Is Angels the film in which Meryl Streep plays a Mormon?
” a friend of mine asked. Yes, in fact, among other things. And this seems as good a starting point as any to discuss the extraordinary filming of Tony Kushner’s ambitious 1993 stage drama, presented, as was the play, in two parts, and which encompasses everything from religion to political power, sexual politics, social identity, and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. At the conclusion of the drama’s first part, one of the characters, Prior Walter, abandoned by his lover after Prior reveals he’s HIV-positive, is rudely awakened by nothing short of an angel whose arrival shatters the ceiling of Prior’s apartment, after which she proclaims him to be a prophet, HIV-positive or not. Prior, as most people would be, is taken aback. The main story is set during 1985-86, before the widespread use of AZT and protese inhibitors, when Pres. Reagan hasn’t even spoken publicly about AIDS, making many HIV sufferers feel as if they’re being rendered non-entities by a government that is ostensibly suppose
