Reviewing gay themed novels, memoirs and stories is interesting. Reviewing plays after having seen a performance is enjoyable. But reviewing a play based on having read the script presents challenges. As we all know from having read Shakespeare in high school, the written play and the performance of the play are two very different things. What makes little sense when trudging through Romeo and Juliet becomes vibrant and alive when the work is actually mounted.
This is apparent in the case of Angels in America. Sadly, I have not seen the production. There is an additional challenge...this is one of two plays. Angels in America (part II) is, I understand, normally performed with part I, often on consecutive evenings. I am not aware of any recent productions.
The complete title is A Gay Fantasia on National Themes...Angels in America Part I: Millennium Approaches. This tells us a lot about what we can expect on the stage.
Indeed Angels is a fantasia, a sort of free floating swirl of archetypal images, concepts and fears of the gay community in the mid-’80s. It was first performed in 1990 and is set in late 1985. What we see stands in sharp contrast to most plays I’ve experienced. Romeo and Juliet, Our Town, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf...all make powerful points, but all have characters who are real...I can empathize with them, hate them, know them.
Angels characters are different...they are archetypes. Each represents a viewpoint, a concept, each is drawn so strongly that he is one-dimensional he is...well...archetypal.
We have Roy, the arrogant closeted powerbroker dying of AIDS. He is in total denial of his homosexuality to the point that the word barely escapes his mouth. He has cancer (not AIDS), he is not gay (he has sex with men). His double-think represents a gay group even today.
There is Joe, struggling with trying to be straight, knowing he is gay, struggling with his sexual identity and his religion (Joe was raised as a Mormon) struggling to remain in the closet, knowing that it cannot be.
His wife, Harper, represents the thousands of woman married to a gay man who cannot understand why her relationship is a shell...self-blaming, self-abusing.
Belize, black, the now-and-again drag queen, represents a viewpoint close to reality. She comes closest to a three dimensional person. Because of her no nonsense worldview her character seems to be drawn from the New Yorkers of Stonewall who finally said “Enough” to the police and society...
There are others who interact, who overlap, and in using split stage scenes, drive powerful themes home to the audience.
How does it all end? It doesn’t really. Part I really needs the conclusion of Part II to be fully understood. The massive gay themes portrayed need to be tied down...concluded.
It is inevitable that, having read Part I, I feel compelled to read Part II. Is the story germane in 2002? I think so, but the dated material dealing with Reagan and the federal government attitude toward the AIDS epidemic will increasingly make the play seem like a historical period piece. This may be unfortunate since much else about the work can still speak to the gay community today.
I don’t recommend that you run out and buy this play, yet the time spent reading it was not wasted. For me it puts matters into perspective, things like where we (gay men) were, where we are today, and where we are going.