Angels in America

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• Source: University of Bristol Theatre Collection

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• Ian Harris

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Play description

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991[1] and its Broadway opening was in 1993.[1]

The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.

The two parts of the play are separately presentable and entitled Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, respectively. The play has been adapted into an HBO 2003 miniseries of the same title. The Seattle Times listed the series as among “Best of the filmed AIDS portrayals” on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of AIDS.[2] The playwright and professor of theater studies John M. Clum called the play “a turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture”.[3]

In 2017 the show received a much-acclaimed West End revival which won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival. The production later transferred to Broadway where it received eleven Tony Award nominations, the most ever for a non-musical play at that time, and won three: for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for Andrew Garfield and Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for Nathan Lane.

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