Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, won numerous awards during its run at the Mark Taper Forum and then on Broadway. I saw it in 1997. Well, the first 300 hours, anyway -- it's divided into two parts, Millenial Approaches and Perestroika, each requiring superhuman endurance and thinking about butts and cocks to sit through.
Very, very depressing: people dying have never been my idea of entertainment, and this dude is dying of AIDS, very slowly, with all of the symptoms displayed in graphic detail. Meanwhile he thinks he's a Mormon prophet and turns straight, having sex with a female angel with multiple breasts and vaginas, and this guy named Roy Cohn is dying of AIDS, too, and elderly lady in a 1950s outfit is comforting him although she hates him.
Are we supposed to recognize these people?
Plus the names are bizarre and off-putting, and you never know what's really happening and what's an AIDS fever dream, and people are dying. Help!
Ok, very slowly, let's try to get through this mishmash of obscure history, with illustrations of actors from the tv miniseries that appeared in 2003:
1. New York, of course, in the 1980s. the Jewish Louis, played by Ben Shenkman, discovers that his Mormon boyfriend Prior -- prior to what? -- has AIDS, and dumps him.
Prior is played by Justin Kirk, top two photos. He will have delusions of becoming a Mormon prophet.
2. Prior is comforted in the hospital by an ex-drag queen nurse named Belize.
3. Meanwhile, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson, butt and dick left), conservative Republican Mormon politician in Boyfriend Louis's office, becomes interested in him, which causes friction with his crazy wife and conservative mother, and causes him to dream about meeting Prophet Prior.
Republican Joe comes out to his mom, who travels to New York to coddle him, and to his wife, who flees from the house and believes that she is in Antartica. Then he starts dating Boyfriend Louis.
4. Joe's boss is Roy Cohn. Yes, that Roy Cohn, played by Al Pacino. I had never heard of him at the time, but he was one of the instigators of the Red Scare in the 1950s. He was gay in real life, but closeted and homophobic.
In the play, he claims that he is dying of liver cancer, but actually it's AIDS.
The elderly lady who is comforting him, although she hates him, is Ethel Rosenberg. In 1953, Roy prosecuted Ethel and her husband Julius as Soviet spies, and got them the death penalty. They were widely presumed innocent, being railroaded because they were Jewish.
5. Prophet Prior has a lot of disturbing fever dreams. He meets his ancestors, also named Prior, and a Mormon angel with several breasts and vaginas, who has sex with him and tells him to prepare for the Great Work.
Left: Simon Callow, one of the prior Priors
The first play ends there. Sort of a cliff hanger, innit?
Perestroika after the break
Part 2: Perestroika. The title refers to the restructuring of the Soviet economy beginning in 1986, in preparation for the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991.
6. A Bolshevik -- the party that toppled the Romanovs and started the Soviet Union -- gives a speech against progress. The only way to a bright future is to stand still and do nothing.
Left: James Cromwell, who plays Roy Cohn's doctor.
7. Meanwhile, Prophet Prior, Drag Queen Belize, and the Angel go to heaven -- aka San Francisco, har har -- where they discover that God has abandoned the angels. The only way to get Him back is for humans to "stop moving." That's the message that Prophet Prior has to give to the world.
I don't get it -- why would what humans do affect heaven, and why should we care? It sounds like angelic manipulation. But this is all a fever dream of a dying man, so it doesn't have to make sense.
Left: In case you need more cocks -- and I know you need more cocks -- Lee Pace played Prior on Broadway.
8.While Roy Cohn is still in a hospital bed, dying of AIDS and claiming that it's liver cancer and being tormented by the homophobe-hating Belize, Prophet Prior goes to a Mormon Visitor Center and runs into the delusional ex- wife of Republican Joe Pitt -- you remember, the one who is dating Prior's ex-boyfriend?
Left: Jeffrey Wright as Belize and "Mr. Lies."
Prior and the Delusional Ex-Wife recognize each other from shared dreams, and peek into the lives of their exes. Louis is horrified to discover that Republican Joe Pitt is a Mormon, and learns about his various homophobic legal decisions in the past, and dumps him. Then he asks Prophet Prior's forgiveness, and gets rejected.
9. Next, Republican Joe visits his old boss, Roy Cohn. He comes out, whereupon Roy gets violent and homophobic. Upset, Republican Joe returns to his ex-wife and has sex with her, but neither like it, so he leaves again.
Left: I still need dicks to get through this. David Zayas, the building superintendent
10. Roy dies after being comforted and tormented by Ethel Rosenberg. Belize and Boyfriend Louis sneak into his room to steal the experimental drug AZT to use on Prophet Prior.
11. Prophet Prior and the Delusional Ex-Wife go to Heaven and tell the Council of Angels that he's not going to deliver the message. Humanity has to progress, not stand still. Life is horrible, but it's better than the alternative.
12. Five years later, Prior, the Delusional Ex-Wife, Louis, and Belize are all friends who vow to continue the work of progressing.
Left: Another Prior penis.
Angels is much easier to understand when you have the historical and cultural background that Tony Kushner evidently believed was common knowledge, but only if you're a gay Mormon historian. Still depressing: I don't care that Prior lives, he spends Part 1 dying.
See also: The Eyes of Tammy Faye: A gay-positive view of the homophobic 1980s.
The Other Two, Episode 1.6: Cary goes shirtless, Chase twerks, and there's enough butts and bulges for everyone. With Patrick Wilson
Cruising: Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay community. With Al Pacino.
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