15
South Bronx / Emily / Ella Chapter / The Angel . 11 Christopher Bram describes the plot in the most succinct way imaginable in his book Eminent Outlaws , referenced earlier :
When a gay man , Prior , is diagnosed with AIDS , his bookish lefty lover , Louis , panics and abandons him . Guilty Louis becomes involved with Joe , a closeted gay Mormon lawyer with an unhappy , pill-popping wife , Harper . Joe is being courted for political work by Roy Cohn - Cohn , too , is sick with AIDS . Joe ’ s Mormon mother , Hannah , comes to New York to save his marriage . Prior ’ s friend Belize , a black male nurse , does what he can to save Prior . As if this weren ’ t rich and complicated enough , many of the characters have dreams and visions . Cohn dreams of Ethel Rosenberg , whom he sent to the electric chair . Harper dreams of Prior , whom she ’ s never met . And Prior has visions : first of ghosts and then of an angel - an angel who crashes through his ceiling and promises to tell him Everything . 12 “ Part Two : Perestroika ” opened on November 23 , 1993 again at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New
York with the same principal cast reprising their original roles in addition to other doubled characters pertinent to the plot of the second half of the play . The second half of the play opens with an interview with the world ’ s oldest living Bolshevik , Aleskii Antedillluvianovich Prelapsarianov , who suggests that the world struggles because they require a new “ theory ” and we assume that this theory is given by the Angel to Prior . The Angel does in fact present a theory , but tells Prior that he should “ STOP MOVING !” 13 and that motion is the enemy from which all bad things happen , change included . This dream is interpreted by Belize as a sign that Prior really craves a lasting relationship with Louis . Prior climbs his way up to Heaven , finds that God has left Heaven , the management of which has been handed over to multitudes of angels who really don ’ t know what to do . They offer him the gift of sameness , which The Angel told him
11 “ Angels in America : Millenium Approaches .” Playbill . com . New York : Playbill , Inc . http :// www . playbill . com / production / angels-in-america-millennium-approaches-walter-kerr-theatrevault-0000010052 .
12 Christopher Bram . 2012 . Eminent Outlaws : The Gay Writers Who Changed America . New York : Twelve . 265 .
13
Ibid . 270 .