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Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Part One: Millennium Approaches Part Two: Perestroika
by Tony Kushner
Paperback : 304 pages
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HBO Films will present Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols from Tony Kushner's own adaptation of his Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The remarkable cast features Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary Louise Parker, ...
Introduction
HBO Films will present Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols from Tony Kushner's own adaptation of his Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The remarkable cast features Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright, Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson, James Cromwell, Michael Gambon and Simon Callow.
Angels in America is one of the most remarkable and celebrated plays of our time. Over 350,000 copies have been sold in paperback since their original publication in 1993.
Praise for the play:
"Angels in America is the broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time."?Jack Kroll, Newsweek
"A vast, miraculous play . . . provocative, witty and deeply upsetting . . . a searching and radical rethinking of Ameri-can political drama."?Frank Rich, The New York Times
"Something rare, dangerous and harrowing?a roman candle hurled into a drawing room . . . "?Nicholas de Jongh, London Evening Standard
"Playful and profound, extravagantly theatrical and deeply spiritual, witty, and compassionate, furious and incredibly smart . . . It's impossible to imagine anyone captivated by the beginning not wanting?needing?to go back for the end."?Linda Winer, Newsday
"An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theatre stretched to its full potential can achieve."?Clifford A. Ridley, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Perestroika is a masterpiece."?John Lahr, New Yorker
Tony Kushner's Angels in America is that rare entity: a work for the stage that is profoundly moving yet very funny, highly theatrical yet steeped in traditional literary values, and most of all deeply American in its attitudes and political concerns. In two full-length plays--Millennium Approaches and Perestroika--Kushner tells the story of a handful of people trying to make sense of the world. Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.
But such a summary does not do justice to Kushner's grand plan, which mixes magical realism with political speeches, high comedy with painful tragedy, and stitches it all together with a daring sense of irony and a moral vision that demands respect and attention. On one level, the play is an indictment of the government led by Ronald Reagan, from the blatant disregard for the AIDS crisis to the flagrant political corruption. But beneath the acute sense of political and moral outrage lies a meditation on what it means to live and die--of AIDS, or anything else--in a society that cares less and less about human life and basic decency. The play's breadth and internal drive is matched by its beautiful writing and unbridled compassion. Winner of two Tony Awards and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Angels in America is one of the most outstanding plays of the American theater. --Michael Bronski
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