Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

A recorded voice, belonging to the actor who plays the Angel, introduces Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov (played by Hannah), the World’s Oldest Living Bolshevik, who is speaking at the Kremlin in January 1986. Aleksii is “unimaginably old and totally blind” (147). In his speech, he asks whether humanity is hopeless or if it can change. He laments the loss of an age in which the beauty of Marxist theory worked in harmony with daily life. In its place, Aleksii chastises, is American consumerism. He asserts that humanity must change, but not until there is a new theory to guide it. Lights rise to reveal the final tableau at the end of the first play, with the Angel hovering over Prior’s bed, surrounded by the debris from the ceiling. The Angel repeats the proclamation, and Prior responds, “Go away” (149).

On the same night, Mr. Lies (played by Belize) sits in Harper’s Antarctica and plays the oboe, which he identifies as the official instrument of the International Order of Travel Agents because it sounds like a migratory bird. Harper enters, now dressed as she was when she ran from home, hauling a small tree behind her.