Plays are difficult things to read. It is rare to find a play that is widely read outside of classroom assignments. We have become so accustomed to the narrative form that it can be discombobulating to read stage directions, set descriptions, and stark lines of characters with little sense of the nuance of delivery, the emotion behind the words. Of course, we also have to thank Mr. William Shakespeare for scaring most people away from reading plays in play form. Great that the Bard is, many people look back on their school assignments of reading with a certain amount of angst. Play form is difficult enough, but surely Shakespeare could be translated into English!
`Angels in America, Pt. 1: Millennium Approaches' is, linguistically speaking, a much more accessible play. But it still suffers (as perhaps all plays must) from the lack of description beyond the words. In this regard, plays are very much more like poetry - they tend to latch on to single elements rather than taking the fuller form of narrative, and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader.
Tony Kushner's play is imaginative. Like great playwrights of old, he takes contemporary situations and figures and embellishes them, keeping faith with the overall meanings in society and the overall characters he's using, but is careful to make it known that this is a work of fiction.
We begin the play, staged (we are told) in the barest of scenery with a minimum of scene shifting and no black-outs - imagine, if you will, almost a stream of consciousness as the play progress - there is a funeral. A Jewish funeral. Not an unusual scene in New York, but the Rabbi doesn't know the woman, and so gives generic funereal orations.
Scene shifts to the office of Roy Cohn (alas, an all too real figure, but this is, Kushner emphasises, a fictional account). Here we encounter the high-powered, high-strung Cohn in his glorious best (or worst) while Joe (a conservative Mormon lawyer) is being chatted up for a job, which would put him in Cohn's debt.
Scene shifts - we see Joe's wife Harper planning a trip with a travel agent, Mr. Lies.
And so forth - in the course of this tale, we meet several people who are in various stages of AIDS. This is the meaning of the play. We encounter out gays and closeted gays, poor gays and rich gays, and the occasional straight suffering person, too. Often we have scene shifts and double scenes with two sets of action going on simultaneously. The moral issues of life with AIDS (which, as it happens, often reflect the moral issues of life more generally) are played out in political, social and religious terms.
Take, for instance, Louis, who attends the funeral (conducted by the Rabbi), who is contemplating leaving his lover Prior, who has started to show symptoms. The interplay between Louis and the Rabbi shows differing ideas not only between religions but also within religions toward difficulties.
Later, Cohn launches into an extended tale to his doctor of how he couldn't possibly be a homosexual:
`This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who now nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me?'
Ultimately, denial is deep with Cohn.
Doctor: You have AIDS, Roy.
Cohn: No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.
Ultimately, issues of drug access, relationship building and deterioration, and the overall morality of life is played out among the characters. Perhaps the image of Ethel Rosenberg, who appears to Cohn in one of his weakened delusional states, says it best:
History is about to crack wide open. Millennium approaches.
The play concludes as an Angel makes a traumatic entry at the end (the cracking open that Rosenberg mentions, perhaps?) appearing to Prior, after we have witnessed Prior's now ex-lover Louis making a connection with our conservative Mormon lawyer Joe.
There is a message. We the audience are not told what it is.
