Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Tony Kushner

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

“Angels in America has proved to be a watershed drama, the most lyrical and ambitious augury of an era since Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie.”

—JOHN LAHR, New Yorker

“Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork . . . Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions—power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world—are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever.”

—LINDA WINER, Newsday

“The most influential American play of the last two decades.”

—PATRICK HEALY, New York Times

“Daring and dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least absconding of God.”

—JACK KROLL, Newsweek

“Few plays have captured the spirit of an age more powerfully than Angels in America . . . and the passage of time has not clipped Angels’ wings.”

—PAUL TAYLOR, Independant (London)

“Something rare, dangerous and harrowing . . . a roman candle hurled into a drawing room.”

—NICHOLAS DE JONGH, London Evening Standard

“Angels breaks all the rules to achieve the astonishing integrity of its vision . . . It is a play that has remained utterly of-the-moment.”

—JEREMY GERARD, Bloomberg

“That Angels came so close to the burning heart of the Zeitgeist left Kushner fearing he would never get there again. But in fact he has been there so often that he seems to have passed right through it . . . Angels, so much a cry in the dark about AIDS when it was written, seems now to be as much about the Earth’s potentially fatal illness as gay men’s.”

—JESSE GREEN, New York

“The greatest American play of the waning years of the twentieth century.”

—CHRIS JONES, Chicago Tribune

“An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve.”

—CLIFFORD A. RIDLEY, Philadelphia Inquirer

OTHER BOOKS BY TONY KUSHNER PUBLISHED BY THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP

A Bright Room Called Day

Caroline, or Change

Death & Taxes: Hydriotaphia & Other Plays

A Dybbuk and Other Tales of the Supernatural

(adapted from S. Ansky; translations by Joachim Neugroschel)

Homebody/Kabul

The Illusion

(adapted from Pierre Corneille)

Lincoln

(the screenplay)

Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness:

Essays, a Play, Two Poems and a Prayer

Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is published by

Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018-4156

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Joyce Ketay, The Gersh Agency, 41 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010; (212) 634-8105.

The publication of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, by Tony Kushner, is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kushner, Tony.

Angels in America : a gay fantasia on national themes / Tony Kushner.

Revised and Complete edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-1-55936-769-1

1. National characteristics, American—Drama. 2. AIDS (Disease)—Patients—Drama. 3. Sexual orientation—Drama. 4. Gay men—Drama. 5. Mormons—Drama. 6. Angels—Drama. [1. Cohn, Roy M.—Drama.] I. Title.

PS3561.U778A85 2013

812’.54—dc23 2013001994

Book design by Lisa Govan

Cover art by Milton Glaser

Cover design by Molly Watman

First Revised Combined Edition, November 2013

Contents

Introduction

By the Playwright

PART ONE:

Millennium Approaches

PART TWO: