Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Revised and Complete Edition

Tony Kushner

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781559363846
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367691
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes includes Part One, Millennium Approaches and Part Two, Perestroika

“Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork…Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions—power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world—are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever.” –Linda Winer, Newsday

"A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama." - Frank Rich, New York Times

"A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty." - John Lahr, New Yorker

“An enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve.” -Philadelphia Inquirer

"Angels in America is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century." - John Heilpern, New York Observer

“Some playwrights want to change the world. Some want to revolutionize theater. Tony Kushner is that rarity of rarities: a writer who has the promise to do both.” -New York Times


This new edition of Tony Kushner's masterpiece is published with the author's recent changes and a new introduction in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its original production. One of the most honored American plays in history, Angels in America was awarded two Tony Awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. This two-part epic, subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has received hundreds of performances worldwide in more than twenty-six languages.

Tony Kushner’s plays include Angels in America; Hydriotaphia, or the Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Cornelle; Slavs!; A Bright Room Called Day; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
Among many honors, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

Part One:

MILLENNIUM

APPROACHES

THE CHARACTERS

IN MILLENNIUM APPROACHES

ROY M. COHN,* a successful New York lawyer and unofficial power broker.

JOSEPH PORTER PITT, chief clerk for Justice Theodore Wilson of the Federal Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

HARPER AMATY PITT, Joe’s wife, an agoraphobic with a mild Valium addiction.

LOUIS IRONSON, a word processor working for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

PRIOR WALTER, Louis’s boyfriend. Occasionally works as a club designer or caterer, otherwise lives very modestly but with great style off a small trust fund.

HANNAH PORTER PITT, Joe’s mother, currently residing in Salt Lake City, living off her deceased husband’s army pension.

BELIZE, a registered nurse and former drag queen whose name was originally Norman Arriaga; Belize is a drag name that stuck.

THE ANGEL, four divine emanations, Fluor, Phosphor, Lumen and Candle; manifest in One: the Continental Principality of America. She has magnificent steel-gray wings.

Other Characters in Millennium Approaches

RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ, an orthodox Jewish rabbi, played by the actor playing Hannah.

MR. LIES, Harper’s imaginary friend, a travel agent, played by the actor playing Belize. In style of dress and speech he suggests a jazz musician; he always wears a large lapel badge emblazoned “IOTA” (International Order of Travel Agents).

THE MAN IN THE PARK, played by the actor playing Prior.

THE VOICE, the voice of the Angel.

HENRY, Roy’s doctor, played by the actor playing Hannah.

EMILY, a nurse, played by the actor playing the Angel.

MARTIN HELLER, a Reagan Administration Justice Department flackman, played by the actor playing Harper.

SISTER ELLA CHAPTER, a Salt Lake City real-estate saleswoman, played by the actor playing the Angel.

PRIOR I, the ghost of a dead Prior Walter from the thirteenth century, played by the actor playing Joe. A blunt, grim, dutiful, medieval farmer, he speaks abruptly and rather loudly with a guttural Yorkshire accent.

PRIOR 2, the ghost of a dead Prior Walter from the seventeenth century, played by the actor playing Roy. A Londoner, a Restoration-era sophisticate and bon vivant; he speaks with an elegant Received English accent.

THE ESKIMO, played by the actor playing Joe.

A HOMELESS WOMAN, an unmedicated psychotic who lives on the streets of the South Bronx; played by the actor playing the Angel.

ETHEL ROSENBERG, played by the actor playing Hannah.

* The character Roy M. Cohn is based on the late Roy M. Cohn (1927–1986), who was all too real; for the most part the acts attributed to the character Roy, such as his illegal conferences with Judge Kaufmann during the trial of Ethel Rosenberg, are to be found in the historical record. But this Roy is a work of dramatic fiction; his words are my invention, and liberties have been taken.

Millennium Approaches is dedicated to Mark Bronnenberg

In a murderous time

the heart breaks and breaks

and lives by breaking.

—STANLEY KUNITZ, “The Testing-Tree”

ACT ONE:

Bad News

October–November 1985

Scene 1

The end of October. Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz alone onstage with a small coffin. It is a rough pine box with two wooden pegs, one at the foot and one at the head, holding the lid in place. A prayer shawl embroidered with a Star of David is draped over the lid, and at the head of the coffin, a yahrzeit candle is burning.

The Rabbi speaks sonorously, with a heavy Eastern European accent, unapologetically consulting a sheet of notes for the family names.

RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Hello and good morning. I am Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews. We are here this morning to pay respects at the passing of Sarah Irons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: By the Playwright
• Part One: Millennium Approaches
• Part Two: Perestroika
• Epilogue: Bethesda
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Production History
• A Few Notes from the Playwright About Staging
• Two Omitted Scenes from Perestroika
• With a Little Help from My Friends
• About the Author