Angels in America is an epic double-comedy of love and hate, heaven and earth, past and future. It’s magnificent in both scope and detail, with luminous writing. Both Millennium Approaches and Perestroika won the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Play. Playwright Tony Kushner is also a duel Academy Award nominee for the screenplays Lincoln and Munich.
Part One – Millennium Approaches: It is 1985, Prior Walter is HIV positive, his Jewish boyfriend, Louis leaves him for a straight Mormon, and then he gets a hospital visit from an angel, who says it is up to him to save humanity. Throw in his drag queen best friend, a closeted Republican lawyer, the Mormon’s pill-popping wife, and a Rabbi and things are about to get mighty interesting…
Part Two – Perestroika: Various forces have gathered in New York: the ex-boyfriend and his Mormon squeeze, the squeeze’s pill-popping wife and Mormon mother, a rabid Republican lawyer, a black nurse and the Angel of America. And Prior Walter has the future of the world in his hands.
Kushner’s prize-winning play Angels in America became the defining theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theatre-goers.
Now, a generation after Kushner’s masterpiece first appeared, a black President who supports gay marriage is up against a Mormon Republican for the White House, and Angels in America is the perfect guide to the essential questions of our times. Exactly what are the forces that drive the manic history of this new millennium? What does it mean to live in a free society? What might it mean to live in a good society?
Angels in America will be created by an extraordinary creative team, led by director Eamon Flack and features Paula Arundell, Mitchell Butel, Marcus Graham, Amber McMahon, Luke Mullins, Robyn Nevin, DeObia Oparei and Ashley Zuckerman.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes
Belvoir St Theatre – 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Season: 28 May – 14 July 2013
Theatre Royal – 108 King St, Sydney
Season: 18 – 28 July 2013
For more information and bookings, visit: www.belvoir.com.au for details.
Image: by Gary Heery
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