Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

It is a madman's undertaking, Angels in America.

It's a work of staggering grandiosity and ambition, no doubt. To portray human drama intimately and without pretension; to examine the politics and morality at play in a cross-section of not-too-distant history; to create a cast of characters that are three-dimensional and complex; to ruminate on the Big Stuff, love and death and forgiveness, and the Contemporary Stuff, homosexuality and modern religion and partisanship; to weave all these things into a gripping, moving, hilarious, intense, strange, wonderful story, all the while infusing it with all manner of Judeo-Christian allusion and historical context and intriguing philosophy. Who on Earth would sign up for such a task of their own show more volition? Who could even attempt to carry all of this out?

Tony Kushner, apparently. And, by God, does he do a fucking spectacular job of it.

Perestroika is a very different play than Millennium Approaches, and you'll realise that quickly, but you'll understand just as quickly that the quality and the heart of the second remains just as high and just as true as in the first. While Part I cultivated a sense of eagerness and impending salvation mixed with a foreboding and a fear of judgment, Part II deals with the messy business of what happens after the Angel arrives, after the Great Work is undertaken.

It doesn't make sense to talk much about the plot, because it's a continuation of Part I and giving a way a little bit is liable to cause the whole spool to unravel, and I don't want to spoil anything. What I will say, though, is that I feel like I should've been unsatisfied, but I wasn't. In any other story, I probably would dislike the looseness, the lack of structure, the way that—objectively—not much actually happens (compared to Millennium, at least). But something about this play made all of that perfect. I still felt closure, and it felt like a coherent plot that didn't have the sort of intricate twists that a less talented writer has to rely on, simply because it didn't need them. The characters and the internal dynamics were more than enough.

This (Angels in America as a whole) is a very gay play, and I mean that in the absolute best way. And not just that many of the characters are gay (I don't think there's one heterosexual kiss in the entirety of Part II) but that homosexuality and AIDS and drag and such are dealt with really well, with such tenderness and introspection and searching for truth. Kushner himself is gay so this shouldn't be surprising, but it still is; because on television and in movies and even in several books, the most we see of gay people are their surfaces, very rarely do authors or creators take the time to consider gay characters not based on how they can further the plot or help the (always hetero) protagonist, but what they're like as people, how being gay affects their lives and their relationships. Kushner doesn't stick to focusing on saccharine positives (cheery, sassy Gay Best Friend) nor on melodramatic negatives (Bury Your Gays). Prior, Louis, Belize, Joe, Roy—being gay affects them all in different ways, highlighting different facets of their personalities, revealing much more about themselves in how they react to it rather than by the simple (and rather bland) fact that they're "friends of Dorothy."

I should talk about the humour here too, which is something I forgot to mention in my review of Part I. Tony Kushner is funny, and the comedic touches in these two plays are always tasteful and they always land—Prior himself made me laugh out loud a few times, and not because he's the stereotypical witty queen, but because he's legitimately intelligent and fiercely emotional and the way he speaks his mind is bloody hilarious. And even apart from the dialogue, there's something so deliciously subversive in making the Prophet a gay man dying of AIDS, or fully embracing the hermaphroditism of angels, or sending the Valium-addicted Mormon housewife up to heaven for a little detour. Apart from being funny with their absurdity, they mirror the absurdity of life and history, and they're profound in that they blend the mundane and the fantastic together so well.

Which leads me right into where I wanted to end, my greatest praise of Angels in America: its astonishing ability to meld raw humanity with lofty philosophy. Authors who can paint beautifully in broad strokes, waxing poetic on grand points and skilfully weaving theories and belief systems, your Ralph Waldo Emersons or whathaveyous, they captivate us. Authors who can frame a simple conflict or personal dilemma to reveal the depths and complexities of the human heart, who can probe our spirit and our emotions with incredible subtlety and nuance, they make us feel. But authors who can do both, who can fuse the concrete and the abstract, the idyllic and the real, the broad and the narrow, the should-be and the is, who can play the part of the Angel and the AIDS patient and recognise that both are equally important and powerful—they're masterful. And rare.

And Tony Kushner is one of them. show less

Woooowwwwww.

Despite its rather long duration for a play, comprising some seven hours acted all out, this is very tightly written. Each little scene, every bit of dialogue, has some reach or development or meaning to it. The characters are passionate and dynamic. All of them matter. All are played by the same little group of actors.

This play goes over a lot, and I'm not really sure I can give the play its proper due with my meager summaries. Politics, gnosticism, love, class, how God has abandoned us to the Republicans and spread plagues and hellfire, and prophecy, and all sorts of fun things.

You really ought to read this, gay or not, whatever you are, I'm not going to smack a label on it. There's something here, as there is in many of show more the great works, about a common thread of humanity. show less

As Part II opens, the Angel attempts to make Prior the prophet of a message of non-progress, non-movement, and non-mingling, saying that the constant transformation has "upset heaven" and, indirectly, caused G-d to flee heaven. Belize finds this message proto fascist and Prior's appearance as a prophet disturbing. Belize and Prior follow Louis so that Prior can take a look at Joe, who he calls the "Marlboro Man," and these trips land Prior in the Mormon Visitors Center in New York. Hannah, Joe's mother, has moved to New York from Utah after her son Joe tells her over the telephone that "he is a homosexual," and then asks ir his father loved him. Prior walks into the Mormon Visitor Center and collapses, and Hannah ends up helping him to show more get to the hospital, where they quickly become friends. Hannah shares with Prior a belief in angels, who she calls "prayers with wings," and they are visited by an angel who is enraged that Prior is not promulgating the prophecy of non-progress and non-movement. Hannah tells Joe to demand that the angel bless him and not to let go until the angel does so, recapitulating the scene from Genesis where Jacob wrestles with the angel to earn the blessing of "od ha'im" (more life). Prior goes to heaven and rejects the prophecy that the angels have given him, but also demands the blessing of more life. In the meantime, Roy Cohn is dying of AIDS and gets a stash of an effective anti-AIDS drug called AZT. When he dies, Belize insists that Louis thank him by saying the Kaddish over him, and he is assisted in doing so by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Belize gives the AZT to Louis, who therefore wins the gift of "od ha'im." At the end of the play, Hannah, Belize, Louis, and Prior have become close friends, and gather under the fountain of the Angel Bethesda to predict events in the Middle East. For her part, Harper, now recovered from her self-delusions, is seen taken a plane across the country and imagining angels holding hands to repair the rents in the ozone layer.
This is an epic work of enormous scope and vision that reveals the uncanniness and unpredictability of human lives by showing how unlikely people meet--whether they show up in each other's dreams or, indeed, an out gay man ends up at the Mormon Visitor Center. The conceit of the angels--and both Mormonism and Judaism believe in angels--is very effective, and the angels give hope even as their message of forced inertia cannot be accepted. show less

I loved Angels in America. There is a lot of modern American drama that I believe just doesn't hold up as literature. Kushner, however, belongs in the same pantheon of modern American greats as Pinter and Mamet.

In Part 2 of Angels in America, our characters have to deal with terrible decisions. Roy becomes very sick and pulls all sorts of strings to get AZT. Joe and Harper separate. Louis is afraid of seeing Prior and develops a relationship with Joe. Belize continues to be the voice of reason for everyone.

The lives of the characters are so filled with fear, anxiety, self-loathing, denial, and more fear. We have seen a little of how tragic and difficult the life of homosexuals were then.
This play was produced by HBO and after reading it, I intend to find it and watch it again.

Though together with Millennium Approaches, Angels in America is rather long, the ending makes every word worth reading. Angels in America is a stirring, inspiring statement about living in the age of AIDS.

I love seeing the development of the characters through to the bitter end, as it were, but I have to say that I also think Angels in America stands very well on its own.