Reviews with content warning for Biphobia - Angels in America

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Angels in America by Tony Kushner

2 reviews

addyruth17's review against another edition

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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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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