Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Winner of the 1993 Tony Award for Best Play
Play Description
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.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 180 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“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
Book Information
Publisher | BPPI |
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Publication Date | 1/30/2017 |
Pages | 140 |
ISBN | 9780881456516 |
Special Notes
All licensees are required to give credit to the original stage producers of the play in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
MILLENNIUM APPROACHES was first performed in a workshop production
presented by Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, May 1990
The world premiere was presented by The Eureka Theatre Company, May 1991
Opened in London at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, January 1992
Opened in New York at the Walter Kerr Theatre in April 1993
The first production of ANGELS IN AMERICA, Parts One and Two
was presented at the Mark Taper Forum
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, New York, NY