Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. It has been made into both a television miniseries and an opera by Peter Eötvös.

Characters

The play is written for eight actors, each of whom plays two or more roles. Kushner's doubling, as indicated in the published script, requires several of the actors to play roles outside of their own gender.

There are nine main characters:

Prior Walter - A gay man who previously is dating Louis at the beginning of the play. Early on, it is discovered that he had somehow contracted AIDS. Throughout the play, he experiences various heavenly visions and miracles, climaxing at the end of Act 1 when an angel appears, gives him a book, and charges him with a holy crusade to stop humanity from progressing. He refuses the mission ultimately.

Louis Ironson - Prior's boyfriend, who is unable to deal with Prior's AIDS infection and ends up in a relationship with Joe. He leaves Joe upon learning that he works for Roy Cohn. He is asked by Belize to smuggle rare experimental drugs out of Roy's hospital room and says a Jewish prayer for him with the help of Ethel Rosenberg.

Harper Pitt - A neurotic Mormon housewife who constantly hallucinates because of her constant use of Valium. She dreams of escaping her life and visiting Antarctica. After a revelation from Prior (who she meets when his heavenly vision and her hallucination cross), she discovers that her husband is gay and goes off on a downward spiral. Eventually, she finds the strength to stand up to her husband and leave him for good.

Joe Pitt - A deeply closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn. Joe eventually abandons his wife for a relationship with Louis but tries to return to her when it doesn't work out. Throughout the play, he struggles with his sexual identity.

Roy Cohn - A highly unethical lawyer who is closeted and proud of his part in the Red Scare, specifically the execution of Ethel Rosenberg. It is eventually discovered that he has contracted AIDS (which he insists is "liver cancer") and is sent to a hospital where he pulls strings to get large amounts of experimental drugs for himself. As he dies, he learns from the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg that he has been disbarred.

Ethel Rosenberg - The ghost of a woman who Roy Cohn had executed as a Communist spy. She stays with him as he is in the hospital and takes delight in telling him of his disbarrement. Despite this, she also helps Louis remember the burial Kaddish when Roy dies.

Hannah Pitt - Joe's mother, who moves to New York after her son comes out to her on the phone while drunk. She arrives to find that Joe has abandoned his wife, leaving Harper in a poor mental state. She cares for Harper and later advises Prior on how to reject his holy mission (which he has no desire to take on), suggesting that he wrestle the angel and demand a blessing. At the end of the play, she tells Prior about a fountain that cures all disease and how she will take him to it should it flow again to cure him of his AIDS.

Belize - A drag queen and Prior's best friend. He is a nurse at the hospital which Prior and Roy are kept in and puts up with both Louis's inquiries into Prior's health and Roy's ruthless attitude. He is the first person Prior tells about the encounter with the angel and later has Louis sneak out the large amount of experimental drugs Roy had, following Roy's death.

The Angel America - An angel who visits Prior and charges him with the holy mission of keeping humanity from progressing. When she appears later, he wrestles her to the ground (tearing a muscle in her thigh in the process) and lets him ascend to heaven to speak to the other angels.

Plot

Set in New York City in the mid-1980s, Act One of Millennium Approaches introduces us to the central characters. As the play opens, Louis Ironson, a neurotic, gay Jew learns his lover, Prior Walter, has AIDS. As the play and Prior's illness progress, Louis becomes unable to cope and moves out. Meanwhile, closeted homosexual Mormon and Republican law clerk Joe Pitt is offered a major promotion by his mentor, the McCarthyist lawyer Roy Cohn. Joe doesn't immediately take the job because he feels he has to check with his Valium-addicted, agoraphobic wife, Harper, who is unwilling to move. Roy is himself deeply closeted, and discovers that he has AIDS. Joe does not know of Roy's illness at this time.

As the seven-hour play progresses, Prior is visited by ghosts and an angel who proclaim him to be a prophet; Joe finds himself struggling to reconcile his religion with his sexuality; Louis struggles with his guilt about leaving Prior and begins a relationship with Joe; Harper's mental health deteriorates as she realizes that Joe is gay; Joe's mother, Hannah, moves to New York to attempt to look after Harper and meets Prior after a failed attempt by Prior to confront Hannah's son; Harper begins to separate from Joe whom she has depended upon and find strength she was unaware of; and Roy finds himself in the hospital, reduced to the companionship of the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg and his nurse, Belize, a former drag queen and Prior's best friend, who meanwhile has to deal with Louis's constant demands for updates on Prior's health.

The subplot involving Cohn is the most political aspect of the play. During his life, the character Cohn was profoundly closeted and self-hating. He prided himself on his political connections and power, which he used in a heartless and unethical manner. He played a key role in the Joseph McCarthy hearings of the 1950s. In the play, he recollects with pride his role in having Ethel Rosenberg executed for treason. As he lies alone in the hospital, dying of AIDS, the ghost of Rosenberg brings him the news that the New York State Bar Association has just disbarred him.

The play is deliberately performed so that the moments requiring special effects often show their theatricality. Most of the actors play multiple characters (e.g., the actress playing Prior's nurse also appears as the Angel). There are heavy Biblical references and references to American society, as well as some fantastical scenes including voyages to Antarctica and Heaven, as well as key events happening in San Francisco and at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

Production history

The first part, Millennium Approaches, was commissioned and first performed in May 1990 by the Center Theatre Group at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, as a workshop. Kushner developed the play with the Mark Taper Forum, with which he has a long association. It received its world premiere in May 1991 in a production performed by the Eureka Theatre Company of San Francisco, directed by David Esbjornson.^[1] It debuted in London in a Royal National Theatre production directed by Declan Donnellan in January 1992, which ran for a year.

The second part, Perestroika, was still being developed as Millennium Approaches was being performed. It was performed several times as staged readings by both the Eureka Theatre (during the world premiere of part one), and the Mark Taper Forum (in May 1992). It received its world premiere in November 1992 in a production by the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Oskar Eustis and Tony Taccone. A year later on 20 November 1993, it received its London debut at the National Theatre, again directed by Declan Donnellan, in repertory with a revival of Millennium Approaches.

The play debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 1993, directed by George C. Wolfe, with Millennium Approaches being performed in May and Perestroika joining it in repertory in November. The original cast included Ron Leibman, Stephen Spinella, Kathleen Chalfant, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Wright, Ellen McLaughlin, David Marshall Grant and Joe Mantello. Among the replacements during the run were F. Murray Abraham (for Ron Leibman), Cherry Jones (for Ellen McLaughlin), Dan Futterman (for Joe Mantello) and Cynthia Nixon (for Marcia Gay Harden). Both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika were awarded the Tony Awards for Best Play back to back in 1993 and 1994 respectively. Both parts also won back to back Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Play.

Adaptations

Film

In 2003, HBO Films created a miniseries version of the play. Kushner adapted his original text for the screen, and Mike Nichols directed. HBO broadcast the film in various formats: three-hour segments that correspond to "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika," as well as one-hour "chapters" that roughly correspond to an act or two of each of these plays. The first three chapters were initially broadcast on December 7, to international acclaim, with the final three chapters following. "Angels in America" was the most watched made-for-cable movie in 2003 and won both the Golden Globe and Emmy for Best Miniseries.

Kushner made certain changes to his play (especially Part II, "Perestroika") in order for it to work onscreen, but the HBO version is generally a remarkably faithful representation of Kushner's original work. Kushner has been quoted as saying that he knew Nichols was the right person to direct the movie when, at their first meeting, Nichols immediately said that he wanted actors to play multiple roles, as had been done in onstage productions.

The lead cast includes Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright (repeating his Tony-winning Broadway role), Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson and Mary-Louise Parker.

Opera

Angels in America - The Opera made its world premiere at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, France, on November 23, 2004. The opera was based on both parts of the Angels in America fantasia, however the script was re-worked and condensed to fit both parts into a two and half hour show. Composer Peter Eötvös explains: "In the opera version, I put less emphasis on the political line than Kushner...I rather focus on the passionate relationships, on the highly dramatic suspense of the wonderful text, on the permanently uncertain state of the visions." A German version of the opera followed suit in mid-2005. In late 2005, PBS announced that they would air a live filmed version of the opera as a part of its Great Performances lineup. The opera made its U.S. debut in June 2006 at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts.

Music

The text of Prior Walter's soliloquy from Scene 5 of Perestroika was set to music by Michael Shaieb for a 2009 festival celebrating Kushner's work at the Guthrie Theater. The work was commissioned by the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus, which had commissioned Shaieb's Through A Glass, Darkly in 2008. The work premiered at the Guthrie in April 2009.^{[citation needed]}

Awards and nominations

The play merited inclusion as the very last item in Harold Bloom's controversial list of what he considered to be the most important works of literature, The Western Canon (1994).

References

External links

• Angels in America: Millennium Approaches at the Internet Broadway Database
• Angels in America: Perestroika at the Internet Broadway Database
• Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes at the Internet Movie Database