Poetry

...Is the angel announcing the end of something or the beginning...

...This time, no virtual halo rests at rakish angle on his head...

...Dave, in particular, evokes the glamour of Ruritania even though it takes place in contemporary America...

...that those who do...

...GERALD WEALES SCREEN E.B...

...Do we have to wait for part 2? Should I quit asking questions and simply accept that Angels in America is a play almost as impressive as the hoopla surrounding it...

...For Cohn, life is the getting and wielding of power, which is why he denies his homosexuality, renames his AIDS to the straighter cancer because gays and AIDS victims are powerless...

...rewrite it, till it is a view of a brighter, more enhancing hue...

...For when Dave, a Joe Average impersonating a stroke-disabled president at the behest of a power-mad chief of staff, first tours the White House, we are meant to catch our breaths just as he does at the sight of so much plush carpeted, crystal chandeliered splendor, to ooh and ah at the idea of a commoner having free access to the trappings of royalty...

...Norman Cohn writes: A boundless, millennial promise made with boundless, prophet-like conviction to a number" of rootless and desperate men in the midst of a society where traditional norms and relationships are disintegrating--here, it would seem, lay the source of that peculiar subterranean fanaticism which subsisted as a perpetual menace to the structure of medieval society...

...It may be suggested that here, too, lies the source of the giant fanaticisms which in our day have convulsed the world...

...He did not add, as he might have done...

...Angels is a serious play which is also a grotesque comedy that brings us back to the angel who crashes through the roof at the end of the play...

...In both films, as in Anthony Hope's romance, an innocent is forced to substitute for a figure of power and/or notoriety and, through pluck and common sense, the sub outdoes the subbed...

...He has made a son of sorts of Joe Pitt, a slightly bent straight arrow, a conservative Mormon lawyer, whom he wants to redesign in his own image, to teach him to "transgress a little, Joseph...

...I'm going to hell for doing this," says Joe, the good Mormon, when he finally accepts that he is homosexual and goes off with Louis, a damnation that is certainly more positive than our last sight of Harper, settling into the comfort of an imaginary Antarctica...

...de Vito Roles Rewritten This time, the replay recalls their brief, outdistanced time together, finds Lucifer recast--as is-and not in any way at all the angel he was before the fall...

...For instance, the hero is so ignorant of even the rudiments of government that he has to be taught about the three branches, yet when his handlers place him at the presidential podium to coach him for his 20:16 July 1993 Commonweal...

...Where does that leave the AIDS victim as prophet...

...Louis, whose path has crossed Joe's often in the play, has guilt of his Own, having deserted Prior, whom he loves, because he does not have the courage to watch AIDS destroy Prior...

...Of course 1 have caught on to the idea that we are a democracy and that all presidents (even when they're not Harry Truman) are common men, but, in so far as Dave works at all, it does so as Zenda-esque romance: a commoner walks among aristocrats and proves himself a natural aristocrat...

...This time, a script completely new denies what she seemed committed toz the role of puppet, pawn or toy-MISTAKEN IDENTITIES 'DAVE' & 'EL MARIACHI' he prisoner of Zenda is at large again, courtesy of two recent, well received movies: Dave and El Mariachi...

...The transgressions Roy has in mind are political, legal, professional, but Joe has stifled transgressions of his own...

...As the derelict and perhaps psychotic woman in act 3 says, "In the new century I think we will all be insane...

...and he, not m some shining spot is tucked in his allotted slot Santayana said those who do nol remember the past are condemned to relive it...

...He has spent his life smothering his homosexual longings and, in the process, has helped turn his wife Harper into an hysteric, a woman obsessed by a man threatening her (Joe, of course) whose only escape is dream journeys...

...Is the angel simply a stage device, perhaps a comic one, looking toward something better than the human losses and failures embedded in the gay fantasia, the national themes...

...This description hardly indicates the texture of the play because the scenes are often very funny, sometimes sentimental, more often simply ruthless...

...Dave might very well be mistaken as satire, for it does sport with some satirical notions in its first half...