Laurie Higgins Summarizes Kushner’s Debauched ‘Angels in America’

Here is Laurie Higgins’ summary of homosexual playwright Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: a Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” which was taught last year in Deerfield High School (Deerield is a north Chicago suburb). Click HERE for Richard John Neuhaus’ sardonic take on “Angels” (emphasis added below):

By Laurie Higgins

Angels in America is filled with obscenity, primarily forms of f**k. And although it addresses forgiveness (albeit not in a Christian sense, but rather, interpersonal forgiveness), compassion, community, and AIDS, it is primarily a pro-“gay” treatise with heavy-handed leftist politicking (e.g., explicit criticism of the Reagan administration) and sacrilege.
 
The plot revolves around two couples: married Mormon couple Harper and Joe whose marriage is disintegrating in large measure due to Joe’s repressed homosexuality, which he eventually acts upon: and a homosexual couple, Louis and Prior, who has AIDS. Louis leaves Prior due to his AIDS and has a month-long affair with Harper’s husband Joe. Roy Cohn — the infamous, unscrupulous, foul-mouthed, closeted, Republican lawyer — is also a central character who dies of AIDS.

Then there is the black, homosexual, drag queen nurse with the heart of gold, Belize, and the Angel with eight vaginae whose visits prompt sexual arousal and orgasm. Heaven is a dreary place that looks like San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and people sit around on crates playing cards. The Angels say that God has abandoned man.
 
At the end, Harper has left Joe. Prior who now uses a cane and has lost some vision, Louis, Belize and Hannah (who is the Mormon mother of Joe) are sitting by Bethesda fountain talking about the hope embodied by the the statue of the Angel of Bethesda. Please note the diversity represented: Prior is very WASPish, homosexual; Louis is Jewish homosexual, Belize is a black, homosexual transvestite, and Hannah is white, perhaps heterosexual, and sort of Mormon. 
 
Angels in America concludes with an emotional speech to the audience about all those homosexuals who have been lost to AIDS who “will be commemorated.” And further that homosexuals “are not going away. . . . We will be citizens. The time has come. . . . You are fabulous creatures. . . . And I bless you. . . . The Great Work Begins.”

END OF PLAY

Now isn’t that edifying for students? 

Laurie Higgins works full-time in a suburban public high school writing center in the Chicago area.