Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ROY M. COHN, a successful New York lawyer and unofficial power broker..." (more)
Key Phrases: little pause, Prior Walter, Salt Lake, Roy Cohn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The most anticipated new American play of the decade, this brilliant work is an emotional, poetic, political epic in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. Spanning the years of the Reagan administration, it weaves the lives of fictional and historical characters into a feverish web of social, political, and sexual revelations.

About the Author

Tony Kushner's plays include A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!; as well as adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, Ansky's The Dybbuk, Brecht's The Good Person of Szecguan and Goethe's Stella. Current projects include: Henry Box Brown or The Mirror of Slavery; and two musical plays: St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline or Change. His collaboration with Maurice Sendak on an American version of the children's opera, Brundibar, appeared in book form Fall 2003. Kushner grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he lives in New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559360615
• ISBN-13: 978-1559360616
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,196 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #19 in	Books > History > World > Jewish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Angels among us?, July 15, 2003

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Humanization (revised review), May 12, 1999

By A Customer

A Humanization Tony Kushner's Angels in America skillfully presents genuine heartaches: loss, addiction, love, sexuality, and sickness. The play contrasts searches for integrity with complete denials of the self and releases a sense of authentic frustration. Kushner provides fascinating characters with realistic strengths and flaws. Courageously standing in the face of stereotypes, he embraces the development of individuals. Joe's identity becomes clear as he allows himself to develop into a more truthful person. Roy, on the other hand, continues to build walls hiding who he really is.

Kushner not only brilliantly captures real personalities while dealing with fantasy, but also relates them to the complicated, sometimes heartless world in which they exist. He poignantly addresses the loneliness and loss that is living, but does so with a sharp humor that keeps the pages rapidly turning. Angels in America is an incredible dramatic masterpiece that challenges a transformation of the soul into a true reflection of who we really are.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Close as you can come to reviewing Nichols' great HBO film, January 6, 2004

By	Andy Orrock (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millenium Approaches" is as close as you can come right now to reviewing the recent six-hour HBO special directed by Mike Nichols. That was set as two three-hour pieces, playing on back-to-back weekends. The first weekend was the complete three-act 'Millenium Approaches'; the second was Kushner's follow-up, 'Perestroika.'

'Millenium Approaches' won a Pulitzer for Kushner, and it's easy to see why. It's an amazingly literate discourse and masterful interweaving of three strands of gay life in America as it stood before triple therapy arrived and slowed down the impact of AIDS.

By contrast, 'Perestroika' feels different and distant - lots of soliloquies, extreme anger, archsymbolism - I felt like the high point of the six-hour spread was the angel's dramatic appearance at the end of 'Millenium.'

Remembering back to the play, I think all the actors in Nichols adaptation really found new levels for each of their characters. For example, Pacino nailed Roy Cohn's perverse sense of logic: homosexuals (and you can hear the quotes around it when Pacino utters the word) have no power; I have power; I am not a homosexual; therefore, I do not have AIDS, I have liver cancer. I've read Cohn's biography and this is truly the way he saw things. Kushner has him nailed & Pacino really captures the essence of Kushner's words.

The other thing worth noting is that Mary-Louise Parker does wonders with the role of Harper Pitt. I remember thinking of the character as overwhelmed on stage (compared to the other actors), but, wow, does she stand out in Nichols' adaptation. It's the best performance in the film, in my eyes.