Angels In America

You would think that sitting down to watch a 3-hour long play one evening in the middle of a work-week would make you fall asleep. Think again! Watching part one of “Angels in America” was worthevery minute spent rushing and getting lost trying to find the theatre in the south-side of the city. The Court Theatre’s production of “Angels in America” was probably one of the best plays I haveseen in Chicago. Artistic Director Carolina Ariza did a amazing job setting everything together to make a fantastic and enjoyable production with an excellent cast of actors and designers. Watchingthe first part “Millennium Approaches” is seriously making me consider setting aside time (and money) to watch the second part of this production: “Perestroika”.

This is a complex story with manydifferent themes. This production mixes reality and fiction, humor and pity. The play develops a sense of community, it gets deeply into human identity such as religion (specially Judaism andMormonism), race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Even AIDS serves as a part of an identity. The characters ethnicity is clearly defined. Personal bonds and moral issues are represented and then we seehow they turn into frustration, isolation and loneliness. But even as a community we must not loose our sense of identity to be able to be part of it. A society is an infrastructure made up of avaried collection of individuals, and this is clearly one of the morals of this story.

Political and Biblical references are all over this play. The main villain character is a conservativeRepublican (Roy Cohn) and the hero is a well-intentioned liberal (Prior Walter). Another political relationship can be formed through religious views in the play as well as in today’s society: Jews havemainly liberal views while Mormons are widely conservative. Both Louis’ and Joe’s religious beliefs come into play when they feel guilty after they leave their partners, violating their religious...