Thesis. Book Report. Try a review next time? Kudos #1.

#2 - I agree! Belize is one of my favorite characters ever. His time to shine, though, is in the next play.

I appreciate your comments about Angels and agree, to an extent. But, “My trouble with Angels,” you write, “is how relatively uncritically it's been received and embraced as the story of AIDS.” Embraced by whom? I think that criticism applies more aptly to the movie Philadelphia, which was seen by vastly greater numbers than Angels and was praised almost universally by sympathetic straight people, who seemed to accept it as the true story of AIDS. It was praised as well by some lesbians and gay men but hated by many, and I’m one of them, because it treated gay men as mostly infantile, self-absorbed and irresponsible, it reduced the gay community and AIDS activism to a noisy crowd outside the courthouse, it ignored the existence of lesbians and the major role lesbians played in AIDS activism. It depicted, incredibly, a loving, responsible, sane, rational heterosexual family in contrast to the untroubled gay party-goers. All the plays, movies, books and articles about AIDS lumped together still don’t tell the whole story. Angels is one part of it all, one I have great admiration for. Thanks for your review.

I'm a gay man who graduated from high school the year AIDS hit the U.S. (1981). I lived in New York the last half of the 80s, and then lived in Seattle through the 90s. I saw Angels in America when I lived in Seattle. I do not, nor do I know anyone else who does, embrace Angels in America as THE story of AIDS.

Right on, #6. AIDS is bigger than a backdrop in Angels in America, but the play is about so much more than the disease. And I don't feel assuaged from guilt and responsibility by the characters. All of the characters - except for Cohn - had pieces to like and not like. It would be very hard to find anything likable about Roy Cohn.

To say Angels in America is the AIDS play is like saying The King and I is all about Siam.