Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Part One of Tony Kushner’s sweeping set of epics, Millennium Approaches chronicles the intersecting stories of a cast of New York (and otherworldly) characters as they grapple with the AIDS epidemic, the social and political climate of the 1980s, and the approaching of the new millennium. As one of the characters, Harper, tells us: “everywhere, things are collapsing, lies surfacing, systems of defense giving way.” While Harper’s statement is about the world at large, it also rings true to the characters in the play as they face tumult in their own lives. In this atmosphere of uncertainty and decay, how, then, do we keep moving forward? 

Kushner has subtitled his play, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, which we can see in its scope and breadth with examining queerness and the entity of “America” through a range of lenses, from suffering to sacredness. In its blending of fantastical with familiar, ruin with repair, and conservatism with change, Angels in America tells that we, even in the darkest of times, can find community and comfort.