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Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America. Edited by Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 306. $44.95 casebound, $17.95 paperbound.
Early in Tony Kushner's Angels in America the montage of identities, experiences, and varied histories of its characters is transposed on an American landscape described as "the melting pot where nothing melted" (1:10). This iconic metaphor might also aptly represent the new collection of critical essays presented in Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America edited by Deborah R. Geis and Steven F. Kruger. This ambitious anthology presents aesthetic, political and pragmatic critical views as vast and divergent as the much-heralded play itself. The text is separated into four categories, although a few of the essays transcend disciplinary boundaries: socio-political discourse and historiography, identity issues, treatments of time and space, and a final section discussing the formidable production considerations of Angels. This complex blend of perspectives offers tantalizing points of entry into a deeply-layered play, yet the breadth of views seem to collapse under the weight of their scope leaving potentially provocative and fruitful analyses underdeveloped. Still, while occasionally disappointing, Approaching the Millennium is an excellent addition to the curiously sparse literature surrounding Kushner's play.
David Roman's article "November 1, 1992: AIDS/ Angels in America" provides a clear example of the perplexing blend of insight and digression present throughout Approaching the Millennium. Roman questions traditional theater history narratives in a Foucauldian manner, arguing that a linear construction of history couched in heterosexual semiotics is inherently biased. Roman extends his argument to AIDS activism, insightfully explaining how the media's selective preoccupation with "radical" groups such as ACT UP tends to totalize AIDS activism into false "official" narratives, marginalizing other forms of AIDS activism by essentially erasing them from history. To Roman, then, AIDS drama, and Angels in particular, requires...