Angels in America

: I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you.

: I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you

I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you

Belize is tough, but Prior unfolds for him what must sound, to a nurse with considerable experience dealing with AIDS, like a wholly unfamiliar form of dementia, far more coherent than anything Belize has heard from his patients. He’s bewildered, grief-stricken, and, when Prior’s delusions assume uncharacteristically, deeply disturbing reactionary, even racist overtones, Belize becomes frightened and then angry. Thus Prior’s desperate attempt to end his loneliness by telling his best friend about the waking nightmare in which he’s trapped results in even greater isolation.

She’s Not Joking, and She’s No Joke: Some of what happens between Prior and the Angel is supposed to be funny, but it’s essential for the play, and, for that matter, for the comedy, that the Angel’s dignity and her unequivocally serious purpose are never—as in not for one single second!—compromised by schticky winking at the audience. Prior’s terror at being in her presence and/or at the possibility that he’s going mad never (as in not for one single second) abandons him. As Prior has his first full encounter with the Angel, and simultaneously relates it to Belize three weeks later, we’re watching a cosmically high-stakes encounter between a badly frightened but very brave human being and his furious, grief-stricken, frightened and frighteningly powerful nonhuman visitor/intruder. Apologies if I’m sounding strident, but I’ve learned that there are dire consequences if this reality is parodied or traduced. People can enjoy pratfalls, mugging and easy laughs, even while determining that they won’t be fooled again into deep investment in what’s proved to be unserious. Once faith in the seriousness of what’s onstage has been withdrawn, however briefly, it’s unlikely to return fully.

3) Her Cough: The Angel’s cough is a manifestation of cosmic unwellness, but she controls it, and she is a creature of unimaginable strength and discipline. She doesn’t want Prior to sense any weakness, disorder or confusion on her part, and her cough ought to be a single, dry bark, not prolonged wracking emphysemic spasms. Ellen McLaughlin, who created the role, based her brusque, even angry rap of a cough on a cat hacking up a furball. It was startling, sharp, simple—one hack, not ten—and effectively nonhuman, not funny as much as disconcerting and ominous, and always always dignified. It did not make her seem frail.

For starters, she refers to herself in the plural (I I I I) because she isn’t a single thing: She is a Principality, which is, depending on which angelological ordering system you subscribe to, the highest or one of the highest types among the angelic orders. She is four Divine Emanations—Lumen (blue), Candle (gold), Phosphor (green) and Fluor (purple)—manifest as an aggregate entity, the Continental Principality of America.

The characters in the play are fighting for survival; the stakes are very high. They talk to make things happen, to advance an agenda, to defend, to enlist, to seduce, to punish. Sometimes they speak in an effort to understand how or what they’re feeling. But never speak solely to announce your character’s distress, hoping for pity. The characters in the play are tougher than that; the world of the play, like the world outside the theater, is a tough place.

Millennium has three acts and Perestroika has five. Three acts make a tauter, cleaner play, the gestures and rhythms of which will feel more inexorable, more destination-driven; a five-act play is likely to provide a more expansive, exploratory and ultimately open-ended and unresolved experience. Perhaps it can be said that Millennium is a play about security and certainty being blown apart, while Perestroika is about danger and possibility following the explosion.

You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More Life.
The Great Work Begins.