Summary
Part II: Perestroika
Act One: Spooj
Scene 1
In the darkness, a voice announces the oldest of Bolsheviks, here in the Kremlin. Lights come on and Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, old and blind, asks if the Past will release us. Can we change in time? What about theory? Do these reformers even have theory? He says they once found the classic texts in the time of their ignorance and “heard the tick of the Infinite” (138). Can this happen today? What do the children of theory have to offer? Market incentives, cheeseburgers? He wants to see theory and then he’ll be at the barricades; if there aren't any words to change the world, just stay silent. If they don’t have a new skin, like a snake would after shedding his old, they cannot come out into the world.
Scene 2
Louis and Joe enter Louis’s apartment. Joe is a little perturbed that it’s so messy, and he starts to become uncomfortable. Louis says he likes that, but Joe is concerned about Prior being sick. Louis says they will use a lot of protection. Joe is unconvinced and moves to leave.
Louis says that he should hurry home to the missus and that, the next time he goes to the Ramble, he should remove his wedding ring. Joe stops and turns around. He hugs Louis awkwardly. Louis asks what cologne he’s wearing and laughs to hear that it’s Faberge.
Louis moves closer to Joe, explaining how powerful scent is and how the nose is a sexual organ. He whispers to Joe to inhale near his own nose. Joe does so. Louis continues, saying the nose and tongue work as a team. They kiss. Louis puts his hand down Joe’s pants and then has him smell it.
Joe is still a little nervous, but Louis tells him that words are the worst: he only needs to breathe and smell.
Scene 3
Mr. Lies plays the oboe in what is left of Antarctica, now dirty and grim. Harper enters, dragging a pine tree. She is wearing normal clothes that she’d put on in her own apartment. She is filthy and desperate.
When Mr. Lies asks where she got the tree, she says she chewed it down. She’s like a beaver but hasn’t had food in three days. She can’t light a match and sits in despair. She wonders why she’s not dead, for if one’s heart breaks they should die.
Joe enters and sees Harper. He approaches and says hello. She asks if she can go with him since this isn’t working. He isn’t sure. She angrily says he fell out of love with her. After a moment, she cries that she wishes he were dead. He is sorry, but he vanishes.
Mr. Lies plays a lament. The Antarctic fades; now there is just the park and city. Mr. Lies tells her he had warned that there were no Eskimos or trees. Harper realizes she got the tree from the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens Arboretum.
Police car lights flash. Harper sighs that this was a lousy vacation.
Scene 4
The exhausted Hannah answers the phone in the Pitt apartment and hears about Harper. She is shocked about the tree but tells the officer that Harper does not belong in the hospital: she’s just bewildered. She says she is coming to get her.
Scene 5
Prior wakes up in the middle of the night, rueful that he clearly had an orgasm but slept through it. He calls Belize at the hospital and tells him what happened. It was strange, he says, because it was with a woman—an angel. Belize laughs and says that’s fabulous.
Prior asks Belize to come over and marvels that he feels lascivious, sad, wonderful, and horrible. He also realizes he is crying, scared, and joyful at the same time.
Belize has to go, however, when Roy’s doctor, Henry, enters. He entertains Prior for longer, though, and the two sing “Joy to the World” together. Henry is annoyed, but he gives Belize Roy’s chart when he hangs up.
When Belize sees that Roy’s chart says “liver cancer,” he raises his brows. Henry curtly tells him that Roy is on the right floor regardless of what it says.
After Henry leaves, Belize calls Prior back with the gossip: “The Killer Queen Herself. New York’s number one closeted queer” (150) is here with AIDS in the hospital. Prior is stunned.
Scene 6
The sick and scared Roy is in bed. Belize enters. Roy rudely tells him he wants a white nurse, saying it’s his constitutional right. Belize retorts that in the hospital there are no constitutional rights.
Belize prepares Roy’s arm and Roy nervously tells him not to jab it, or else he’ll sue. Belize hisses that Roy had better be careful when Belize is holding something so sharp, or else it’ll slip into Roy’s heart. Roy is grudgingly impressed, especially when Belize inserts the needle flawlessly.
Roy groans in pain but says it’s fine because pain is nothing—pain is life. He brags of getting a facelift under local anesthesia and how he saw the whole thing. Belize is unconvinced, but Roy says he can get anyone to do anything. Maybe they should be friends, because, after all, the “Jews and coloreds” are a “historical liberal collation” (152). He rambles on about being annoyed that Jews went Communist while blacks didn’t because they had Jesus.
Belize sighs that Roy is obviously delusional. Roy tells him to sit to talk, but Belize is not at all interested in this. Roy, upset, says he doesn't want to beg. Belize stops. Roy comments on how he hates hospitals, wasting, and weakness, and how he wishes he could kill this. He pauses and asks if they can kill it. Belize is quiet.
Roy asks how he looks compared to all the other guys with this. Belize replies that he is in trouble. Roy knows he is going to die soon, and Belize has to say that he probably will. Roy tells him he appreciates the honesty, and he adds that he actually hates the racist simpletons: they’re useless, he says, and not worth his hate.
After a moment, Belize tells him that even though he does not like him, he has some advice: don’t let the doctor use radiation, because he doesn’t have enough T-cells to lose. The doctor won’t want to listen, but Roy should make him. And, as he’s amazingly on the AZT trials, he should not sign the paper that could let them give him placebos.
Roy is interested in this and wonders why he’s telling him this if he hates him. Belize sighs that he doesn't know—but maybe it’s one “faggot to another” (155).
After Belize leaves, Roy demands an outside line. He calls Martin and says he requires his own private stash of the medicine, and if he doesn’t get it soon he’ll call up CBS and tell Mike Wallace all about Oliver North and Iran Contra. He holds the phone away as Martin screams; he curses him out gleefully and says that Martin better get his box of drugs, or else there will be hell to pay.
Act Two: The Anti-Migratory Epistle (For Sigrid)
Scene 1
It is now three weeks later. Belize and Prior are leaving the funeral of a mutual friend, a famous drag queen. Belize is dressed flamboyantly, Prior ascetically. Belize comments that the service was divine, but Prior complains about how tacky it was and how they—homosexuals—don’t really count in this world. Belize is irritated; Prior sneers that he’s sorry he can’t get excited about death like the rest of them.
Belize looks at him and says he looks like Morticia Adams. Prior says his eyesight is going bad at the periphery; it’s gotten worse since his strange dream. Belize is skeptical as Prior explains that he is a prophet now. He was given a Book, and it is in him now.
These words perturb Belize.
Scene 2
We return to three weeks earlier. Prior changes himself back into his pajamas, as if to convince Belize of what is happening. Belize is drawn into the scene.
Prior is now in his bed under the wrecked ceiling with the Angel before him. He is clearly terrified, but the Angel, in a booming voice, announces that the Great Work has begun. She is the Bird of America, the Bald Eagle, and is Lumen/Phosphor/Fluor/Candle. She salutes Prior as the American Prophet and says that it is time for him to remove the Sacred Prophetic Implements.
Prior is confused and still terrified, but the Angel motions that he has them in his dreams. Prior tells himself aloud that this is a dream; the Angel, now annoyed, rises higher in the air and tells him to look under the tiles under the sink. Prior protests that he can’t ruin the tiles because he will get in trouble, but the Angel demands that he submit to the will of heaven. Her loud voice is matched by a gust of wind.
It is a standoff. A small explosion is heard in the kitchen. Prior leaps up while the Angel continues her intoning that the Prophet procured the implements with the help of the Angel.
Prior grabs a suitcase that he found, complaining that the Angel destroyed his refrigerator. She calls for him to open it; when he does, he finds a pair of bronze spectacles with rocks instead of lenses. After he puts them on, he immediately takes them off and says he did not want to see that.
The Angel then says he must remove the Book, and he does. More light, wind, and music occur. She tells him to put on the spectacles and read the Book. He is reluctant, especially as he now has an erection for some reason.
Prior begins to read. The Angel intones that he is mere flesh, she is utter flesh, and ecstatics make the engine of creation run. She vibrates with sexual energy, which also affects Prior. Prior cannot help his arousal and humps the Book as she speaks of engorgement, flow, ejaculate, and fiery grappling. She turns him on his back and, as he moans, she calls out in ecstasy.
Finally she says the “Body is the Garden of the Soul” (165) and that Prior had a “Plasma Orgasmata” (165).
Belize butts in to ask what this all is. Prior says she fucked him and has eight vaginas. Belize is understandably confused.
Prior is both in the bedroom three weeks ago, and in the present time with Belize.
Belize asks what gender God is. Prior replies that God is male but not an old man; rather, He is the Aleph Glyph. Each Angel is “an infinite aggregate myriad entity, They’re basically powerful bureaucrats, They have no domination, They can do anything but They can’t invent create, They’re sort of fabulous and dull all at once, and They copulate, ceaselessly” (166).
The Angel orders Prior to keep reading. He does, reading that, when Angels cum, they make this Plasma Orgasmata, which is protomatter that makes Creation. Heaven is like San Francisco, the Angel tells Prior.
Prior listens as the Angel continues. She is speaking of God, Aleph Glyph, coming down to them as he burned forever, and heaven’s walls were ringing with moaning and hot wet fire. She is sorrowful and stops talking.
Belize breaks in to stop Prior, but he is listening to the Angel. She says that one day, God changed, growing weary of the Angels and their fornications. They cannot imagine, only adore. He wanted something new and he made humans, which also made division: man and woman. By doing so, God unleashed “Eternal Creation’s Potential for Change” (169), and, the Angel tells Prior disgustedly, “the Virus of TIME began! YOU Think. And you IMAGINE! Migrate! Explore“ (169).
Belize asks Prior haltingly whether he knows that none of this is real. Prior sighs that it is real enough. The Angel addresses both of them, angrily saying that humans progress. They move. They intermingle. Belize asks why this is bad, as the Angel gets angrier and angrier. Prior tells him it’s because that caused earthquakes in Heaven: God began to leave the Angels and become bewitched by humans.
On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake happened; God abandoned the Angels and did not return. The Angel is bemoaning that they are bitter, cast off, waiting for God, and missing Him.
Belize raises his brow and says that abandonment is a common motif. Prior understands. Belize tells him to let him go.
Back at the Book, Prior holds the peepstones. The Angel speaks passionately of the anxious, hovering Angels, and of how humans must stop moving because they drove God away. They must forsake the open road, neither mix nor intermarry, and stop mingling. Humans destroy, trample, and do not advance. They are “Poor blind Children, abandoned on the Earth, Groping terrified, misguided, over Fields of Slaughter, over bodies of the Slain: HOBBLE YOURSELVES!” (172.) The Angel prepares to conclude and speaks the words, “If you Cannot find your Heart’s desire”; Prior adds, “In your own backyard”; finally, all three say, “You never lost it to begin with” (172).
The Angel doesn’t know what to do about the humans knowing the words. Prior remonstrates with her that he is a sick, lonely man, not a prophet. He knows she wants him dead, but he says vigorously that he is tired of death. He wonders whether this illness is revenge: might the illness itself be the prophecy? He finally tells her to leave, saying that if she doesn’t, then he will.
Prior moves to go past her. She touches his shoulder on his way out and says, “you can’t Outrun your Occupation, Jonah. Hiding from Me one place you will find me in another” (173). She grasps him softly, presses the Book against him, and the two experience a painful and joyful sensation together.
She releases him and, amidst music, ascends.
Scene 3
Prior puts his normal clothes on and is standing alone with Belize. Belize is clearly confused and annoyed about the Angel’s criticisms. He says that Prior is afraid of his disease, death, and time. But, he adds, the world doesn’t spin backwards.
As Prior moves to respond, Belize holds his hand up. He tells Prior to listen to the city, the sound of energy, and the sound of time. He tells him seriously that there is no angel and that he cannot handle this happening to Prior.
As he talks, the Angel whispers to Prior. Finally, Prior backs away from Belize and apologizes that this won’t let him go—maybe he really is a prophet. He does believe that he’s seen the end of things, and, like all prophets, he seems to be going blind.
He kisses Belize and says sadly that he has no resistance left except to run. He limps away.
Act Three: Borborygmi (The Squirming Facts Exceed the Squamous Mind)
Scene 1
Joe and Louis are in Louis’s apartment; Harper and Hannah are in Harper and Joe’s.
Hannah is helping Harper dress and trying to sternly comfort her: life, she says, can be very disappointing, but you have to accept it. Harper listens stoically. Hannah sighs that she has tried to get ahold of Joe but he will not respond.
Harper talks over to the other part of the stage where Joe is, accusing him of being in love with Louis. He says that he’s not, and he asks how she is. This makes her think that he isn’t in love with Louis after all. She wonders if she is a witch because she sees more than she ought to see. Joe tells her she is not.
Harper continues, telling him that she knew he’d be with someone since he could never be alone. She reaches and puts her hand under Louis’s head. He wakes, and she vanishes.
Louis grimly says he did not sleep well and has terrible dreams every night. Joe doesn’t anymore, now that he’s been here. Louis looks at him and calls him a conundrum. Joe responds by asking Louis to “solve” him.
Scene 2
Roy is in his hospital room, sicker and more emaciated than before. He is yelling into the phone when he has a spasm of pain. Ethel Rosenberg appears and sits down on a chair.
Roy is angrily defending himself to the accuser on the phone, and when Belize comes in, he tells him he threw up fifteen times today. He also talks to Ethel.
Belize explains he has to watch him take his pills, but Roy throws them on the ground, saying he will supply his own pills. Pain grips him and he sees Ethel laugh at him.
Roy tells Belize he’s self-medicating and Belize is shocked to hear that this medication is AZT, marveling that only 30 people in the whole country are getting it. After a moment, Belize tells Roy frankly that he needs some of those pills from him because he has friends who need them. Roy refuses flatly, explaining that he hates Belize and his friends: in his mind, they are so entitled. Roy continues his rudeness, but the pain takes over eventually; he complains that he is a dead man.
Belize isn’t interested in doling out pity, and Roy calls him a “nigger.” The two exchange heated, colorfully explicit insults. When Belize calls him a “greedy kike,” Roy is pleased and tosses him the keys, telling him to take a bottle of pills. Belize takes three and leaves.
Roy looks at Ethel. She says that she will stay there until she leaves to hear his disbarment proceedings. He calls her a succubus and they laugh together.
Ethel vanishes. Roy is now sad, talking to her empty chair about how America has no use for the sick; this is “no country for the infirm” (189).
Scene 3
Harper is sitting lazily in the Diorama Room at the Mormon Visitors’ Center. There is a red curtain drawn around a proscenium. Hannah leads Prior and tells him she’ll get it started.
Harper watches Prior with her new ironic, disaffected, flat affect. He is dressed in black and seems nervous.
A welcome message sounds, but the audio has trouble. Harper says confidingly that there are usually issues. She looks at Prior and wonders if she’s met him before; then, she continues to explain about the family in the diorama. There is a man who looks like her husband, Joe. Prior asks if she is Mormon, and she replies that she’s an inferior one.
Harper looks at Prior and says matter-of-factly that he’s not Mormon, just distracted by grief. This surprises him; she shrugs and says that a lot of people like that come here. Prior explains that he is here doing research on angels.
Harper is intrigued and that's interesting, because you’d have to be dead before you saw your first specimen of an angel for any such research. Prior confides in her that he did see one because it crashed through his bedroom ceiling. Harper understands. Prior thinks that she looks very familiar. Harper agrees with him, but she muses that she never goes anywhere—so how would she know him?
The lights come in the diorama room and there is a scene of Mormon pioneers in a wagon with the mountains of Colorado and Utah in the distance. The music plays and a narrator speaks of the journey in 1847. Harper cheerfully says hello to Joe in the diorama.
The narrator continues and Harper adds her own commentary. She says that the mother and sister have no lines. She laughs that they will die of snakebites and not make it; the lake they’re going to is all salt. It’s an extremely disappointing Promised Land.
Suddenly, Louis appears in the diorama. He is angrily telling Joe that he cannot believe he’s spent three weeks with a Mormon. Prior is stunned and asks what is going on. Harper can see them, too.
Louis is complaining about Mormonism being a cult. Prior cannot handle this and bursts out asking what he is doing there. Harper is not at all agitated; she says that the creep is in and out and has nothing to do with the story.
Louis is telling Joe that it is bad that he abandoned his wife. He remarks that it’s strange, though: it is terrible that Joe did that thing, but Joe is not a terrible person—and he’s so sweet in bed. Louis also doesn’t understand how Joe is a Republican. Joe kisses him.
Prior, upset, says Louis’s name. It is almost as if Louis hears him, but he turns away. He tells Joe they have to talk. They leave.
Harper is visibly upset and says that the dummy has never actually left with the creep before. She sees Prior crying and tells him that this is no place for real feelings. Also, this is her place to be miserable in, not his. Prior cries that he just saw his lover with her husband. Harper tries to convince him that it is just the magic of the theater and that he didn’t really see that.
Hannah enters and glares at Harper when she sees Prior’s tears. She asks what Harper did to him. Harper yanks open the curtains and the dummies are there as they ought to be. Harper looks at Prior and says they imagined it all.
Hannah and Harper begin to bicker. Prior is perplexed by all of this. Harper tells Hannah that Prior saw an angel and is an angelologist. Hannah is unconvinced and orders them out.
Harper and Prior stand together. Harper says she doesn't want to leave because she is waiting to hear the Mormon Mother’s story someday. Prior realizes he knows Harper from his dream and says sadly that dreaming used to be safe. He leaves.
Harper address the Mormon Mother. The Mother gestures for Harper to come sit with her, and she does. Harper tells her that her heart is an anchor and she’s stuck, to which the Mother replies, “Leave it, then. Can’t carry no extra weight” (199).
Harper asks how people change. The Mother paints a picture of God ripping people open, pulling everything out, and then people needing to learn how to stitch themselves back together. People are really just “mangled guts pretending” (200).
Scene 4
Joe and Louis sit at the beach facing the cold ocean. Joe is wistfully talking about what a great country this used to be. Louis is still bothered by the Mormonism and asks about Joe’s temple garment underwear. He moans that he doesn’t know why he is with Joe and that Joe is just fooling himself about being happy now.
Joe and Louis are still attracted to each other, but Louis is torn. Joe sighs that Louis is unhappy all the time because he thinks the world is perfectible; he needs, Joe says, to learn to reconcile himself to its imperfectability by being in the world but not of it.
Louis is intrigued, especially when Joe begins to bite his nipple. Louis is into it but stops him, frustrated that he’s lost his clarity. He wishes that Joe weren’t so conservative. Joe is a little unnerved by Louis’s behavior now and tells him that he’s obsessed with Reagan.
Joe continues, talking aloud and wondering if perhaps he feels clarity now—maybe he is in love with Louis. Louis scoffs that this isn’t possible. Joe implores him to understand that they want the same thing. When Louis says he wants to see Prior again, Joe freezes. Louis explains that he needs to see him and that Joe must want to see his wife. Joe agrees that he feels bad for her and is afraid of her.
Joe wonders whether Louis does not want to see him anymore. Louis is confused. Joe says he will give him anything and starts to take off his clothes on the beach, even his temple garment. He is now naked. He proclaims he is open, flayed, and ready to live. He wants Louis and will be anything he needs to be. As Louis reaches to help dress him, Joe tells him that sometimes, being kind and gentle is bad for others—and that Louis is hurting him.
Louis stands and walks away slowly. Joe calls that he will come back to him. Prior goes home. He takes off the black clothes and splashes water on his face.
Joe screams that Louis will come back to him.
Prior takes his pills. Louis picks up the phone and calls Prior, telling him that he wants to see him.
Analysis
Judaism is not the only religion that plays a significant role in the text. Mormonism, a religion of American origin, functions in numerous ways. First, the story is of exiles, outcasts, and their migration westward, a perfect example of what the Angel says is the problem with humans. Second, it functions like Republicanism and conservatism in that it makes Joe feel ashamed and confused about his homosexual identity. Third, it oppresses Harper as a woman, making her think that her entire identity is wrapped around her husband.
Mormonism, like other Judeo-Christian traditions, has angels in its cosmology. This gives Hannah a somewhat unique ability to help Prior interpret what is happening to him, especially towards the end of the play when he has to wrestle the Angel and demand blessing. These Angels in Angels in America are not simply beautiful and benign beings as they are represented elsewhere: they are concupiscent, aggressive, frightening, and self-interested. They are devastated that God grew bored with them and left Heaven for his new creation of human beings, and they desire nothing more than for humans to stop doing what makes them human: migrate, progress, intermingle, imagine, and change. Within human beings is the capacity for change; they represent time and history.
Kushner’s heavenly beings are certainly more enigmatic than they might seem at first. It isn’t clear if Prior is really seeing anything at all; he could be suffering mere delusions resulting from pain and emotional suffering. However, it’s more likely that what he is seeing is real; so does that there is a God in this universe? Critic John Hudson asks, “Is God really absent from the heavens, and are the various real and metaphorical plagues visited upon the earth the result of God’s wrath and disappointment or merely the chaotic vagaries of a neutral universe and of scientific law?”
Assuming that what Prior experiences is real, let’s focus on his role as prophet. As critic Ranen Omer-Sherman writes, a prophet in ancient Judaism isn’t so much a seer as a “marginalized outsider who critiques society, sometimes anticipating disastrous consequences if society does not abandon its pursuit of certain practices.” As a prophet, Prior has responsibilities and new concerns. He cannot celebrate death as Belize does. He has no time for Louis’s platitudes. He seeks further enlightenment at the Mormon Visitors’ Center, contemplating what he is to do with the prophecy and Book he was given.
Returning to Belize, it is important to acknowledge a few significant readings of the character. First, he represents two marginalized identities: African American and homosexual. He comments that he wearies of taking care of white people and has no patience for Louis’s specious comments on race and politics. He is incredibly compassionate, as seen in his treatment of Prior and Roy. With Roy, this compassion is even more remarkable because Roy is a detestable human being, but Belize is able to look at his essential humanity and help him even though he abhors the man’s ideology and behavior. Belize is also perspicacious and authentic. He tells Louis flatly that he does not love America—in fact, he hates America. He is not fooled and he has no interest in performing anything. Ultimately, he is the voice of reason in the play.
Despite these affirmative aspects of Belize, there are issues with him. New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als admits, “despite Belize’s virtues, I have never felt comfortable in his presence. Even the greatest actor would love to do all the finger-snapping part-time-drag-queen stuff, but I don’t know one black man in nineteen-eighties New York who would have felt entirely himself—entirely safe—‘reading’ white people while on the job. The character is a dream of black strength, an Angela Bassett of the ward.” And it is important to note that Belize really does spend all of his time in the play helping out the white characters. He has a life—drag, a boyfriend—but we never see it. In an interview for the book of essays, The Color of Theater: Race, Culture and Contemporary Performance, Brian Freeman succinctly but sharply asks, “How come Belize is like the cleaning lady?” In perhaps the most damning and resonant critique, which deserves to be quoted at length, Steven Thrasher writes:
In its nearly eight-hour running time, there are only two nonwhite characters who are typically played by the same black actor: a Magical Negro named “Mr. Lies” (a travel agent who transports crazy white people during their hallucinations) and an equally Magical Negro nurse named Norman Arriaga — known to his friends as Belize — who is there to clean up the emotional mess and literal blood of the otherwise all-white cast… Cohn calls Belize a ‘nigger’ and that’s how he’s treated by everyone in Angels…But the scene that made me most uncomfortable is when Belize and Louis are on a bench and Louis is talking — and talking, and talking, ejaculating a monologue of bullshit at Belize while the black character throws shade in looks. When I saw it, the overwhelmingly white audience found this hilarious. But if you’re a queer of color and have ever been spoken to in this way, you don’t find Louis very funny…Belize may not be a clown, but he certainly functions as comic relief for the audience. And what’s more, because Kushner segregates him in a lily-white world; he exists more for the emotional development of the white characters than he does for his own…Angels in America gives the impression that black American queerness only exists in relation to white, gay men.
