Angels in America

The National Theatre offers a special night to the audience. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America actually contains two whole play, which - for the first time in the world - could be reduced into one show with the writer’s permission. The new translation made by a young Hungarian poet, Balázs Szálinger.

The first part, Millennium Approaching, won the Pulitzer Prize of the best drama in 1993. The play talks about “the state of the nation of the US”, about questions of race, religion and politics which the nation had to face during the era of Reagan’s presidency, at the time AIDS spread like flu. The characters of the play try to find the meaning of life in a world which seems to be left by God. Ones are denying, rejecting and failing but the stronger ones are escaping and finding relief in charity and commitment. The story continues in the second part, the Tony Award winner Perestroika.

The two plays create such a complete unity which has understandably been awarded for the representation of nowadays’ Unites States. They picture it as the mixture of plain reality and amazing fantasy with both their comical and tragical sides. Angels and real historical people, made up characters and ghosts show up together on stage and dispute our conceptions of reality.

To understand democracy and its crisis is the new problem of our society and the possible solutions for these are what this play is looking for. Now in The National Theatre the USA based Romanian director Andrei Serban put Angels in America on stage.