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Jul 20, 2017 · With Andrew Garfield, Russell Tovey, Denise Gough, Nathan Lane. The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's play 'Angels in America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.
- (804)
- Drama
- Marianne Elliott, Bridget Caldwell
- 2017-07-20
Thank you so much for archiving this for its educational value and posterity. I especially appreciate the ability to compare and contrast between productions to glean nuance and differences in interpretation. What a gift! Play by Tony Kushner, full show. Part 1 and 2: Milennium Approaches and Perestroika.
- Scene 1
- Scene 2
- Scene 3
- Scene 4
- Scene 5
- Analysis
The play opens with Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz alone onstage with a small wooden coffin. He is preaching the funeral of Sarah Ironson, the grandmother of a large, assimilated Jewish family. Rabbi Chemelwitz admits he did not know Sarah, whose later years in the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews were sad and quiet, but that he knows her type: the strong, unc...
Meanwhile, Joe Pitt is waiting in Roy Cohn's office while Roy nimbly manipulates several blinking phone lines. Roy switches between arguing with a client whose court date he missed, arranging theater tickets for the wife of a visiting judge, and cursing out an underling. Joe watches him uncomfortably. As Roy uses swear words, Joe asks him not to ta...
Joe's wife Harper is sitting alone in their apartment talking to herself and worrying—she imagines the ozone layer disappearing. Mr. Lies, a travel agent who Harper imagines, suddenly appears. Harper asks for a guided tour of Antarctica to see the hole in the ozone layer. She confesses her terrible fears about the world and the state of her marriag...
The scene cuts to Louis Ironson, Sarah's grandson, and his lover Prior Walter. They are sitting on a bench outside the funeral home and Louis is about to leave for the cemetery. He remembers his grandmother and apologizes to Prior for not introducing him, saying that family events make him feel closeted. Louis asks why Prior is in a bad mood, assum...
Joe asks Harper if she is willing to move to Washington, but she asks him to turn the job down, offering a series of lame, unconvincing excuses and ridiculous fears. Joe asks her how many Valium pills she has taken today; after first denying it, she admits she has had three. At first he tries to calm her, promising that things are changing for good...
Although the beginning of Act One only gives brief glimpses of the play's central characters, it nevertheless reveals the conflicts that will confront them for the rest of the play. Louis and Prior experience a terrible shock—Prior's revelation that he has AIDS—and that awful moment signals the inevitable destruction of their relationship. Prior te...
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1991 American two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The two parts of the play, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately.
- Tony Kushner
- 1992
In the first part of Tony Kushner's epic, set in 1980's New York City, a gay man is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls.
Millennium Approaches: Act 1, Scene 1. Part One of Angels in America takes place in 1985. Shortly after the death of his grandmother, Sarah Ironson, Louis Ironson learns that his boyfriend, Prior Walter, has AIDS. Louis is devastated by this news.
2, Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches is a theatrical megalith, veering wildly between the personal and political, the historical and the fictional, the epic and the intimate, the real and the hyper-real.
