Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
At its core, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches is a play about fear. Kushner’s characters face overwhelming fears of disease, death, change, truth, loss of influence, and of what they find themselves capable of in moments of stress or panic. Although the play’s events occur in Ronald Reagan’s 1985-86 New York, the fear that permeates every scene is universal and timeless. Although Angels is monumental in scope, ranging over the limits of the human imagination, what ultimately drives the text are intensely personal moments—conversations and confrontations that are microscopic in the grand scheme of the world. It is within these small moments that we see both the strength and the failing of the human spirit, as characters either fight or succumb to their darkest fears. Thus, Angels presents a history that is simultaneously scaled down and blown up. It asks us to consider both a nameless homeless woman and a terrifying Angel, and to place ourselves in relation to both. .
