Angels of No Mercy

Perestroika, the second half of Tony Kushner's AIDS epic, offers sermons and soul searching but scant spiritual redemption

When Angels in America opened its Pulitzer-prizewinning first half, Millennium Approaches, in May, the producers' main worry was keeping it afloat long enough to get the second half, Perestroika, up and running. They feared Millennium's gay outlook might limit audiences to homosexuals, sympathetic straights and the relative handful of theater mavens who see everything. Nobody worried about the logistics of using the same eight actors to perform one 3 1/2-hour play and rehearse another, let alone installing sets for the sequel on the same stage where Millennium was playing.

They needn't have fretted about money. Millennium has played to 98% of...

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