Angels in America by Tony Kushner

So the book I read was called Angels in America by Tony Kushner, and it features Angels, America, and pretty much everything else you could possibly imagine being in a book. Technically it’s a play in two parts, set in New York City in the 1980s. Including both parts, the play lasts about seven hours, and therefore Kushner goes deeper into his characters and their situations. Due to its length and complexity, it’s hard to pinpoint what this play is about. It’s about alienation, death, religion, unhappiness, delusion, truth, acceptance, guilt, cowardice, and judgment. In short, Angels in America chronicles the lives of multiple people in the 1980s. The main character is Roy Cohn, a ruthless lawyer who feels no remorse for his ruthless persecution of Ethel Rosenberg and prides himself on his political connections. He is dying and can do nothing about it. His loss of control and his unchanging convictions make up much of the play. Other characters include Joe, a Mormon working for Roy who tries to come to terms with the harm he’s caused, Harper, his Valium-addicted wife, and Hannah, his no-nonsense mother. In another subplot, Prior Walter is also dying of AIDS and is visited by an angel who claims that he is a prophet. Prior was abandoned by his lover, Louis, when Louis learned of Prior’s disease. Unable to deal with caring for a sick man, the politically active Louis is racked with guilt and questions, while Prior has trouble acting as a prophet in New York City. Basically, all these characters and all these plots somehow come together, amid some surreal trips to Antarctica and Heaven (which looks like a rundown San Francisco).

Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan to a clarinetist mother and a bassoonist father. Unsurprisingly, he was actively involved in policy debate through high school, but it’s interesting to note that he first graduated from Columbia University with a degree in medieval studies. He studied directing at NYU graduate school where he began to write his own plays. Angels in America is his most famous work, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, but he has written other plays, as well as essays, operas, the book for a musical, and even a children’s book with Maurice Sendak. His work often includes surreal situations (like angels and ghosts and visions) as well as a focus on his extremely political leanings and Jewish upbringing. Additionally, he helped adapt Angels in America into a miniseries. I haven’t seen it, but it has Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, and Mary-Louise Parker in it, so it has to be pretty good.

By the way, the picture is Tony Kushner when he was at Columbia University participating in (what else?) a protest.