Angels

It's been just over a week now since Angels in America closed at the Ephrata Performing Arts Center. The piece by Tony Kushner (of Lincoln fame) is considered by many to be one of the great masterpieces of modern American theater.

It's such a huge and challenging two-part play that many theaters do only the first part (Millennium Approaches); or they do the second part (Perestroika) later in their season. At the risk of blowing our community theater's horn again, we did it back-to-back, with only a week of rehearsal in between. I agreed to help with stage crew on Perestroika (I had already seen the first part on opening night). I am so thrilled to have had even a small part in bringing this beautiful piece to life.

It may seem odd—or at least unorthodox—to call this piece subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes" a spiritual work. But it is without doubt one of the most spiritual pieces I've encountered. I know that conservative groups have protested the play for its frank portrayal of homosexual issues and for its "blasphemous" treatment of God, but I have to wonder (as with most such situations) whether any of the protesters have seen—or even approached—the work with anything resembling an open mind.

If they had, they would have seen a very open-minded and rather even-handed treatment of the subject. Some of the gay characters are noble, and some are not. Same for the straight characters. As for the titular angel, she is hard to figure out, as I would think an angel would be. But the most profound thing to me was how utterly human the characters are. Prior, the protagonist who struggles with AIDS as well as with his apparent calling as a prophet to his generation, is someone the audience cannot help but feel empathy toward. (Prior was beautifully embodied in our production by Daniel Greene.) Belize, Prior's best friend, is a very sassy, wisecracking nurse who nevertheless speaks some of the most honest and humane lines in the play (played to perfection in our show by Adam Newborn). Even the reprehensible Roy Cohn (one of the few true-life people) shows a fearful defiance in the face of AIDS that we can't help but sympathize with. Cohn was played brilliantly by Richard Bradbury on our stage.

What struck me the most, and what continues to stay with me, is the hopefulness that evolves throughout the play. People are gravely sick. People die. Marriages and relationships falter. And still Kushner instills a brave and stubborn sense of hope. And married to that hope, breathing life into it, is forgiveness—forgiveness for all the pain we inflict on each other, sometimes carelessly and sometimes quite maliciously.

One of the most pivotal scenes is when Belize and Louis (Prior's ex-lover) go to the hospital room of Roy Cohn soon after his death. Belize convinces Louis to say kaddish over Roy's dead body. Reluctantly, Louis does, through the help of the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (the masterful Elizabeth Pattey). Belize elicits Louis's help by reminding him, "It isn't easy. It doesn't count if it's easy. It's one of the hardest things—forgiveness. And maybe that's where love and justice finally meet."

v'ʼimru amen