Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches and Part Two: Perestroika

Tony Kushner

Note

This bundle consisting of two books is sold at 20% off the regular price for its individual titles.

$20.75

Acting Edition — Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

In the first part of Tony Kushner's epic, set in 1980's New York City, a gay man is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls. Other characters include the infamous McCarthy-ite lawyer Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, a former drag queen who works as a nurse, and an angel.

Acting Edition — Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika

In the second part, the plague of AIDS worsens, relationships fall apart as new ones form, and unexpected friendships take form.

MILLENNIUM APPROACHES: Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Winner of the 1993 Tony Award for Best Play; PERESTROIKA: Winner of the 1994 Tony Award for Best Play

Description

Among the twentieth century’s defining works of American art, ANGELS IN AMERICA remains as transcendent, as potent, and as timely in its concerns as when it premiered on Broadway over 25 years ago.

Categories: ,
Reviews

Press Quotes

ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART ONE: 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

“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

ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART TWO: PERESTROIKA

“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

“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

“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, New Yorker

About the Author

Author

  • Tony Kushner

    Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Tony Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES. His other plays include A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY, SLAVS!, HYDROTAPHIA, HOMEBODY/KABUL, and CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille's THE ILLUSION, S.Y. Ansky's THE DYBBUK, Bertolt Brecht's THE GOOD PERSON OF SEZUAN and MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, and the English-language libretto for the children's opera BRUNDIBÁR by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels in America and Steven Spielberg's Munich. In 2012 he wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's movie Lincoln. His screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Chicago Film Critics Award, and several others. His books include But the Giraffe: A Curtain Raising and Brundibar: The Libretto, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. His recent work includes a collection of one-act plays entitled TINY KUSHNER, and THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES. In addition, a revival of ANGELS IN AMERICA ran Off-Broadway at the Signature Theater and won the Lucille Lortel Award in 2011 for Outstanding Revival. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement, and the 2012 National Medal of Arts, among many others. CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, produced at the National Theatre of Great Britain, received the EVENING STANDARD Award, the London Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical. In September 2008, Tony Kushner became the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the largest theater award in the US. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.