Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches

“Daring and dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least the absconding of God.” ?—?Jack Kroll, Newsweek

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1991 American two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The two parts of the play, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately. 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, followed by part two in 1992. Its Broadway opening was in 1993.

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

In 1994, 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". It is widely described as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century and of all time.

“A vast miraculous play … provocative, witty and deeply upsetting … a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama … PERESTROIKA is not only a stunning resolution of the rending human drama of MILLENIUM APPROACHES, but also a true millennial work of art, uplifting, hugely comic and pantheistically religious in a very American style.” ?—?Frank Rich, New York Times

“Something rare, dangerous and harrowing … a roman candle hurled into a drawing room …” ?—?Nicholas de Jongh, London Evening Standard

“An epic theatrical fever dream … a three-hour cliffhanger that leaves you wanting more.” ?—?Variety

“A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty. ANGELS IN AMERICA is a monumental achievement, the work of a defiantly theatrical imagination that has no parallel on television or in the movies. It ennobles Broadway as no other work in recent memory has.” ?—?Jeremy Gerard, Variety

“Not since Tennessee Williams has a playwright announced his poetic vision with such authority on the Broadway stage … PERESTROIKA is a masterpiece.” ?—?John Lahr, The New Yorker

“Establishes Kushner as a poet and moral visionary in love with the theater yet awake in the world.” ?—?Don Shewey, The Village Voice

“Playful and profound, extravagantly theatrical and deeply spiritual, witty and compassionate, furious and incredibly smart … It’s impossible to imagine anyone captivated by the beginning not wanting ?—? needing ?—? to go back for the end.” ?—?Linda Winer, Newsday