Wrestling with Angels

Never Done: Saw Angels in America: Part Two: Perestroika

And was transported. If you'll remember, I felt distanced from Part One: Millennium Approaches. It felt small and un-epic. But from the moment the world's oldest living Bolshevik took the podium in Part Two: Perestroika, I was drawn in. I don't know what the difference was. It could have been that I was sitting further back in the house, and had more perspective on the set. Or that the new cast had a week to solidify. Or that I had already re-entered the emotional lives of the characters (even though I tend to carry those emotional lives with me the way I carry the lives of other great literary characters, like Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice, or Celie from The Color Purple) and the emotional reality of the mid-80's.

There is so much more to say about this, but I am afraid I have to set this aside for now and come back to expand on it later. I have too much work to do, and got too little sleep, and Josh is quite sick, and I am a little sick (turns out that's why I wasn't up for video games on Sunday) and although I want to write about what it means to stay still, and to refuse a prophecy, and who are the Angels in America now, and how much Lynne McCollough's portrayal of Hannah Pitt, once she had become a smart-dressing New York lady, reminded me of my aunt Julie, who also comes from a Mormon family, and was mostly raised near New York, and is a very smart dresser, and how close this association made me feel to Hannah, who is not usually the character I feel closest to in Angels in America and how part of that closeness might also be that I am now nearer to Hanna's age than to any of the other characters in the play .... but instead of writing about all that, I must get to work.