Ethel Rosenberg only grounded this even more. At the same time, the play exists in the realm of magical realism, for lack of a better term. It pushes the boundaries between real and fantasy but grounds it in religion, truth, and life. Each character is incredibly complex and dynamic, so there are no antagonists in this story, apart from the nature of the Reagan era and AIDS itself. The dialogue is clever and humorous while being incredibly raw and heartfelt. It is heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. The scenes are ingeniously and masterfully crafted and staged. Overall, it is a masterpiece of both theatre and literature. If I were to choose a play that EVERYONE should read, it would be this one.
January 11, 2011
Harper: I'm not addicted. I don't believe in addiction and I... I never drink and I never take drugs.
Prior: Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
Harper: Except for Valium.
Prior: Except Valium in wee fistfuls.
Harper: It's terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I'm a Mormon.
Prior: I'm a homosexual.
Harper: In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals.
Prior: In my church, we don't believe in Mormons.
Fantastic!
Prior: Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
Harper: Except for Valium.
Prior: Except Valium in wee fistfuls.
Harper: It's terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I'm a Mormon.
Prior: I'm a homosexual.
Harper: In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals.
Prior: In my church, we don't believe in Mormons.
Fantastic!
July 17, 2021
I fucking LOVE blasphemy
July 31, 2024
This first part of Angels in America lives up to its reputation: The Pulitzer- and Tony-winning play is a captivating illustration of the AIDS crisis in the 1980's. Main character Prior hails from an old American family. When his health deteriorates due to his AIDS diagnosis, his lover Louis abandons him. Louis, who comes from a Jewish family, then starts a relationship with Joe, a Mormon and Republican who has a Valium-addicted wife and works for lawyer Roy Cohn (a real historical figure who worked for McCarthy and Trump and died of AIDS).
Kushner plays with ideas of transcendence and paranoia when he shows his characters driven to the edge because of fear, shame and anger. Dying Prior, pushed aside by both his lover and society at large, has visions of his ancestors and an angel; Louis wrestles with his guilt and spirals; closeted Joe outwardly submits to his religious and political affiliations while hurting his loved ones and himself, which puts him in constant psychological limbo; Joe's wife, who senses that something is wrong, lives in a Valium-induced haze; and Cohn is haunted by his own ruthlessness: Closeted and unwilling to admit that he has AIDS, he has visions of Ethel Rosenberg, a woman who was, along with her husband, executed for espionage at Cohn's recommendation.
I listened to the award-winning audio production of the National Theatre, starring the likes of Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, which was great. Here's a clip of the stage version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJT1i...
And here's the famous bench scene in which Prior tells Louis that he has AIDS, starring the fantastic Andrew Scott and Dominic Cooper in an earlier production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRkC6...
Kushner plays with ideas of transcendence and paranoia when he shows his characters driven to the edge because of fear, shame and anger. Dying Prior, pushed aside by both his lover and society at large, has visions of his ancestors and an angel; Louis wrestles with his guilt and spirals; closeted Joe outwardly submits to his religious and political affiliations while hurting his loved ones and himself, which puts him in constant psychological limbo; Joe's wife, who senses that something is wrong, lives in a Valium-induced haze; and Cohn is haunted by his own ruthlessness: Closeted and unwilling to admit that he has AIDS, he has visions of Ethel Rosenberg, a woman who was, along with her husband, executed for espionage at Cohn's recommendation.
I listened to the award-winning audio production of the National Theatre, starring the likes of Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane, which was great. Here's a clip of the stage version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJT1i...
And here's the famous bench scene in which Prior tells Louis that he has AIDS, starring the fantastic Andrew Scott and Dominic Cooper in an earlier production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRkC6...
Read
June 27, 2024FULL THOTS ON THAT PATREON YOU KNOW THE DRILL!!
April 23, 2021
This review is of the two plays by Tony Kushner housed under the title ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES -- "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestrokia" -- which can be produced and mounted individually, or together for one rather long (seven-hour) afternoon and evening in the theater.
Although the two plays were workshopped in 1990 and played jointly on Broadway and the West End in 1992 and 1993 -- they are really about the Eighties. Set in 1985 and 1986, with an Epilog in 1990, they're about a people who were credulous enough to believe that the old ways would hold if they just stayed the course.
The first play ("Millennium Approaches") has largely to do with a gay man who falls in love with a closeted, conservative Republican Mormon who abandons his wife. This causes no small amount of confusion in gay, analytical Louis through most of both plays:
On the whole, ANGELS is a freewheeling and often surreal theater piece that gives a role to the late Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed on federal charges of espionage 32 years earlier. A major role belongs to the imperious, grey-winged Angel (played gloriously in the HBO adaptation by Emma Thompson) whom the lead gay character with AIDS, Prior, must straddle to get her attention: "The body is the garden of the soul."
A major character in both plays play is the real-life Roy Cohn, a professional political opportunist who furthered the climate of "Witch-Hunting," persecuting not only political dissidents but inducing a "Lavender Scare" among gay men, during the Joseph McCarthy years of the 1950's. He, too, is homosexual but will not allow the word anywhere near him, even as he prepares to die of AIDS ("liver cancer"):
[Reviewer's Note: The real Roy Cohn once "treated" a reporter to a limousine-ride interview while simultaneously cooling his anal warts (contracted just as you think they were) with an air-conditioner vent. Not for nothing did playwright Kushner call the Eighties "the Fifties in drag."]
Tony Kushner has given us two plays that are probably among the best and certainly among the most powerful of late-Twentieth-Century American theater. If you like plays and how they are written, this volume belongs in your home. Also well worth having is HBO's 2005 miniseries adaptation with top-notch actors like Meryl Streep playing Ethel Rosenberg and Al Pacino as Roy Cohn, which I have reviewed at Amazon.
from the play: "You may be dumber than shit but I refuse to believe you can't figure it out. Try."
Although the two plays were workshopped in 1990 and played jointly on Broadway and the West End in 1992 and 1993 -- they are really about the Eighties. Set in 1985 and 1986, with an Epilog in 1990, they're about a people who were credulous enough to believe that the old ways would hold if they just stayed the course.
The first play ("Millennium Approaches") has largely to do with a gay man who falls in love with a closeted, conservative Republican Mormon who abandons his wife. This causes no small amount of confusion in gay, analytical Louis through most of both plays:
"It's just that, you know, belonging to a political party that's one half religious-zealot-control-freak theocrats and one-half ego-anarchist-libertarian cowboys [shrilling for 'freedom'] . . . you've had a lot of practice straddling cognitive dissonance? Or, or what?"
from "Perestroika," Act 3 (p. 195).
On the whole, ANGELS is a freewheeling and often surreal theater piece that gives a role to the late Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed on federal charges of espionage 32 years earlier. A major role belongs to the imperious, grey-winged Angel (played gloriously in the HBO adaptation by Emma Thompson) whom the lead gay character with AIDS, Prior, must straddle to get her attention: "The body is the garden of the soul."
A major character in both plays play is the real-life Roy Cohn, a professional political opportunist who furthered the climate of "Witch-Hunting," persecuting not only political dissidents but inducing a "Lavender Scare" among gay men, during the Joseph McCarthy years of the 1950's. He, too, is homosexual but will not allow the word anywhere near him, even as he prepares to die of AIDS ("liver cancer"):
From the play -- Roy Cohn, diagnosed with AIDS, threatens his doctor:
"No, say it. I mean it. Say: 'Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.' . . . And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do. . . To someone who doesn't understand this, homosexual is what I am because I sleep with men, but this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who, in 15 years of trying, can't get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council. They are men who know nobody, and who nobody knows. Now, Henry, does that sound like me?"
from "Millennium Approaches," Scene 9 (p. 195).
[Reviewer's Note: The real Roy Cohn once "treated" a reporter to a limousine-ride interview while simultaneously cooling his anal warts (contracted just as you think they were) with an air-conditioner vent. Not for nothing did playwright Kushner call the Eighties "the Fifties in drag."]
Tony Kushner has given us two plays that are probably among the best and certainly among the most powerful of late-Twentieth-Century American theater. If you like plays and how they are written, this volume belongs in your home. Also well worth having is HBO's 2005 miniseries adaptation with top-notch actors like Meryl Streep playing Ethel Rosenberg and Al Pacino as Roy Cohn, which I have reviewed at Amazon.
from the play: "You may be dumber than shit but I refuse to believe you can't figure it out. Try."
April 29, 2021
I put off reviewing this book out of dread for so long that now I don't think I could give it the full treatment if I tried—I'm too far out from my first impression.
But if nothing else I think the sheer number and variety of Goodreads shelves I've put this on should give you some idea of its scope, which in turn will tell you why I was so intimidated by the prospect of reviewing it. So rather than give you nothing, I'll give you that:
SHELVED AS: 1950-to-1999
One of the great American plays of the late 20th century, and perhaps the single most influential piece of literature to come out of the AIDS epidemic from someone who was there. Even if you don't know theater (I don't), even if you don't know queer lit (I do, within limits), you almost definitely know Angels.
Also a play acutely aware of its place in historical time; the subtitle of the first volume is "Millennium Approaches," though most of the characters are less than certain they're actually going to get there.
SHELVED AS: book-club
Watchable versions are available and should be availed of, but Kushner is a literary sort of playwright and benefits from close reading, too.
SHELVED AS: drama
I've never been lucky enough to see this two-part behemoth onstage, but Kushner's notes at the end of my copy give a good idea of just how magnificent a pain in the ass it must be to put on.
SHELVED AS: family-matters
Families found, families foreordained, families fraught, fractured, and fixed.
SHELVED AS: gender-on-my-mind
Questions of what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be a man who loves men, to be a woman who loves a man who loves men, to perform masculinity, to perform femininity. . . Do angels have genders at all?
SHELVED AS: kings-and-politicians
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely deliberate. Ballsy commentary on Reaganite politics which ends up predicting Trumpism, too. (Roy Cohn was both Ronald's advisor and Donald's attorney.) Power never strays far from its source.
SHELVED AS: lgbtq-themes
Obviously.
Kushner doesn't speak for every queer experience (nor does he claim to), and you should definitely seek out other perspectives on this history, but I don't think that lessens the value of the great deal he does manage to achieve here.
SHELVED AS: speculative-elements
Well, who am I to say what's fantasy and what's not?
SHELVED AS: things-in-heaven-and-earth
A plague of biblical proportions demands a prophet—and in fiction, at least, it can receive one.
The angels here are as weird and horrifying as angels should be; no Precious Moments cherubs to be found in these pages.
Not a "religious" play but certainly one fascinated by faith. Plentiful dashes of Judaism, Christianity, and that all-American offshoot, Mormonism.
SHELVED AS: what-is-love
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken. . . .
In conclusion
A brainy lovely wordy rageful generous play which I won't claim I fully comprehended, but which I certainly liked a whole lot.
But if nothing else I think the sheer number and variety of Goodreads shelves I've put this on should give you some idea of its scope, which in turn will tell you why I was so intimidated by the prospect of reviewing it. So rather than give you nothing, I'll give you that:
SHELVED AS: 1950-to-1999
One of the great American plays of the late 20th century, and perhaps the single most influential piece of literature to come out of the AIDS epidemic from someone who was there. Even if you don't know theater (I don't), even if you don't know queer lit (I do, within limits), you almost definitely know Angels.
Also a play acutely aware of its place in historical time; the subtitle of the first volume is "Millennium Approaches," though most of the characters are less than certain they're actually going to get there.
SHELVED AS: book-club
Watchable versions are available and should be availed of, but Kushner is a literary sort of playwright and benefits from close reading, too.
SHELVED AS: drama
I've never been lucky enough to see this two-part behemoth onstage, but Kushner's notes at the end of my copy give a good idea of just how magnificent a pain in the ass it must be to put on.
SHELVED AS: family-matters
Families found, families foreordained, families fraught, fractured, and fixed.
SHELVED AS: gender-on-my-mind
Questions of what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be a man who loves men, to be a woman who loves a man who loves men, to perform masculinity, to perform femininity. . . Do angels have genders at all?
SHELVED AS: kings-and-politicians
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely deliberate. Ballsy commentary on Reaganite politics which ends up predicting Trumpism, too. (Roy Cohn was both Ronald's advisor and Donald's attorney.) Power never strays far from its source.
SHELVED AS: lgbtq-themes
Obviously.
Kushner doesn't speak for every queer experience (nor does he claim to), and you should definitely seek out other perspectives on this history, but I don't think that lessens the value of the great deal he does manage to achieve here.
SHELVED AS: speculative-elements
Well, who am I to say what's fantasy and what's not?
SHELVED AS: things-in-heaven-and-earth
A plague of biblical proportions demands a prophet—and in fiction, at least, it can receive one.
The angels here are as weird and horrifying as angels should be; no Precious Moments cherubs to be found in these pages.
Not a "religious" play but certainly one fascinated by faith. Plentiful dashes of Judaism, Christianity, and that all-American offshoot, Mormonism.
SHELVED AS: what-is-love
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken. . . .
In conclusion
A brainy lovely wordy rageful generous play which I won't claim I fully comprehended, but which I certainly liked a whole lot.
January 20, 2016
There was a scene in the movie Still Alice when the maddeningly sexy Kristen Stewart reads Harper's last monologue from this play to her mother, and it tore my heart out HARD.
The words of the monologue were so unique and touching. I looked up the play and was happy to find it in the queer library close to my house. Read it in a day or two and I have to say I've never read anything quite like Angels in America before.
GOD I LOVE JEWISH WRITERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There I said it.
And GAY JEWISH WRITERS.
My brain had multiple orgasms reading Kushner's witty, stark, wild, righteously angry, politically incorrect, loving, generous, imaginative prose. I only have one question.
HOW?
I mean, how the fuck did he pull this off? Every character in here, from the life-affirming black nurse Belize (Drag Queen name), to Joe the closeted republican clerk, to his wife Harper, the fragile woman in love with her gay husband, to Prior, the terrified man AIDS who is visited by the Angel with the Silver wings, down to his all too human and cowardly boyfriend Louis who abandons him alone in a hospital... They lived. They were so vividly rendered. I ate this up like Tom Cruise eats up Scientology cookies.
And let's not forget the majestically honest and brutally uncompromising Roy Cohn.
Whew. This isn't a review. It's a plead to you all to read this read this read this!!!!
Yet, through all the humor and careful wake-up calls in this masterpiece--Tony Kushner's testimony--I began to feel raw like a fresh wound. Because that's what Angels in America really is twenty years later: a transcript of a time when men ten years younger than I am today were dying, dropping like flies, while the Reagan administration looked the other way.
Only through art, literature and in the hearts of those who still love them can those young men be remembered.
***
The words of the monologue were so unique and touching. I looked up the play and was happy to find it in the queer library close to my house. Read it in a day or two and I have to say I've never read anything quite like Angels in America before.
GOD I LOVE JEWISH WRITERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There I said it.
And GAY JEWISH WRITERS.
My brain had multiple orgasms reading Kushner's witty, stark, wild, righteously angry, politically incorrect, loving, generous, imaginative prose. I only have one question.
HOW?
I mean, how the fuck did he pull this off? Every character in here, from the life-affirming black nurse Belize (Drag Queen name), to Joe the closeted republican clerk, to his wife Harper, the fragile woman in love with her gay husband, to Prior, the terrified man AIDS who is visited by the Angel with the Silver wings, down to his all too human and cowardly boyfriend Louis who abandons him alone in a hospital... They lived. They were so vividly rendered. I ate this up like Tom Cruise eats up Scientology cookies.
And let's not forget the majestically honest and brutally uncompromising Roy Cohn.
Whew. This isn't a review. It's a plead to you all to read this read this read this!!!!
Yet, through all the humor and careful wake-up calls in this masterpiece--Tony Kushner's testimony--I began to feel raw like a fresh wound. Because that's what Angels in America really is twenty years later: a transcript of a time when men ten years younger than I am today were dying, dropping like flies, while the Reagan administration looked the other way.
Only through art, literature and in the hearts of those who still love them can those young men be remembered.
***
June 22, 2020
Everyone's life in this play is/becomes affected by AIDS. The time is 1985. It is a scary time with AZT brand new. As Prior Walter's fever culminates, his talks with Angels and some others from the next world intensify. The effect of AIDS does not care how strong a character may be in their earthly life. This play displays a variety of different personalities and how they handle AIDS as it crosses their path. A fast moving play with short scenes. Even in these short scenes, there may be two sequences and dialogues going on simultaneously (hospital room; at home). There are some connections between characters revealed early. More interesting connections develop as the play goes on.
I am sure I would like this more as a Live performance. The stage directions are written into the play (overlapping dialogues, sound queues, pauses, etc.) There were consistent small monologues (multiple sentences) by characters that would not be done so much in normal conversations. These messages were important, and were part of the personality of this play.
At no point did I know how the play would end, until it ended. While not a 'surprise' ending, it is still one you must wait for. That is a sign of a story that keeps you paying attention and wanting to read (or watch) even more.
Angel: "He wants to live."
Prior: "Yes. I'm thirty years old, for God sake. (soft rumble) I haven't done anything yet, I... I want to be healthy again. And this plague, it should stop. In me and everywhere. Make it go away."
Angel: Oh We have tried. We suffer with You but We do not know. We Do not know how."
Solid 4.5, but I don't feel the need to buy this book, so I round down.
Great ending quote in the epilogue:
"We won't die secret deaths anymore.
The World only spins forward.
We will be Citizens.
The time has come."
I am sure I would like this more as a Live performance. The stage directions are written into the play (overlapping dialogues, sound queues, pauses, etc.) There were consistent small monologues (multiple sentences) by characters that would not be done so much in normal conversations. These messages were important, and were part of the personality of this play.
At no point did I know how the play would end, until it ended. While not a 'surprise' ending, it is still one you must wait for. That is a sign of a story that keeps you paying attention and wanting to read (or watch) even more.
Angel: "He wants to live."
Prior: "Yes. I'm thirty years old, for God sake. (soft rumble) I haven't done anything yet, I... I want to be healthy again. And this plague, it should stop. In me and everywhere. Make it go away."
Angel: Oh We have tried. We suffer with You but We do not know. We Do not know how."
Solid 4.5, but I don't feel the need to buy this book, so I round down.
Great ending quote in the epilogue:
"We won't die secret deaths anymore.
The World only spins forward.
We will be Citizens.
The time has come."
May 6, 2017
Well that really was something.
It's hard for me to write a real review of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches because I finished it a few minutes ago and I'm dying, dying to start part two, Perestroika, which is sitting right next to me. But let's try anyway. Quick and dirty, no funny business.
This play is something special, and I knew that almost immediately. Reading the cast of characters page was a bit of a trip at first—it includes a drag queen-turned-nurse, two ghosts, a rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, an Eskimo, an imaginary travel agent, and an angel, among others. But don't let that turn you off, because it is really, really, really good, and not as bizarre as you might think.
Right off the bat, the dialogue is superb. The way the characters speak and interact feels so real, and this isn't something I'd normally comment on but Kushner's use of punctuation is very effective, it gives a really good indication of the cadence of the lines without actually having to put any parenthetical direction into it. Everyone has a unique way of speaking, too, which is something I notice playwrights tend to struggle with without resorting to drastic accents or overly emotive stage cues.
And every character felt like a real person (not just the ones who actually were, like Roy Cohn & Ethel Rosenberg). It's stunning, truly, how well they're fleshed out despite the length of the play (far too short! I want more!) and the fact that they all have to share the spotlight. They transcend stereotypes in beautiful ways, their words are powerful but human, and the conversations they have are anything but easy and pleasant. They react to heartbreak and disease and confusion the way real people do, they don't act like characters in a play. And there wasn't a single one I disliked, not even the ones that act despicably or forsake the ones they love, because I can understand every one of them, and I can relate to something deep at the core of each one.
There are touches of surrealism, or magical realism at least—a mutual dream scene, a brief foray into Antarctica, divinity-induced arousal. But it really is remarkable how well these blend in with the rest of the piece, and even though they're clearly more fantastical, they feel no less real. I don't think I've ever pictured any play more clearly in my head than this; I had vivid mental images of every character, I could visualise the split scenes (another playwriting tactic Kushner uses to great effect here), I could see the heavenly light and the angel breaking out from above on the very last page, I could hear the triumphant sublimity of the chorus, Hallelujah!, Hallelujah! Glory to!
The whole play cultivates this incredible feeling of something coming, of being right on the very cusp of something profound and terrifying and blindingly beautiful, something unknown but all the more powerful for the not knowing. There's this sense of upheaval, of things set in motion, of being swept up into the awe-inspiring heart of mankind and everything we are. The climax comes at the very end, which of course leads right into part two, but the building anticipation is anything but unsatisfying. What is coming? What is on the other side? What is this grand, sublime thing that has come to save us or smite us, is it plague and damnation or salvation and "softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace"? What will happen when it arrives?
In all this praise I realise I haven't yet answered the big question: What is Millennium Approaches actually ABOUT? Hard to say. I suppose I could just say "the 1980s" or "the AIDS crisis" and that would technically be true, but it wouldn't be much truer than saying the Statue of Liberty is a decently-sized figurine or the Grand Canyon is a large crack. It just doesn't cover it. Yes, the four main male characters are all homosexual; yes, two of them have AIDS; yes, it takes place in New York City in 1985/1986; yes, there's a drag scene and a gay sex scene and several dying-of-AIDS scenes. But the subtitle really says it all: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. A significant part of Angels in America is about homosexuality, certainly, but rather than ending the theme there—homophobia is bad, AIDS is bad, that's all folks thanks for coming—Tony Kushner uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the complexities of love, justice, identity, religion. And he does so beautifully.
If or when you get the chance, read this play. It is not to be missed.
It's hard for me to write a real review of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches because I finished it a few minutes ago and I'm dying, dying to start part two, Perestroika, which is sitting right next to me. But let's try anyway. Quick and dirty, no funny business.
This play is something special, and I knew that almost immediately. Reading the cast of characters page was a bit of a trip at first—it includes a drag queen-turned-nurse, two ghosts, a rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, an Eskimo, an imaginary travel agent, and an angel, among others. But don't let that turn you off, because it is really, really, really good, and not as bizarre as you might think.
Right off the bat, the dialogue is superb. The way the characters speak and interact feels so real, and this isn't something I'd normally comment on but Kushner's use of punctuation is very effective, it gives a really good indication of the cadence of the lines without actually having to put any parenthetical direction into it. Everyone has a unique way of speaking, too, which is something I notice playwrights tend to struggle with without resorting to drastic accents or overly emotive stage cues.
And every character felt like a real person (not just the ones who actually were, like Roy Cohn & Ethel Rosenberg). It's stunning, truly, how well they're fleshed out despite the length of the play (far too short! I want more!) and the fact that they all have to share the spotlight. They transcend stereotypes in beautiful ways, their words are powerful but human, and the conversations they have are anything but easy and pleasant. They react to heartbreak and disease and confusion the way real people do, they don't act like characters in a play. And there wasn't a single one I disliked, not even the ones that act despicably or forsake the ones they love, because I can understand every one of them, and I can relate to something deep at the core of each one.
There are touches of surrealism, or magical realism at least—a mutual dream scene, a brief foray into Antarctica, divinity-induced arousal. But it really is remarkable how well these blend in with the rest of the piece, and even though they're clearly more fantastical, they feel no less real. I don't think I've ever pictured any play more clearly in my head than this; I had vivid mental images of every character, I could visualise the split scenes (another playwriting tactic Kushner uses to great effect here), I could see the heavenly light and the angel breaking out from above on the very last page, I could hear the triumphant sublimity of the chorus, Hallelujah!, Hallelujah! Glory to!
The whole play cultivates this incredible feeling of something coming, of being right on the very cusp of something profound and terrifying and blindingly beautiful, something unknown but all the more powerful for the not knowing. There's this sense of upheaval, of things set in motion, of being swept up into the awe-inspiring heart of mankind and everything we are. The climax comes at the very end, which of course leads right into part two, but the building anticipation is anything but unsatisfying. What is coming? What is on the other side? What is this grand, sublime thing that has come to save us or smite us, is it plague and damnation or salvation and "softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace"? What will happen when it arrives?
HARPER: I'm undecided. I feel... that something is going to give. It's 1985. Fifteen years till the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there'll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what's outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe... maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it's even worse than I know, maybe... I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.
In all this praise I realise I haven't yet answered the big question: What is Millennium Approaches actually ABOUT? Hard to say. I suppose I could just say "the 1980s" or "the AIDS crisis" and that would technically be true, but it wouldn't be much truer than saying the Statue of Liberty is a decently-sized figurine or the Grand Canyon is a large crack. It just doesn't cover it. Yes, the four main male characters are all homosexual; yes, two of them have AIDS; yes, it takes place in New York City in 1985/1986; yes, there's a drag scene and a gay sex scene and several dying-of-AIDS scenes. But the subtitle really says it all: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. A significant part of Angels in America is about homosexuality, certainly, but rather than ending the theme there—homophobia is bad, AIDS is bad, that's all folks thanks for coming—Tony Kushner uses it as a jumping-off point to explore the complexities of love, justice, identity, religion. And he does so beautifully.
If or when you get the chance, read this play. It is not to be missed.
September 17, 2023
”For us it’s not the verdict that counts, it’s the act of judgement.”
”Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.”
”I could be a witch. Why not? I married a fairy.”
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, (the two related plays within Angels In America) are not subtle plays. They are bombastic and garish. Their symbolism is heavy handed. Their brash magical realism, via way of hallucinations, dreams, and angelic apokalypsis, is loud and demanding. They are the theatrical equivalent of the Village Halloween Parade. How else would you capture the trauma of AIDS amid the excesses of the Reagan ‘80s?
The true power of these plays is in the relationships they reveal in all their messy complexity. Love, friendship, selfishness, faithlessness, ambition, fear, and guilt all swirl in a complex dance within them. Prior and Louis, a gay couple torn apart by Louis’s fear of Prior’s disease, Joe and Harper, a deeply closeted conservative Mormon and his wounded wife spiraling into delusions because of their toxic secrets, Louis and Joe, searching for solace from their fear and guilt in each other, even Roy Cohn and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as Roy struggles against his mortality, clinging to his forceful will and hatreds — each of these couplings, swirling around each other, reveal aspects of the complexity of our humanity.
The two opposite poles that energize Angels In America are Roy Cohn and Belize. Cohn was famous as the prosecutor of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and as a confederate of Joe McCarthy in pursuing both the Red and Lavender Scares. In the plays, he is fascinatingly detestable, dominating every scene he is in. Yet he is strangely compelling in his unbending will to shape the world as he wants it, without apology or remorse. Even dying he personifies the American myth of the Individual. Belize, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is a fabulous queer nurse, a shepherd of mercy dispensing wisdom and compassion to his friends and charges with an oh snap! biting wit.
Angels In America should be experienced rather than read. I discovered it in its miniseries form, with its outstanding performances from Al Pacino, Jeffery Wright, and Mary-Louise Parker. I later listened to the excellent audio production performed by the National Theater Broadway Cast (twice). Much of its power depends on its staging and production, and simply would not come across as powerfully on the page.
”Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.”
”I could be a witch. Why not? I married a fairy.”
Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, (the two related plays within Angels In America) are not subtle plays. They are bombastic and garish. Their symbolism is heavy handed. Their brash magical realism, via way of hallucinations, dreams, and angelic apokalypsis, is loud and demanding. They are the theatrical equivalent of the Village Halloween Parade. How else would you capture the trauma of AIDS amid the excesses of the Reagan ‘80s?
The true power of these plays is in the relationships they reveal in all their messy complexity. Love, friendship, selfishness, faithlessness, ambition, fear, and guilt all swirl in a complex dance within them. Prior and Louis, a gay couple torn apart by Louis’s fear of Prior’s disease, Joe and Harper, a deeply closeted conservative Mormon and his wounded wife spiraling into delusions because of their toxic secrets, Louis and Joe, searching for solace from their fear and guilt in each other, even Roy Cohn and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as Roy struggles against his mortality, clinging to his forceful will and hatreds — each of these couplings, swirling around each other, reveal aspects of the complexity of our humanity.
The two opposite poles that energize Angels In America are Roy Cohn and Belize. Cohn was famous as the prosecutor of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and as a confederate of Joe McCarthy in pursuing both the Red and Lavender Scares. In the plays, he is fascinatingly detestable, dominating every scene he is in. Yet he is strangely compelling in his unbending will to shape the world as he wants it, without apology or remorse. Even dying he personifies the American myth of the Individual. Belize, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is a fabulous queer nurse, a shepherd of mercy dispensing wisdom and compassion to his friends and charges with an oh snap! biting wit.
Angels In America should be experienced rather than read. I discovered it in its miniseries form, with its outstanding performances from Al Pacino, Jeffery Wright, and Mary-Louise Parker. I later listened to the excellent audio production performed by the National Theater Broadway Cast (twice). Much of its power depends on its staging and production, and simply would not come across as powerfully on the page.
February 25, 2024
A sharp, witty script that manages to craft a balance of humour whilst engaging with very serious themes around death and identity, whilst being set during the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s.
I also watched the National Theatre production, with Andrew Garfield starring as one of the main characters, and it was great seeing how the script could be brought to life. This is a play that brilliantly explores character relationships. Whilst at times the dream-like, metaphorical sequences did not click with me as much, they still were interesting.
I also watched the National Theatre production, with Andrew Garfield starring as one of the main characters, and it was great seeing how the script could be brought to life. This is a play that brilliantly explores character relationships. Whilst at times the dream-like, metaphorical sequences did not click with me as much, they still were interesting.
October 10, 2007
Angels in America is seven hours long. You need to break the two parts up over the course of a weekend, probably. And it might be the first and it might be the only gay epic ever written. And this is why it's one of the most important books I've read. Luckily it's also one of the best.
Its project is a tough one: look at the rise of AIDS in the culture of Reagan-era New York City as experienced by three men who identify as gay, one Mormon who's oriented sexually toward other men, and Roy Cohn—who spent a lifetime in the closet and died in 1986 of complications due to AIDS. Introduce angels to the scene and try to humanize everyone no matter how villainous they might act. More than its length, AiA is magnificent for the honest way it goes about compassion. Hannah, the mother of the closeted Mormon, becomes at the end of the play a New Yorker in looks and all, amiable friends with a gaggle of gays without having gone all haggy about it. She is able to make this change because she knows herself, and her selfhood is as strong as her faith. She's in the end a kind of hero.
I will always remember Prior's final lines, will let them ring in my head long after I've forgotten everything else. He's talking to the audience:
"This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
"Bye now.
"You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
"And I bless you: More Life.
"The Great Work Begins."
Its project is a tough one: look at the rise of AIDS in the culture of Reagan-era New York City as experienced by three men who identify as gay, one Mormon who's oriented sexually toward other men, and Roy Cohn—who spent a lifetime in the closet and died in 1986 of complications due to AIDS. Introduce angels to the scene and try to humanize everyone no matter how villainous they might act. More than its length, AiA is magnificent for the honest way it goes about compassion. Hannah, the mother of the closeted Mormon, becomes at the end of the play a New Yorker in looks and all, amiable friends with a gaggle of gays without having gone all haggy about it. She is able to make this change because she knows herself, and her selfhood is as strong as her faith. She's in the end a kind of hero.
I will always remember Prior's final lines, will let them ring in my head long after I've forgotten everything else. He's talking to the audience:
"This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
"Bye now.
"You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
"And I bless you: More Life.
"The Great Work Begins."
December 8, 2010
I begin this review with a quote: "Things fall apart / the center cannot hold." A colleague pointed out the resonances of Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming' in Kushner's 'Angels,' and I had to agree with his fantastic observation. This is a drama set in Reaganite America that images a world seemingly coming to an implosive and horrifying end. God has literally abandoned us (evidently, during the great San Francisco earthquake), and the national and historical crises alluded to--the onset of the AIDS epidemic being the most present, but also the fall of the Soviet Union, the infection of Reagan-era individualism, the legacy of the Cold War, the Rosenberg trial--profoundly intersect with the personal crises that provide the play's sometimes overwhelming sense of trauma.
Roy & Prior are each wrecked by AIDS; Harper is a pill-popping agoraphobe; there are closets galore; there are pervasive narratives of abandonment (emblematized in the one committed by God) and of comings-home; of religious doubt & the terror of change--with its corollary, the terror of stasis. There's also, as evidenced by figures like Harper, Joe, Louis, and Prior, the terror of being with--and being isolated from--other people. Roy Cohn is both a historical figure and a kind of literary master narrative--as my professor remarked, Roy reads almost as analogous to Milton's Satan. He's the most despicable character, ostensibly the villain of the play, but ultimately also becomes an intensely compelling one to follow.
With all of this said, I simply have to remark that this is, first and foremost, an absolutely magnificent work of literature. It's beautifully written, refreshingly literary (without being as pretentious as I've been in this review), often laugh-out-loud hilarious, and emotionally affecting in a way I haven't experienced with a fictional work in a long time. Read it. Seriously, READ. IT. For your betterment as a human being, give the play a shot. It's just radiant.
Roy & Prior are each wrecked by AIDS; Harper is a pill-popping agoraphobe; there are closets galore; there are pervasive narratives of abandonment (emblematized in the one committed by God) and of comings-home; of religious doubt & the terror of change--with its corollary, the terror of stasis. There's also, as evidenced by figures like Harper, Joe, Louis, and Prior, the terror of being with--and being isolated from--other people. Roy Cohn is both a historical figure and a kind of literary master narrative--as my professor remarked, Roy reads almost as analogous to Milton's Satan. He's the most despicable character, ostensibly the villain of the play, but ultimately also becomes an intensely compelling one to follow.
With all of this said, I simply have to remark that this is, first and foremost, an absolutely magnificent work of literature. It's beautifully written, refreshingly literary (without being as pretentious as I've been in this review), often laugh-out-loud hilarious, and emotionally affecting in a way I haven't experienced with a fictional work in a long time. Read it. Seriously, READ. IT. For your betterment as a human being, give the play a shot. It's just radiant.
January 28, 2023
Leiam este livro, vejam a série.
É verdade que é um livro potente sobre o VIH Sida, mas é - igualmente - um incisivo retrato da política e da sociedade norte-americana nos anos 80.
É verdade que é um livro potente sobre o VIH Sida, mas é - igualmente - um incisivo retrato da política e da sociedade norte-americana nos anos 80.
November 6, 2020
"Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do."
This play is going to stay with me for a long time.
This play is going to stay with me for a long time.
November 8, 2010
I absolutely love this play. It explores the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, particularly its effect on the gay community. But you don’t have to be a gay man with AIDS living in 1985 to relate to it. This play reaches out on a very basic human level. It’s about dealing with loss, love, sickness, regret, hope, politics, betrayal, sex, religion, death, confusion, hate…it’s about facing yourself and trying to deal with what you find there.
Angels is hands down my favorite play. It’s written in 2 parts: Millenium Approaches and Perestroika and is somewhere around 7 hours when performed back-to-back.
Seriously, if I could set the curriculum for a literature class, Angels in America would be top priority. I think it’s an important play and that everyone should grab a copy of it and just read the hell out of it.
Angels is hands down my favorite play. It’s written in 2 parts: Millenium Approaches and Perestroika and is somewhere around 7 hours when performed back-to-back.
Seriously, if I could set the curriculum for a literature class, Angels in America would be top priority. I think it’s an important play and that everyone should grab a copy of it and just read the hell out of it.
March 28, 2010
Seeing that "Angels in America" is a Pulitzer prize winner, I think I should conclude I am just not smart enough to get it. I neither enjoyed this play nor understood it. I'll leave it at that.
Reading challenge: #12.
Reading challenge: #12.
April 11, 2020
“what AIDS shows us is the limits of tolerance, that’s it’s not enough to be tolerated, because when the shit hits the fan you find out how much tolerance is worth. Nothing. And underneath all the tolerance is intense, passionate hatred.”
well that sure was. something
well that sure was. something
June 3, 2024
È più riflessivo di quanto Wikipedia faccia intendere. Tosto e con temi importanti, sarebbe uno spettacolo assistere a una rappresentazione a teatro ma prima recupero la serie e poi passerò alla recensione.
August 27, 2023
Reading these two plays totally blew my mind- both in positive and mindbending ways. First at the heart of "Angels" are characters left behind, characters suffering a broken heart, and wondering how love went wrong for them- especially for Prior and Harper; and the complexities of ambivalent feelings that Joe and Louis wind up having for each other against the backdrop of the dying Roy Cohn and the fear and specter of AIDS.
The ideas of love, metaphysics, sexuality, fluidity have always been the crux of Kushner's opus, but sometimes his dialogue gets a little heavy-handed with too much sentimentality or preachiness.
However, I have just seen the latest Broadway revival (2018) starring Nathan Lane as Cohn, and Andrew Garfield as Prior; and both left indelible impressions on me as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Justin Kirk did in the miniseries directed by Mike Nichols. Throw in a little Ethel Rosenberg, an awakened Hannah Pitt, and a very, very strange angel- you are in for a theatrical reading treat.
The ideas of love, metaphysics, sexuality, fluidity have always been the crux of Kushner's opus, but sometimes his dialogue gets a little heavy-handed with too much sentimentality or preachiness.
However, I have just seen the latest Broadway revival (2018) starring Nathan Lane as Cohn, and Andrew Garfield as Prior; and both left indelible impressions on me as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Justin Kirk did in the miniseries directed by Mike Nichols. Throw in a little Ethel Rosenberg, an awakened Hannah Pitt, and a very, very strange angel- you are in for a theatrical reading treat.
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