I posted this on Facebook, June 9th, but need to capture it here:
We saw Angels in America part 1, Millennium Approaches, on Friday June 1st, and part 2, Perestroika, on Friday June 8th, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In between those dates I reread both plays, copies I’d bought in 1993 and 1994 when they were first published, after seeing the Broadway production in 1993. Watching Perestroika this past Friday, I thought I heard several lines that seemed unfamiliar; did I glaze through them when reading the play two days before? One passage that I thought especially striking was at the end of the key scene late in the play as Prior leaves Heaven, renouncing his role as a prophet, as he accuses the angels of not seeing what’s to come, but only seeing what they fear. A striking line. I got home and checked my copy of the play. Lines not there. A bit of research: Kushner revised the plays a bit, and his final 2010 revisions were published in a 2013 combined edition. Which has those lines:
“PRIOR:
You haven’t seen what’s to come. You’ve only seen what you’re afraid is coming. Until it arrives — please don’t be offended but… all you can see is fear.
I’m leaving Heaven to you now. I’ll take my illness with me, and. And I’ll take my death with me, too.
The earth’s my home, and I want to go home.”
Fun facts: among actors who played roles in earlier productions: Daniel Craig, Zachary Quinto, Cynthia Nixon, F. Murray Abraham, and Cherry Jones — not to mention Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, et al, in the 2003 HBO TV production — as detailed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America:_Perestroika
