Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

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Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Angels in America)

4.31 of 5 stars 4.31 · rating details · 4,735 ratings · 206 reviews

HBO Films will present Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols from Tony Kushner’s own adaptation of his Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The remarkable cast features Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson, James Cromwell, Michael Gam...more

Paperback, Complete Edition, 304 pages

Published November 1st 2003 by Theatre Communications Group

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Jan 26, 2008 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: joshbooks

Reading these plays aloud in a high school class created more than a few awkward moments.

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Jan 26, 2008 Brett rated it 5 of 5 stars

"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 a...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Manda rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-book-challenge-2011

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 writt...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Jamie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010, drama

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 AID...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Julia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: plays, favorites

so good, guys, SO GOOD. this was pretty much the most compelling thing i've read in a while, from plot to themes to characters (i haven't read something in so long where i've just loved every single character, every single distinct person. i especially love louis, even though or maybe because he's such a shithead, or rather a guilt-wracked neurotic jew. which makes him sound like a type, but he's not just a type, that's just his personality as advertised). i'm talking generalities here and i thi...more

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Oct 09, 2007 Dusty Myers rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Yamrat rated it 4 of 5 stars

This play is utterly gutwrenching. I've never felt more conflicted, sick and in love with a bunch of characters before.

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Oct 08, 2012 K. Jared Hosein rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"We have reached a verdict, your honor. This man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing."

"Angels in America" is a two-part play written by Tony Kushner based around the lives of numerous homosexual men, the ladies in their lives and their brushes with celestial beings, ghosts of the past and parallel realms. The first part, titled Millennium Approaches, was deemed so superb by the Pulitzer committee that they did not even wait until the debut of the second part for them to...more "We have reached a verdict, your honor. This man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing."

"Angels in America" is a two-part play written by Tony Kushner based around the lives of numerous homosexual men, the ladies in their lives and their brushes with celestial beings, ghosts of the past and parallel realms. The first part, titled Millennium Approaches, was deemed so superb by the Pulitzer committee that they did not even wait until the debut of the second part for them to award it their top prize.

The second part, Perestroika, named after the movement that led to the dissolution of the Communist Soviet Union, completes each character arc, whether leading to downfall or redemption. The title is appropriate, as the McCarthy Witch Hunts play a major role with many of the characters, along with comparing Communist discrimination to homosexuals and HIV-stricken people.

Our characters include:

1. A young HIV stricken man named Prior Walter, who begins seeing divine visions during his trips to the doctor and while lying sick in bed. For example, he is visited by the ghosts of two ancestors in one scene, who make parallels to the AIDS epidemic and the bubonic plague of their day.

2. Prior's boyfriend, Louis Ironson, who struggles with the prospect of staying with and caring for a dying man, especially having developed a crush on another man.

3. Louis' crush, Joe Pitt, who is homosexual but highly repressed due to his conservative Reagan-ite Mormon upbringing and the fact that he is married. His wife, Harper Pitt, has been driven to pill-popping due to a stagnant, sexless marriage. When Joe disappears from home one day, Joe's strict but rational mother, Hannah Pitt, moves in with Harper.

4. Roy Cohn, the real-life lawyer who played a substantial role in McCarthy's political career and especially the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the Jewish couple who were executed because of a Communist conspiracy. The ghost of Ethel Rosenberg frequently torments Roy in the hospital. Roy Cohn describes himself as not a homosexual, but simply a "guy who fucks guys", as he believes the word 'homosexual' is a label for degenerates and those who dwell at the bottom of the food chain. It is revealed in Roy's first scene that he has contracted HIV.

5. Belize, the transsexual nurse who 'cares' for Roy in the hospital. The word 'cares' here is used sparingly as Belize is aware of every malicious circumstance that Roy has been affiliated with. Belize and Roy spend a great deal of time insulting and berating each other and make for some of the best dialogue in the play. Belize is also friends with Louis and Prior.

Angels in America has the most poignant and biting dialogue I have heard since Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" One of the most affecting lines is when Belize disregards a tearful jingoistic Louis but telling him, "I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word free to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate."

Some may describe Angels in America as overwritten and its dialogue unrealistic and uncharacteristic of its respective speakers, especially that of Harper Pitt, who is drugged up and delusional for the majority of the story, being transported to the inner realms of her own imagination, of which philosophical coherence is remarkable for such emotional instability noted in her character. Each character here is 'levelled' by their own instability. No character here is weak. They all dwindle and ignite on the acidic red corner of the spectrum, whether they are hurting another or being hurt by another. It is through their hard times and selfishness that the story is driven and when the rain falls, it pours. When the ground starts shaking, it splits.(less)

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May 02, 2011 Kristen rated it 2 of 5 stars

I know this play won the Pulitzer, but I just don't get it. It gets a lot of hype, and everyone always tells me that this is THE most amazing play ever... Maybe they built it up too much, because I was disappointed. Then again, I'm not a big fan of magical realism, so I don't think there was any way I was ever going to like this play. I also had to write a couple of papers on it, so I was just completely burnt out at the end of it all. I mean, this play is literally EPIC. It deals with pretty mu...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Kyle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, homosexuality, aids, play

Reading plays is always a challenge--slowing down and watching the characters perform in your head, parsing out the sometimes contradictory stage directions with the first reaction of how the dialogue sounds in your head. ANGELS doesn't eliminate this stumbling block but justifies it solidly in one of the most compelling plays I've ever read. The milieu of the AIDS crisis steams with urgency and high stakes, mixing masterfully with the engrossing politics of post-McCarthy America. Though Belize...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Petra rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had no idea going in what this play was about. It's terrific and gut-wrenching and funny. This play covers so many human levels: sickness, love, hate, betrayal, regret. sex, religion, death, some politics. In the end, it's also about facing what life gives, yourself and coming to grips with it all and triumphing. If you can.
I hope to see this play on stage one day. Very moving and real. Therefore, very touching and painful.

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Mar 07, 2011 Ceilidh rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have no words to describe how much I adore this play. I may do a full review once I'm done with my research on the play for my course but all I can say to describe the play is wow.

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Mar 17, 2013 Shelley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who love inappropriate jokes

Shelves: contemporary-lit, american

First and foremost: this is a fun read. The dialogue is punchy and hilarious, full of great zingers like, "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it." The characters are crazy, rambunctious; some are bleeding out of their butts from AIDS and some are actually ANGELS pondering over the Chernobyl Disaster. Somehow, things turn out well for most of the characters (well, except the Republicans), and you walk a...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Phil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: drama

A wonderfully written play, this does seem very difficult to stage. I haven't yet watched the film versions, but it seems the problems of creating some of the scenes would be a major challenge for anyone doing this on stage.
Although the play came out in the early 1990s specifically about a moment fairly early in the AIDS crisis, it still feels very relevant today because the play asks us to consider the ways we value human beings--what kinds of traits or identity categories do we as a society fi...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Mikella Etchegoyen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, books-i-read-for-school, adapted-or-to-be-adapted-to-film

I had to read the play Angels in America for my ENGL 380 class. I had put off buying the book til the last minute and it got to be that the only place I could get it was at Barnes and Noble. I had no idea what it was about, I had heard there was an HBO film even version because it was up for awards awhile back, but I really didn’t know much about it. Now that I have read it I can say it is 100% worth the $18 I had to pay for the book.

For one, it’s refreshing to read a play that is from this cent...more I had to read the play Angels in America for my ENGL 380 class. I had put off buying the book til the last minute and it got to be that the only place I could get it was at Barnes and Noble. I had no idea what it was about, I had heard there was an HBO film even version because it was up for awards awhile back, but I really didn’t know much about it. Now that I have read it I can say it is 100% worth the $18 I had to pay for the book.

For one, it’s refreshing to read a play that is from this century. I can actually understand exactly what is going on, even when what is going on is strange and unusual. The language is modern and that makes it a quicker read than say, Shakespeare. Haha. ANd by quick read, I mean quick. I bought it Sunday morning at like 11am, twelve hours later of splotchy reading, I had blown through 160 pages. And if I wasn’t exhausted and if I didn’t have to get up to go to class the next morning, it was so captivating that I could have stayed up all night to read it to the end (something I haven’t done since Deathly Hallows came out).

Angels in America is set in the mid 80s when the nation was in the midst of the AIDS crisis. The two plays that make up Angels in America, center around characters from three groups of people: gays, Mormons, and Jews. While you may be hard pressed to find a similarity between the three, once you’ve followed the characters through their struggles, you can see that there are things which tie these three groups of people together. While they appear so vastly different, they can find similarities in each other to which they can relate to each other through.

My 380 instructor says she would classify this play as a comedy, and while Angels in America deals with serious subject matter and is politically driven, I am inclined to agree with her. If you look at the typical conventions and structures of a dramatic comedy, Angels in America follows quite a few of them. But the classification of the play was far from my mind while actually reading it. I was too deeply immersed in the story to even think of anything but finding out what happened next.

And, what reading it really accomplished was me wanting to see it performed live as it was meant to be seen. I can read the words, and I can vividly visualize it in my head, but I kept thinking, “God, how amazing would it be to actually see it.” And I don’t mean the HBO minit series (though I would love to see that as well), but actually live and embodied on a theater stage. I can’t imagine what that experience would be like. While I loved the experience of reading the play, I bet it would pale in comparison to seeing it live (in the way listening to a CD is satisfying, but it isn’t the same as the energy and rush of going to a concert).

Can you tell I loved it? One of the few assigned readings that I could possibly have picked up on my own and read for fun. That doesn’t happen very often. Not often at all.(less)

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Sep 14, 2011 Jonathan marked it as to-read

Shelves: heard-on-mpr-npr

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/13/1404383...

September 13, 2011
Two decades ago, in 1991, the first part of an ambitious work of theater by playwright Tony Kushner took the stage in San Francisco. It was called Angels in America, and its two parts — Millennium Approaches and Perestroika — clocked in at an epic seven hours.

The work, about AIDS in the age of Ronald Reagan, shocked many for its obscenities, and blunt portrayal of sex and homosexuality. But the play was also a story, told with drama and h...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Katie Salter rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this play for an acting class I took, and for the final exam performed a scene from it where I played a drug-addicted woman who suspects her husband is sleeping with men. In the scene she and her husband confront each other. It was so intense I cried. Especially after my acting partner pushed me against the wall trying to stop my character from leaving. He spun me around, got right in my face and said that line "you're not pretty, not like this" he had these beautiful intense brown eyes,...more

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Dec 16, 2011 Elliot rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: freshman-year-2011-12, drama

Despite whatever criticism Kushner levels at America in his highly acclaimed two-part historical drama, this play is at its core a work that believes in ability of our nation to survive. The Reagan administration, the Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Health have failed the country, leaving Americans to vie for ever-elusive clout as a vehicle of power. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. A membrane has been broken. By Perestroika,...more Despite whatever criticism Kushner levels at America in his highly acclaimed two-part historical drama, this play is at its core a work that believes in ability of our nation to survive. The Reagan administration, the Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Health have failed the country, leaving Americans to vie for ever-elusive clout as a vehicle of power. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. A membrane has been broken. By Perestroika, AIDS has punctured the lives of Prior, Louis, Joe, Hannah, Roy, Harper and Belize, and the internal bleeding it causes connects not only the plots of their stories, but the stage itself, as the play's many split-scenes slowly become less and less separable. I read about a production of Angels in America where the stage crew let the sets remain onstage after each scene change, resulting in the detritus of the play's history pile upon itself, imminently looming behind the actors. And yet, the revolution in this play -- so much about the need for revolution -- rests on a rests on a reappropriation of America, not exactly its destruction. Rebirth, for Kushner, contains as many continuities with the past as it does breakages. The Bethesda which did not do enough for AIDS patients in Millenium Approaches (Bethesda, Maryland, the site of NIH) becomes the Bethesda fountain in New York, the symbol of a better future in the epilogue of Perestroika. AZT, whose tainted history Kushner exploits as a signal of the political and economic corruption in his fictional America, is also the blessing -- "more life" -- which the Angels give Prior as he rejects his prophecy.

It is on AZT -- as a symbol of America, a redistribution rather than a rejection -- that the play's four thematic elements converge. As I wrote recently in an essay on AZT in Angels in America:

Prior discovers his Kaposi’s sarcoma, introducing the syndrome as a physical phenomenon, but Kushner soon expands his definition of the disease. AIDS in Angels in America extends far beyond the confines of the body, a political and emotional and even metaphysical affliction. In Angels in America, Kushner ensures that these various modes are distinct, but he refuses to allow them to appear fully independent of each other. The winding theatrical threads that run throughout the play – the somatic realities of the syndrome itself, America’s diseased body politic, the straining of Louis and Prior’s relationship, the crisis in heaven – come together, tied by the knot of AZT.

Even disregarding AZT, the effect is startling. By the end of play, "we cannot say that merely a physical disease struck Kushner’s America – or, for that matter, that the problems in the cast’s troubled relationships can be explained solely in terms of their private neuroses, or that the Reagan administration alone caused the escalation of the crisis, or that the AIDS crisis should be understood only in terms of a metaphysical battle between progress and stasis. In Angels in America, the AIDS crisis is all of these things together." (Again quoting myself -- sorry! I just would hate to see that essay go to waste.)

This play is a monumental piece of drama -- both in its political implications, and in its vision of what true drama should be. Kushner's essay "Notes about Political Theater" is an essential accompanying piece to this masterful work. If you've made it this far in my rambling review, and you haven't already read that essay, GO NOW! If you already have, then you to what extent this is a work of a genius.(less)

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Jun 02, 2011 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: plays

Angels in America is actually two plays: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. Both are set in the mid-1980s, with the second following the first after a break of a few weeks. Really, they’re two parts of the same story, even though they were published separately at first. Angels in America is about people in New York City struggling with all kinds of things, from mental and emotional problems to identity crises to terminal illnesses. Their stories overlap with one another to form the fabric of...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Katharine rated it 4 of 5 stars

i'm wondering if these cursory, spotty readings are doing justice to the text. i think i'm mixing my priorities: reading more good texts and searching for monologues.

anyway, i like this play a lot. thoughtful political, social issues. it's so complex and i had trouble remembering (had to keep flipping back and forth) who was playing who and i think that's an important thing to keep track of. i'm hoping watching the mini series will help the understanding. i find the louis character super annoyi...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Adam Jedlicka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Angels in America has been swirling around my "theatrical mind" since I first heard of it a couple of years ago. Everyone has always praised the context of this show saying its full of emotional scenes and characters that make you want to love them. However, this book is very difficult to read. The amount of political term usage in this show causes the reader to focus in and possibly reread the previous scene. Another difficult aspect of this show is the amount of scenes in this show. There are...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

this comment isn't necessarily related to this play specifically, but my roommate and i were having a discussion about why angels resonated so much. her somewhat abrupt response was, "well, because we fetishize that time period." to which i say, yes, perhaps; perhaps my love for this text comes out of my fetishization of queer, coalition politics in the 80s, politics that came out of the clarity of death, when the political lines were (more) clearly drawn, when race was powerfully asserted withi...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I watched the HBO movie about a month ago and just finished reading the play, and the only way I can think to describe Angels in America is compelling. Thematically powerful, beautifully written, both heavy and comedic in all the right ways... this is the kind of story that you can't quite wrap your head around all at once; that you need to keep thinking about long after you've finished it.

Although seeing it live would definitely be the ideal, I would recommend watching the HBO series over readi...more

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Jul 28, 2009 Robert Beveridge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished, owned-and-still-own

Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Perestroika (Theatre Communications Group, 1993)

There are times when I think the afterword should be banned. These time usually come when an author can't resist using an afterword to push some sort of agenda, as is the case here. It's especially true when the agenda being pushed is so knee-jerk and ill-thought-out that it makes me want to bang my head against a wall at how little the person writing this idiocy has thought about what it is he's saying. Thankfully,...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Excerpts from reflections I wrote for "Gender, Bodies, and the Medical Establishment":

"It’s interesting to note how Angels in America jolts my sense of cultural context, in the sense that there has been a shift in the way that we think about AIDS since it became so prevalent in the 1980s. Then, as is evidenced through the characters of the play, it was the “homosexual plague”; I think that now, with the epidemic in Africa and greater awareness in general, it’s slowly losing that label. But regar...more Excerpts from reflections I wrote for "Gender, Bodies, and the Medical Establishment":

"It’s interesting to note how Angels in America jolts my sense of cultural context, in the sense that there has been a shift in the way that we think about AIDS since it became so prevalent in the 1980s. Then, as is evidenced through the characters of the play, it was the “homosexual plague”; I think that now, with the epidemic in Africa and greater awareness in general, it’s slowly losing that label. But regardless, it was a disease that came into the public sphere through its prevalence in the gay community, and I think that Kushner is right to highlight this, if only in the name of safe-sex education.

But what is AIDS in this play? It’s more than a biblical punishment handed down on Roy Cohn for years of corruption, extortion, and murder. It’s more than a plague. Because it’s only when Prior is diagnosed and becomes very sick that he is visited by the Angel and we learn that he will be the Prophet. It is through his experience with the disease that he becomes aware of these events of biblical magnitude, that he is able to find some sort of perspective on the struggle that he and so many of his friends have and will continue to face.

I think what Kushner is trying to make the audience aware of is, first and foremost, that everyday people are contracting this disease and dying from it. As Prior points out, “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” (280). Underlying this struggle with AIDS, as we can see, is a struggle for legitimacy in a world which denies it to members of the queer community. This play not only highlights the ways in which queer men must maintain invisibility, but the ways in which it is forced upon them, AIDS being yet another way of silencing their voices."

" The way that characters identify seems to be one of the major forces moving the plot forward in Angels in America; the conflicts between identities like Democrat and Republican, straight and queer, and Jew and Mormon all fuel the play. I think, for the purposes of this class, it is important to think about the way in which AIDS has also become an identity category (in the same way that many disabilities or long-term illnesses are); and the way that the characters in the play choose to identify or not with it.

Roy’s rejection of the label of AIDS in Millennium Approaches is very important, because it reflects perfectly the cultural value with which AIDS is imbued in mainstream society—first of all, nobody wants to get it, but besides the fact that it’s still incurable, there will always be the hidden message that AIDS occurs in the queer community, and being diagnosed labels you as a homosexual.

Prior’s acceptance of his disease is perhaps even more important because his character now engages in a sort of queer reading (for lack of a better term) of the situation. There is a functionality which results from his disease—a sense in which it is connected with his lucidity/hallucinations/revelations, and with his ultimate ability to re-introduce a sense of community into the play with the final scene. With its inclusion of characters like Belize, Louis, and Hannah (all characters which have previously enjoyed a fair amount of conflict with each other), it serves as a springboard for the idea that the devastation that AIDS, Republicans, religion, racism, and homophobia wreak ultimately functions to bring the United States as a community back together."(less)

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May 31, 2009 Claire S rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Claire by: Laramie

Shelves: for_good_of_community, human-damage-healing-fict, struggles-of-use, synthesis, human-poison-aired-out-fict, id-constructs-race-gender, class-relations, earthly, ever-young, fiction, form_complexia, fict_beyond, historical, homophobia, language, magc-real-ism, meaning-life-etc, on-writing, philosophy, pol-historical, politics-learning, pol-paradigm-shift-pssbl, pov-content_jewish, psyche-of, religion-morality, sobriety-spirituality, science, the-afterlife, thtr-art-film-music-etc, u-s-hist, u-s-hist_diversity-of-people, visual, women, workplace

Ok, I didn't *read* this, but plays are meant to be seen, not read. And I saw it - well, not the play, but the uber-excellent film made my Mike Nichols with Meryl Streep and everyone. Very luscious.
I saw it again last week, while home sick. I'd been wanting to see it, as Tony Kushner is here opening a new work and having stagings of multiple prior works. It's all Kushner, all the time. It's wonderful. So, in case I get to fit in any of the performances, I wanted to see this of his again.
And this...more Ok, I didn't *read* this, but plays are meant to be seen, not read. And I saw it - well, not the play, but the uber-excellent film made my Mike Nichols with Meryl Streep and everyone. Very luscious.
I saw it again last week, while home sick. I'd been wanting to see it, as Tony Kushner is here opening a new work and having stagings of multiple prior works. It's all Kushner, all the time. It's wonderful. So, in case I get to fit in any of the performances, I wanted to see this of his again.
And this time, I knew what to expect more. It didn't overwhelm me nearly as much. In fact, I was prepared to be overwhelmed, and I wasn't. It was almost like a micro-experience. Scenes I'd remembered as going on forever seemed very short. Speaks to the effect of surprise on one's viewing experience, I guess.
But back to the words of it and all - in a review of one of his plays here, a reviewer used the word 'Proclamatory' to describe it. I was so relieved. That's how I'd felt about it, but hadn't known how to describe it. But that's exactly it. Not that there isn't a plot, and characters, and forward motion (on so many levels), but much of the action and dialogue and monologues do, in fact, proclaim.
And, more in keeping with my prior reaction, much of it felt beyond my grasp. I mean, I just couldn't gain traction with parts of it. Much about America, and Freedom, and Love, and whatnot. Tony said things, and I couldn't disagree or agree, or even nod my head. There were collections of words I just couldn't add up the meanings to.
One small example: A death, a request to forgive, a refusal to forgive, a suggestion that: perhaps forgiveness is where justice and love meet.
Ok, I know what all those words mean, but, the sum of them in that organization, I can't get there. 'Where love and justice meet' - they meet? They're normally separate? Like parallel lines? Only, in forgiveness, these parallel lines cross?
Or, the personal (love) separate from the public (justice).....?? Or love between people, justice for those who've done wrong...love prevents justice (lack of forgiveness) or love and justice as two different effects, meeting in the choice of forgiveness perhaps.
A big part of my experience was that I wasn't all there, recovering from a sleepless night due to episodic illness. So, thinking powers were reduced. Clearly, causing me to miss whole impacts of this rich, essential work.
Much of it still delighted me and was very wonderful. The part about how God does change - perfect. Lou's reaction to Joe's professional work, Mother Pitt about disappointment, Ethel Rosenberg's reaction with her eyes to one thing Roy Cohn says, the Rabbi's initial speech. That initial speech at the funeral alone is priceless, about immigrants and what they brought with them to the US. I tear up just thinking about it. Harper's piece towards the end about how nothing is lost, nothing is in vain; that too. How Belize gets the first few bottles of AZT from Roy fascinates. Mother Pitt is so awesome. Joe's perfect... what.. insanity? And such a great look at conservatism, and race in the US, and how the gay community dealt with the AIDS crisis as it hit, and the price paid by women married to closeted gay men almost most of it; except so much of the rest is also very fully related.
But all of Lou's ramblings go past me - and I think some of them are supposed to, but that I'm also missing some.
Next time I see it, with my faculties all in place, hopefully will gain entire additional meanings.
My advice to you: see it when you're at your best, to gain the most from it.(less)

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May 14, 2009 Jeremy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up over at my parents the other day just to reread one scene...and ended up going back and reading both plays again, for the third or fourth time. Having seen it at the Kennedy Center back in 1993, I remember thinking that Part II was much more ambitious but less successful than the nearly perfect part I. While I was amazed at the overall impact, I still thought that Part II didn't quite make as vast an impression. Upon this rereading, though, my doubts about II were absent. I...more

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Jun 03, 2008 Audrey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Rachel

THE BOOK: Humorous, witty, touching, beautiful play. This play explores the human side of what it means to live and cope with HIV/AIDS; the deadliest virus to hit mankind since the bubonic plague. In a touching line that portrays what it feels like to have such a stigmatized virus, Prior Walter, says, "I have dirty blood running through my veins. I feel polluted."

Kushner comments another theme of the play is the concept of collectivism. He states individualism is way over-rated in the U.S. Throu...more

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Mar 13, 2008 Randy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: drama

This play is freaky good. Rarely does a work of art so epic follow through so completely. If you liked Rent and want twice the profundity with none of the singing, this one's up your alley.

I don't really think of it as being a play about homosexuality, although it definitely has that slant. It's really about the 1980s. You've got your elder, greed-is-good lawyer (closet case dying of AIDS). You've got his young yuppie protege (Mormon who leaves his wife to have an affair with a man). And the ca...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Maya rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Amazing! Would give this 4.5 stars.. the first part is as close to perfect as anything I've ever come across, and the second part has moments of pure genius, humor and depth - but some parts of it take away from the perfection.
As the author himself said, Perestroika (the second half) is more loosely edited, and in my view perhaps should have had a bit more work done.

in any case i completely fell in love with this play when i watched the HBO mini series back in 2004.. and then re-watched, and r...more

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About Tony Kushner

Tony 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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Books by Tony Kushner

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

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Trivia About Angels in America...

3 trivia questions
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Quotes from Angels in America: A ...

“Belize: Hell or heaven?

[Roy indicates "Heaven" through a glance]

Belize: Like San Francisco.

Roy Cohn: A city. Good. I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy Cohn: Isaiah.

Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.

Roy Cohn: And a dragon atop a golden horde.

Belize: And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy Cohn: And Heaven?

Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.” — 20 people liked it

“I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die” — 13 people liked it

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title link	preview: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72003.Angels_in_America?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1354209907l/72003.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72003.Angels_in_America?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner[/url]

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Angels in America)

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