History Theatre / AngelsInAmerica

* AllJustADream[=/=]OrWasItADream: Played with using Harper's Valium-induced hallucinations and Prior's visions. The work as a whole, however, is not.

* AmoralAttorney: Roy Cohn.

* AngelicBeauty: The Angel, naturally.

* TheAtoner: Louis and Joe.

* BeAllMySinsRemembered: Louis.

* ButNotTooGay: in the miniseries.

* CastFullOfGay: All five men have/have had sex with men.

* DecoyProtagonist: The first few scenes can give the impression that Louis is the protagonist, and the play is all about him coping with his boyfriend's AIDS diagnosis. Then his boyfriend--Prior--begins {{hearing voices}}...

* EvilMentor: Roy Cohn.

* FlamboyantGay: Belize; Prior, to a lesser extent.

* GenerationXerox: Like his two ghostly ancestors of the same name, Prior suffers from a terrible disease, and he's afraid he might die from it, alone, like them.
** Justified by statistic probability; he's the ''34th'' Prior Walter!

* HappyPlace: Harper's hallucinations.

* {{Have You Seen My God}}: [[spoiler: After he is chosen as a prophet by the Angel of America, Prior learns that God abandoned Heaven on the day of the 1906 San Fransisco earthquake. The Angels, who believe it was because humanity was more interesting, want Prior to tell humanity to stop moving, in the hopes that God will then become bored and return home.]]

* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Slightly subverted in that the Angel of America is pure stereotypical angel--flowing white gown, white wings, radiantly beautiful--but once you get ''past'' that...

* ParentalNeglect: Hannah describes herself as lacking pity, and Joe clearly has some issues with her emotional harshness, which he akins to the desert.

* RagingStiffie: The Angel's approach makes men...turgid.

* RulesLawyer: Joe is the evil sort - "It's law not justice, it's power not the merits of its exercise..."

* StraightGay: Joe.
* StrawmanPolitical: Conservatives do not come off well. They are almost universally shown to be selfish, cruel, hypocritical, power-hungry bastards. Roy Cohn, the [[spoiler:GayConservative]] stands out.
** However, it is also worth noting that while Louis is, in the end, a sympathetic character, one of his most annoying qualities is his self-righteous liberal philosophizing.
* StairwayToHeaven: Prior [[spoiler: ascends a burning ladder into heaven in the last act of ''Perestroika'']]
* ScrewDestiny: Prior.

* TellMeAboutMyFather: Joe to Hannah, a bit.
* TheSocialDarwinist: Roy

* WellDoneSonGuy: Roy Cohn, for Joe.

* AntagonistInMourning: Belize naturally despises Roy Cohn, but after seeing the hard death he suffers, says that he can sympathize with a fallen enemy.
* AssholeVictim: Roy is a loudmouthed, openly racist and bigoted lawyer who has done terrible things, including getting Ethel Rosenberg executed, but [[spoiler: his death]] is still painful and tragic.

* BoomerangBigot: Roy Cohn is such a raging homophobe that he refuses to identify as a homosexual even though he's had sex with many men over his life. It's implied that Roy's hatred of his sexuality comes from the perception of gays lacking power and being ostracized by his own peers, thus making him feel the need to justify himself as being a heterosexual through twisted logic.

* FakingTheDead: Roy pulls this trick on the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, who pushes the nurse's call button and starts rejoicing--only to have Roy spring back to life and gloat at it having worked. Subverted when [[spoiler: the monitors he's hooked up to then flatline, and he dies for real, in a very violent fashion.]]

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Roy. Except for the ghostly visions, the portrayal of the last year of Roy Cohn's life is pretty accurate.
** Tony Kushner puts in a note at the beginning of both parts, saying that Cohn "was all too real".

---> '''Louis''' ''(in "Perestroika")'': My New Deal pinko parents in Schenectady would never forgive me, they're already so disappointed. "He's a fag, he's an office temp, and now look, he's saying the Kaddish for Roy Cohn."

* SpiritAdvisor: A few. Prior has his ancestors (two of the previous Prior Walters) [[spoiler: as the Heralds of the Angel of America]]; Ethel Rosenberg subverts this somewhat with Roy Cohn, [[spoiler: then plays it straight with Louis.]]
** [[spoiler: Really, she seems to just possess Louis for a few seconds to say a prayer for the dead. Louis is afterwards surprised.]]

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections:[[spoiler: Upon learning he has AIDS, Roy Cohn uses his connections to be forced into the experimental trials of AZT. When he finds out that it's a double blind study (and that he might be getting placebos), he uses his connections to secure himself a massive private stash of the drug.]]

* TitleDrop: In one of Louis' ramblings, he says "There are no angels in America", in reference to the fact that the US does not have a single spiritual tradition due to its nature as a "melting pot".

* TransparentCloset: Roy gives a rather twistedly brilliant speech [[spoiler: to the doctor who diagnoses him with AIDS]], redefining "homosexuality" as a class defined by its lack of political power, which no one would accuse Roy of not having.

* WellDoneSonGuy: Roy Cohn, for Joe
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Joe is the only main character left out of the epilogue [[spoiler: (except Roy since he was dead)]]. However, this probably has to due with the fact that he wasn't meant to be as sympathetic as he was portrayed in the miniseries, although since Kushner wrote both of them, he may have tried to fix that a little with Joe's extra scene near the end in the miniseries.

* AndYouWereThere: The line is recited word for word by Prior, though it's done more to lampshade the {{Loads And Loads Of Roles}} than anything else.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRoles: The play is written for a cast of eight to perform. It is rather symbolic, particularly when, say, the man who Louis hires to have sex with him in Central Park is played by Prior's actor. Lampshaded when [[spoiler: Prior wakes up after having returned the book of Prophecy to Heaven. See AndYouWereThere above]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Prior survives, although how much longer he has left is uncertain. Harper leaves Joe and sets out for a life on her own, while Joe's fate is ambiguous. And God is presumably still missing.]]

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Joe is [[AcceptablePoliticalTargets closeted political conservative]], sure, but he's also a bit of a woobie. [[spoiler:Then he abandons his wife hallucinating around New York only for her to be bailed out and taken in by his timely-arriving mother, and eventually, Louis after some legal library work reveals him not just to be closeted and nominally socially conservative, but to be an evil RulesLawyer.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Prior survives, although how much longer he has left is uncertain. Harper leaves Joe and sets out for a life on her own, while Joe's fate is left ambiguous.]]

---> "And my mother ... well let's leave my mother out of it. Which is where my mother usually is, out of it." Prior, "Millennium Approaches"
---> "My New Deal Pinko Parents in Schenectady would never forgive me, they're already so disappointed, 'he's a fag, he's an office temp, and now look, he's saying the Kaddish for Roy Cohn." Louis, "Perestroika"

-->'''Joe''': You're not well is all.
-->'''Roy''': What do you mean, not well? Who's not well?
-->'''Joe''': You said...
-->'''Roy''': No I didn't. I said what?

* PreserveYourGays: Though funerals are shown (or alluded to) for Prior, Louis, and Belize's friends who've [[TragicAIDSStory died of AIDS]], the only one of the main gay cast to die is [[spoiler: the morally reprehensible (and deeply closeted) Roy Cohn.]]

*** Taken UpToEleven by Creator/NathanLane in the 2018 West End/Broadway revival, true to his form in comedy roles, but this only serves to add greater constrast when [[NotSoStoic his mask of civility slips]] and [[SuddenlyShouting he goes into one of his many rants]], demonstrating a level of malevolence that matches if not surpasses Pacino's.

* AdultFear: Dying of an incurable illness. The effects of the AIDS virus are shown in all their stomach-churning detail.

''Angels in America'' (subtitled ''A Gay Fantasia on National Themes'') is a UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize- and Tony Award-winning play written by Tony Kushner. It is presented in two parts, ''Millennium Approaches'' and ''Perestroika'', each of which runs roughly three hours long. The two parts premiered in California in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and were produced on Broadway together in 1993.