What Is the Story of Angels in America: Perestroika?
In the second part of Tony Kushner’s epic drama of gay life in mid-1980s America, the eight characters introduced in Millennium Approaches pick up their stories at precisely the point that the first play ends. Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt is coming to terms with the fact that he is gay and embarks on a relationship with Louis Ironson, the estranged partner of Prior Walter. Joe’s mother, Hannah, becomes a major character after impulsively selling her Salt Lake City home and moving to New York, where she tries to keep an eye on Joe’s pill-popping wife, Harper. Meanwhile, Roy Cohn lays dying; his feisty nurse Belize covets the lawyer’s secret stash of AZT on behalf of Prior, who continues to battle AIDS and interacts with the angel who seemingly drops from heaven and addresses him as a “prophet.” Will this fascinating collection of New Yorkers survive the coming of the new millennium?