Finished: Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (Kushner). Book #200, after 15 months of reading!! Actually, a play, and a brilliant one. Part two of Angels in America, Perestroika, won the Tony the very next year after it's predecessor, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches. The continued story of all the characters in the first play, Roy Cohn, Prior Walter, Louis Ironson, Belize, Joe Pitt, Harper Pitt, and Hannah Pitt...oh yes, and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg and the title character, the Angel! Heartbreaking, urgent, deep, honest, cringing, humorous at times, but too tragic to be in any way a comedy. I will always read a story about people afflicted with AIDS with such a heavy heart. I will always feel a story like this 100 times more than anything else I read I think. I will always attribute some of the emotions and dialogue and frustration of the characters to feelings and words and despair my brother must have felt and spoken.

The play picks up right where the first part left off. The Angel has crashed into Prior's bedroom and announced to him that he's The Prophet. Actually, I think the Angel is ready for Prior to make his way to heaven. Prior, though extremely sick with AIDS, wants to live. He's only 30. Roy Cohn, on the other hand, has deteriorated critically. He's in the hospital...his death imminent. He's still his hard-nosed self, and he berates nurse, Belize, Prior's good friend and ex-lover. Belize holds his own and the belligerent scenes between Belize and Roy are brilliant and mesmerizing, because they are also full of an underlying compassion that simply must be present in the face of AIDS. Belize lets Roy know that even though he's been approved for the trials of AZT, that there is a chance he'd be one who is only taking placebos...the tragic possibility of any drug trial. Roy gets right on the phone and bribes some former associate into getting him his own personal supply of AZT. Only Belize ends up knowing about the supply, and when Roy finally dies a painful death, Belize takes the drugs to be used by his friends...specifically, we are to assume, Prior. Right before Roy dies, he finds out from the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg that he has, in fact, been disbarred before dying. He really wanted to die as a lawyer, but alas, he did not. Prior, has his own journey into heaven and back. On earth, he also ends up meeting Harper and Hannah and realizes their connection to Joe, which then reveals to him the connection between Joe and Louis who have now had a sexual relationship for the past month. When Louis finds out that Joe is a Mormon AND a Republican, he can hardly stand it. Louis still loves Prior but just can't deal with the disease. Prior and Belize consider him cowardly and can't believe he didn't stand by Prior. Joe thinks he's in love with Louis. Hannah, Joe's mother, has traveled from Salt Lake to New York to take care of the despairing Harper. Harper loves Joe and wants him back. He comes back once, but she finally makes him confess that he's never been attracted to her. At the end, Joe comes back to Harper after Louis kicks him out, but Harper finally stands up for herself and says goodbye to him. Not before, however, she makes her own brief trip to heaven when she almost overdoses on her Valium. While there, she sees Prior with the angel as he's about to refuse, in front of the angle council, to stay. Hannah, who has met Prior in New York's Mormon Visiting Center, takes Prior to the hospital when he falls deathly ill. So, Hannah is actually with Prior when the Angel comes to take Prior on his visit to heaven. She's the one who tells him he can fight the Angel, refuse to be the Prophet and stay here on earth. So, by the end of the story, which is five years later, we don't see Joe again, but we know that Harper has flown off to make her new life. We do, however, see Prior, Belize, Louis and Hannah sitting in Central Park. Though Prior refused to take Louis back years before, it looks like they are all still connected. Obviously the AZT has worked for Prior because, though he's been fighting the illness for the last five years, he's still alive.

Throughout the play, almost every character comes in contact with every other character at one time or another and each scene is pretty brilliant. Now that I've read these plays, I would so much love to see them on the stage. They would be worthy of a trip to New York just to see them alone!