Media coverage of the recent National Gay, Lesbian and Bi March on Washington yielded many striking tableaux, such as lesbian couples and their children marching along with gays in uniform who spoke out against the military ban, or a group of average-looking parents of lesbians and gays followed by members of ACT-UP who staged "die-ins" to protest current AIDS policies. This crossing of personal images and political agendas reflected the dual aims of the march: showing America the human diversity of the gay community and pressing for legislation to protect its civil rights. This thesis, that the personal is the political, is taken up quite forcefully in the new Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tony Kushner, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, which recently opened at the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway. Subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," Kushner's play attempts to meld the interpersonal and sexual straggles of its main characters with provocative reflections about America's identity in the years of Reaganism and AIDS.
On the personal side, "Millennium Approaches" traces a triangular series of interactions among the principal characters. Louis Ironson (Joe Mantello), a Jewish word processor, and Prior Walter (Stephen Spinella), a WASP drag queen, are gay partners whose relationship undergoes turmoil when Prior is found to have the initial symptoms of AIDS. Louis works in the same office as Joe Pitt (David Marshall Grant), a Mormon Republican Federal law clerk who is exhilarated by the change of government in Washington. Joe, however, is experiencing marriage troubles with his Valium-addicted wife, Harper (Marcia Gay Harden), because of his latent but emerging homosexuality. There is also Joe's personal friend, the infamous Roy Cohn (Ron Leibman), who has recently learned he has contracted AIDS and is under investigation by the New York State Bar for failing to repay a "loan." Cohn wants Joe to take an appointment in the Justice Department so as to influence the investigation. The action of the play revolves around Louis and Prior's attempts to cope with suffering, Joe's painful coming to awareness of his sexual identity and "coming out" to his wife, and Roy's efforts to camouflage his illness and his questionable activities.
This complex and often sharply comical web of relationships serves as the forum for Kushner's exploration of epic questions in 1980's America, thanks to this insight that matters of personal identity are inextricable from those of national character. Set between late 1985 and early 1986, the play interrogates the relationship between power and justice, while depicting blatant hypocrisy in the midst of democracy in the Reagan era, especially as exemplified in the figure of Cohn. Cohn tries to maintain his conservative image and power via euphemism ("liver cancer" for AIDS, an "unpaid loan" for a bribe) and attempts to save his skin through manipulation of the upright but naive Joe. Kushner also highlights the connection between freedom and fear as Louis helps Joe come to terms with his identity. Being truly free means, for the two of them, deconstructing images of America that repress and corrupt rather than liberate.
AIDS serves as the primary metaphor throughout the play, representing both the cataclysmic potential of the approaching millennium as well as the opportunity for rebirth. As represented in the play, AIDS is not only a destroyer of relationships and lives but also of images and ideologies, yet Kushner strongly holds out the prospect of hope at the end in the figure of The Angel, who functions as both messenger of death and missionary of mercy, announcing the "great work" that is to begin. Although AIDS is to claim the lives of both Prior and Roy, it provides dramatic opportunities for a new sense of love and honesty among the survivors.
For all of its theoretical aspirations, the play is strongest in its treatment of the human relationships. Kushner confers intensity on the life-and-death straggles between the two sets of lovers, and he uses dramatic juxtaposition quite effectively to represent their parallel situations. Particularly moving is a hallucination scene shared by Prior and Harper that is caused by their respective drugs (AZT and Valium); each character discovers the secret of the other and provides comfort. Equally gripping are the crisis scenes of both relationships, staged simultaneously and superbly choreographed, in which Louis abandons Prior and Joe splits from Harper.
The entire ensemble of "Angels in America" is first-rate, with most members taking on at least one secondary character along with the intense primary roles. Ron Leibman's performance as Roy Cohn is truly a tour de force, an explosion of energy that shifts in the course of the play from the hilarious outrages of a flamboyant raconteur to the pathetic ravings of a dying man. Spinella and Harden are constant sources of both humor and poignancy in the roles of Prior and Harper, while Mantello and Grant succeed in generating sympathy for Louis and Joe, initially so self-absorbed. Special mention must be given to the gender-bending skills of Kathleen Chalfant, who impressively plays a cavalcade of characters from a male rabbi and Cohn's doctor to Joe's strict Mormon mother and Ethel Rosenberg! The performances are supported yet not overwhelmed by Robin Wagner's simple set of moving flats and minimal furniture, which effectively creates a host of locations, and by Jules Fisher's superb lighting design, which varies from blue waves to blood-red artery patterns and occasional strobes to highlight the intense conflict of emotions in numerous scenes.
At first reflection after the play, I thought that Kushner had been too ambitious in linking his touching human stories with his philosophical and political goals. Indeed, at three-and-a-half hours, I found Kushner's work difficult to take in and appreciate at one sitting (and this is only Part I of"Angels in America"; Part II, "Perestroika," is scheduled to arrive in the autumn). A couple of scenes, such as Harper's hallucinogenic "trip" to Antarctica in which she rambles on poetically about the ozone layer and the "deep freeze" of her feelings, simply seemed excessive and disconnected from the body of the play. Despite the structural flaws and indulgences, with further reflection I was grateful for Kushner's courage to risk overstepping dramatic boundaries, much like one of his predecessors, Eugene O'Neill, who also fostered grand theoretical ambitions for his plays. Commercial audiences and financial limitations have too often restricted the flow of serious drama to Broadway. In Tony Kushner's "Millennium Approaches" we have a largely successful and extremely engaging drama that dares to make its audiences think and react as well as to entertain them.
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By JAMES J. MIRACKY
JAMES J. MIRACKY, S.J., is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
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