From the new issue:Kara VanderBijl on Angels in America (2003):
“There’s an old biblical mandate—“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it”—that’s had the faithful chattering for millennia. Across pulpits and potlucks, in prayers and prophecies, these people thank God for the stranger who mysteriously disappeared after pulling their children out of the path of a moving car, for the comforting presence at the foot of the bed, for the almost-physical peace that flooded them during a long illness.
They say, “Thank you for visiting us in our time of need.”
And they miss the point entirely.
But Angels in America, the Mike Nichols-directed adaptation of Tony Kushner’s play of the same name, plumbs these old words’ poignant depths. It may seem strange to speak of biblical mandates and angels in the context of this story: one of a splintering nation, gay sex, the AIDS epidemic, addiction, abuse of power, and betrayal. Still, Angels in America proves that tenderness, and truth, are closeted alongside paradoxes.
It’s 1985. Ronald Reagan is the president. In Manhattan, Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) tells his lover of four and a half years, Louis (Ben Shenkman), that he’s dying. Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), the powerful—and closeted—right-wing fixer, finds out he’s in the advanced stages of AIDS. Cohn’s errand boy, Republican attorney Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), seesaws between his political ambition and his wife Harper’s (Mary-Louise Parker) agoraphobia, not to mention his Mormon beliefs and his own hidden homosexuality.
Somewhere above San Francisco, the angels mourn God’s absence.”
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