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Title: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Millennium Approaches/Perestroika by Tony Kushner ISBN: 1-55936-231-6 Publisher: Theatre Communications Group Pub. Date: November, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.34 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Enough here to consider over a lifetime
Comment: With ANGELS, Tony Kushner has accomplished what only a rare few Western writers have managed to do. Integrating biblical knowledge, classical history, myth, poetry and a vast understanding of the human heart in all of its best and worst guises, these plays illuminate with the blinding fire of the angel at its core, the great hypocrisies which lay just beneath the surface of our nation. Like Howard Zinn, and to some extent Studs Terkel, Kushner recognizes that we are not one nation under God. Instead, we seem to be a huge, selfish and confused hoarde attepting to move forward in time with primary moral references to the oldest, and in some ways, least applicable documents and sources of wisdom. Whether one believes that God is "dead" or not, I cannot imagine another work of literature which might promote a more useful theological discussion between so-called liberals and conservatives. Add to this the fact that the stories and characterization are gripping, the heroes are truly admirable and the villains reprehensible. Humans change in profound and permanent ways, and amid the pain of our time, there is -- after a reading of these remarkable plays -- still hope. For once in many years, the Pulitzer Prize moved in the right direction. Whether read or viewed on stage or in its most recent iteration as a superb HBO movie, ANGELS is one of the most rewarding experiences of a lifetime.
Rating: 2
Summary: Great Prose Squandered for the Sake of a Hollow Vision
Comment: I recall the critical reception that Angels in America received at the time of its initial Broadway run. At that time, it was edgy enough to make many audience members uncomfortable --which it would certainly not do today -- yet it also came at just the right moment to be a coming-of-age manifesto for the gay rights movement. Only the boldest of critics would have dared to disparage it during that heydey of political correctness. And it isn't a horrible play; it's only horribly flawed. But it was also perfectly positioned to capture a mass audience. It seemed transgressive enough to lure aging baby boomers into a sense that they were seeing something risque (the same way much simplistic, commercial hip hop does), yet it piled on enough superficial schlock to make them feel good. This is not to say that the plays don't have great moments; they do. These are individuals scenes, individual lines, one or two extended speeches and sequences. These are sufficient to give the plays an illusion of depth, an illusion of grandiosity and significance. But Kushner lacks the vision to make the plays as a whole truly deep, to put his good moments at the service of a great idea (as opposed to a trite, cloying idea). And he lacks the discipline to purge the plays of their truly atrocious moments, which include some incredibly stereotypical characters, redundant monologues that do nothing but bluster and a drawn-out ending so banal and embarrassing that it is shocking to me that someone did not force Kushner to change it. There is also a lot of second-rate let's-laugh-at-the-Republicans-style humor. There are also many religious ideas being thrown around loosely and ultimately put at the service of a formula no more sophisticated than what Harold Bloom identifies in The Anxiety of Influence as Milton's weak Satanic proclamation "[e]vil, be thou my good," which reduces the grandeur of Satan to a mere childish rebellion. If I were to describe the overall feel of the plays, it would be like Dostoevsky's The Possessed (better translated as Demons) being written by Ron Howard.
I am aware that I am bucking the critical tide on this, but I would be surprised if fifty years down the road Angels in America has anything near the status that it does today. We are still too close in time to Angels in America to be able to judge it at the kind of critical distance necessary to separate ourselves from the political and emotional tenor of the moment, on which the plays so strongly depend for their sustenance. Suffice it to say that I have never seen or read another major play nor read a major novel that is so cheap, so full of cliches, so not in control of its own vision. It has, in many ways, all the big flaws of a Hollywood end-of-year blockbuster, which takes whatever good ideas it might have had and ruins them. While the Nichols movie version unquestionably plays up some of the bad stuff, its bigger problem is what it cannot possibly play down, what is, in other words, there in the text.
As a recent reviewer wrote, speaking of the movie version:
"After five and a half hours of taking up your time, what does Angels reward you with? A version of heaven that seems cribbed from those old 'Calvin Klein Obsession' ads, the inane conclusion that God deserves to be 'sued', and the oldest screenwriting cop-out in the book: hinting that it all may have just been a dream. This is followed by a lame Wizard of Oz reference that essentially mocks everything it just attempted to say, and more false endings than Sugar Ray Leonard's boxing career. My grandmother, a wise old schoolteacher-type, used to be fond of reminding people that 'an emptiest barrel makes the most noise.' While Angels in America does have some redeeming qualities and a handful of good performances, what has it really said after taking up six hours of the audience's time? That AIDS is a terrible disease? That there just might not be a God up there watching over us? That, as Woody Allen once said, life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering - and it's all over much too soon? Or perhaps, as Jerry Springer said, that we should take care of ourselves and each other? With all the noise this empty barrel makes, it's amazing that it still manages to be so full of itself."
Rating: 5
Summary: The Great Work begins...
Comment: I went out and bought this almost immediately after I watched the HBO miniseries. I must say, Tony Kushner's masterpiece looks very good on screen, and it stays pretty faithful to this book (script) with only a few minor changes, most noticeably in Part Two, Perestroika.
I normally don't like reading plays, finding the stage directions and minimal characterizations ungainly and somehow disappointing. After reading this, though, I have to admit, Angels in America looks fabulous anywhere: stage, screen, or in this case, even on paper.
In the beginning, Kushner gives some "performance notes" about staging. There should be minimal scenery and props, scene changes should be fluid and easy, without the use of blackouts, perhaps suggesting a "single stream of conscious thought onstage." The special effects (flying, magical appearances) need not be perfect; wires may show, and perhaps it is best if they do; as if the magic of the theater is able to express the *magic* on stage.
Reading this script opens a whole new door for people who have only seen the HBO mini-series. And while, I'm sure, seeing it onstage is best, reading the script is still an amazing experience.
What Tony Kushner has accomplished in Angels in America is by and far one of the most extraordinary experiences that one is likely to have the pleasure of benefitting from. I know of no other play, or other dramatic enterprise, that engages the mind so thoroughly, in discussion of some of the most complex and controversial issues of our time, or any time.
When reading this, you may feel overwhelmed. There appears to be so much happening, and the events may seem a complicated and tangled web. However, once you reach the end, to Prior's haunting yet uplifing closing monologue, there is a part of you that will understand it,no matter how small it may be. It sinks in, the message, the beauty, the pure humannes of the story, and you are changed.
The Great Work begins...
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Title:Angels in America (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) ASIN: B0000TAZB0 Publisher: Nonesuch Pub. Date: 02 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.99 |
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Title: Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America (Theater - Text/Theory Performance Series) by Deborah R. Geis, Steven F. Kruger ISBN: 0472066234 Publisher: University of Michigan Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title:Angels in America ASIN: B0001I2BUI Publisher: Warner Home Video Pub. Date: 01 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $39.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $27.99 |
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Title:Tony Kushner's "Angels in America": A Study Guide from Gale's "Drama for Students" ASIN: B00006G3AK Publisher: The Gale Group Pub. Date: 23 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $3.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $3.95 |
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Title: Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg ISBN: 0571211186 Publisher: Faber & Faber Pub. Date: 06 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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