Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Angels in America

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Angels in America by Tony Kushner

16 reviews

allygator's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is hands-down my favorite play of all time. I love every single thing about it. This is the play that made me fall in love with the art of theatre and inspires the art I create now. Watching Andrew Garfield play Prior Walter completely shifted what I thought acting could be, and to this day is a level of performance I aspire to achieve.
In case you couldn't know, this is not an objective review at all. A lot of who I am now has been made by the impact this play had on me, so I'm incredibly biased when it comes down to reviewing it.
The best thing about this play is how the characters are written. They all are exceptionally flawed, and it makes them feel like people right out of the streets of New York. There are times when reading this when I get so honestly angry at the characters because they're so flawed and make such terrible decisions. It's real and very well written, but it makes me feel a lot of things.
I do think that as incredible as this script is, nothing comes even remotely close to the experience of watching a filmed or live production of it. Seriously, if you can, take two days and watch this. You won't regret it.

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addyruth17's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

There is a point one can reach when one has so many thoughts and feelings that the mind fails to comprehend any of them, and one can do nothing but stare at the wall with brain buzzing. I reached this point, perhaps twice, while reading this play. Immaculate scenes, delectable wording, and a heap of challenging topics. Gives the audience just enough to understanding something new, even if they don't quite understand what is happening in the scene itself. So surreal it simply must be about reality.

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bvrealis's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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clrlilli's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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greenie_'s review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'd been putting off this one for a while because 1) It was an audiobook play, which I haven't tried before and 2) Because of the dark and depressing subject matter and 3) Because it's a highly rated classic and I've been disappointed by a lot of those recently.

Well, I'm so glad I finally took the plunge! Angels in America was an incredible experience.

This was the first full cast play I've listened to and the acting was fantastic. Every single actor brought their character to life and I felt it play like a movie in my mind. I especially enjoyed Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter and Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn. Their voices felt perfect for the characters and really brought forward the kind of people they were and their situation. I hope that one day I can see this play, not just listen to it.

Now, about the story itself.

The premise: Set in mid 1980s New York, it begins when Prior reveals his diagnosis of AIDS to his partner Louis, a Jew who works as a legal clerk. Belize is a former drag queen and current nurse who provides medical care for AIDS patients, and emotional support for his friends Prior and Louis. Joe is Louis's coworker, a Mormon and Republican whose wife, Harper, has mental health problems and drug dependency. Roy Cohn (the only historical character) is a powerful and bigoted lawyer who is mentor to Joe and (spoilers for major event that happens very early)

is also diagnosed with AIDS.

The story explores themes such as how different people approach illness and death, whether fear, strength or weakness; the will to live; the nature of love, and what it means for love to succeed or fail; how a person's moral framework and life choices affect each other; and how empathy and hatred interact.

While I had my fears about the subject matter, it was surprisingly not as depressing as I had expected. Prior is thankfully not depicted as a helpless tragedy, but a strong person who is going through very difficult things. He still has a breadth of human experiences throughout the story, in different relationships and emotions, not only the negative. This story is sad, but it's certainly not misery porn. There is a deep sense of goodness and hopefulness to the narrative.

I absolutely loved this story and highly recommend it to anyone interested in a classic of American and queer history!

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sherbertwells's review

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“ANGEL: Greetings, Prophet;
The Great Work begins:
The Messenger has arrived” (125)

The script for this play was borrowed from Ms. Lentz (Coach L) the fabulous tech director at my high school. Thank you so much for supporting me and the rest of the theater!

I first saw this play via National Theater Live when I was thirteen and knew nothing about Reagan or dramaturgy. I remember two things about it:

1) I ate a giant package of red licorice during the first four-hour production, and

2) I thought that Andrew Garfield, the brilliant actor who played Prior Walter, was Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendan Urie.

Now that I’m older and (theoretically) wiser—at least, I know who Andrew Garfield and Ronald Reagan are—and I’m preparing to present my country’s theatrical tradition to an international audience, I picked up the script again.

I didn’t know how much I had missed.

Angels in America, the collective title of Tony Kushner’s two four-hour plays Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, feels like a miracle. It walks a fabulously indulgent tightrope between pretentious tragedy and sexy comedy with a little deus ex machina to throw the funambulists off balance. It uses eight actors to portray the whole 1980s, which according to Kushner was an era of apocalyptic plague, religious fanaticism and political machismo. The two mythical figures that dominate the play, the fantastical Angel of America and real-life litigious giant Roy Cohn, shield themselves from the changing times, while ordinary people like Prior Walter and Harper Pitt find themselves abandoned. Like a flying harness, the fate of the world and the success of the show hangs on the weight of these “little people.”

Perhaps the most controversial character in Angels in America is Louis Ironson, Prior’s (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend. He’s a neurotic and a rambler, and in the face of the play’s great challenge—caring for Prior, who is dying of AIDS—he bails. He hides behind problematic liberal monologues and the short, macho nickname “Lou,*” which he is called by Joe, Harper’s closeted husband. He's a bit of a biphobe too. It’s ambiguous whether he even learns anything over the course of the plays, and given their length he definitely had time to do so.

Kushner wrote him as a sort of author avatar/self-criticism: both the playwright and the character are queer jewish men born and raised in New York City, so when other characters call out Louis’ bad behavior Kushner can be seen as agkonwledging his own privilege. But Louis is really hard to like on the page. Perhaps he is only rendered sympathetic by a good actor, or a myopic audience member. When I first observed James McArdle in the role, I didn’t mind his long political rambles. Now I agree more with Belize:

BELIZE: “[You’re] up in the air, just like that angel, too far off from earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love. ‘America’ is what Louis loves...Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you” (228)

I don’t “get” liking America anymore, but that might have more to do with my generation than Tony Kushner’s. Nor do I get the people who treat Angels in America as a godsend. It’s stuffed with big ideas and good lines, sure, but it’s a cracked vessel. It lasts for eight hours because Kushner is having too much fun writing to quit. He’s a little crazy that way.

But what’s more American than that?

*Future essay plan: the name “Lou” as a disguise in Angels in America and Paula Vogel’s play Indecent.

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