Fantasia Millennium

[Liliane Hubright]

Thefull title of this play is Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part One: Millennium Approaches. And you don't need us to tell you that this is one seriously long and amazing title. Well, we guess that makes sense since this is a seriously long and amazing play. Let's take a look at each part of the title.

For example, the conservative movement going on at the time of the play, led by President Ronald Reagan, put Christian moral values at the center of their platform. This, of course, continued after Reagan: Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and the current social conservative movement all tout the importance of religion and traditional values. Some would say that these movements use religion for political gain; others would say they're honestly trying to bring (or restore) decency to America. What do you think?

Note, however, that Louis doesn't refer to the conservative Christian movement here directly; he talks about "spiritualists" instead. This sounds to us like New Age-y hippy types, who tend to fall on the opposite side of the political spectrum from the Reagans, Bushes, and Sarah Palins of the world. In a way, Louis seems to be criticizing all those, left or right, who are seeking spirituality in America, because he thinks it just doesn't exist. We'd like you to notice, though, in one of the very early scenes in which we see Louis, that he consults a rabbi for guidance. Does he actually believe what he's saying?

But, wait! This play isn't called No Angels in America is it? The title seems to imply that there actually are angels in our fair country. When the angel crashes through Prior's ceiling at the end of Millennium Approaches, it would seem there's definitely one angel at least. The angel is referred to as the Continental Principality of America, seeming to imply that she is the spiritual essence of the US; she's the very thing Louis claims doesn't exist. You could interpret this as meaning that Louis doesn't know what he's talking about, or you could say that Prior is just hallucinating the angel and Louis is right. What do you think? Are there "angels in America"?

Now we come to the next word, "fantasia." If you Google this term you're going to see a lot of stuff about either American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino or the beloved Disney movie featuring Mickey and a bunch of unruly broomsticks. We're pretty sure that Kushner isn't referencing either of these. Dictionary.com gives us this definition of the word fantasia:

Yeah, that sounds more like it. The play is like a musical fantasia, in that it blends lots of different styles and has tons of different textures. There are one-person monologues that sing like solos, two-person scenes that play like duets, and overlapping scenes (with several characters talking at the same time) that resound like a full orchestra. The play is also fantastical at times and definitely sometimes gets a little grotesque. Check out "Themes: Versions of Reality" for more on the play's flights of fancy.

Now we come to "on National Themes." This references the sweeping scope of Kushner's play. This epic piece of theater uses its gay characters and fantastic style to explore big issues that affect everyone in the country. Check out "Themes" to find out more about those.

But what about "Millennium Approaches"? A millennium, very simply, is a period of a thousand years. The current millennium started in 2000 and won't end until the end of the year 3000. Historically, people tend to get all freaked out when the millennium arrives, thinking that the world is going to end. As you may remember, the ramp-up to the last turn of the millennium was no different.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, there was a lot of theorizing that some massive disaster was going to happen at the end of the millennium. During the first part of the Reagan Administration, when a good deal of the play is set, America was still deep in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This meant that both the US and the USSR were stockpiling massive amounts of nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear war was real. The approaching turn of millennium only added to the growing paranoia. (To see what else Shmoop has to say about the Cold War, click here /study-guides/cuban-missile-crisis-detente/.)

This part of the title actually comes from a line spoken by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Roy yells at Ethel that he has "forced [his] way into history" (3.5.65). Even though he knows his death is coming, he will be remembered. Ethel just kind of laughs at him and says, "History is about to crack wide open. Millennium Approaches" (3.5.66). It seems like this line could be referencing the mounting paranoia that led up to the turn of the millennium, the fear that some great nuclear holocaust would wipe out humankind.

Tony Kushner's epic gay fantasia Angels in America: Millennium Approaches opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre May 4, 1993. The production, directed by George C. Wolfe, played 21 previews and 367 performances before closing December 4, 1994. The drama was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning four including Best Play.

Set in 1980s New York City, Millennium Approaches follows a gay man who is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, while a closeted Mormon lawyer's marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama starred Kathleen Chalfant as Hannah Pitt and others, Ron Leibman as Roy Cohn/Prior 2, David Marshall Grant as Joe Pitt/The Eskimo/Prior 1, Marcia Gay Harden as Harper Pitt/Martin Heller, Jeffrey Wright as Belize/Mr. Lies, Joe Mantello as Louis Ironson, Stephen Spinella as Prior Walter/Man in the Park, and Ellen McLaughlin as The Angel and others. Rounding out the company were Jay Goede, Matthew Sussman, Susan Bruce, Beth McDonald, and Darnell Williams as understudies.

Millennium Approaches featured scenic design by Robin Wagner, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Jules Fisher, sound design by Scott Lehrer, original music by Anthony Davis, and additional music by Michael Ward with stage management by Perry Cline, Mary K. Klinger, and Michael J. Passaro. For the complete cast and creative team, visit PlaybillVault.com/MilleniumApproaches.

In the fall of 1993, Angels in America: Perestroika joined Millennium Approaches at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where the two halves played in repertory. Like the first play in the two part epic, the following year, Perestroika would go on to win the Tony Award for Best Play.

How does the artistic imagination, or "fantasia," work? This question has intrigued great minds at least since antiquity, beginning with philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. This quest for understanding "fantasia" continued into the early modern era where it commingled with nascent scientific inquiry.

Most of us are somewhat familiar with the mixture of proto-scientific investigations and artistic fantasies in the oeuvres of Italian Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci. However, we are far less able to visualize parallel imagery from northern Europe. In her book on Jacques (or Jacob) de Gheyn II, Claudia Swan helps close this trans-Alpine gap, and to usher de Gheyn scholarship into the new millennium.

Swan's stated purpose in the book is to elide the perceived boundaries between early modern theories of science and those of imaginative image-making with the art of Jacob de Gheyn as her case study. Her book is divided into two parts: the first emphasizes the new scientific world in which de Gheyn lived, and the second uses his images of witches to chart the early modern tension between artists' perceptions of nature and imagination. In her introduction, Swan states that early modern thinkers believed that the same parts of the brain that allowed artistic license also coincided with the melancholic temperament. And, in part 2, particularly chapter 4, Swan points to contemporary science-minded skeptics, who attributed belief in and visions of witches to this same troubled, melancholic state of mind, particularly among older women.

As the artist Jacques de Gheyn routinely created rigorous (even virtuosic) botanical and scientific drawings alongside his otherworldly images of phantasms and witches, Swan argues that de Gheyn was also a proto-scientific skeptic, holding the unnatural subjects of witches in a sort of bemused limbo next to his laboriously detailed animal and plant specimens. In part 1 (chapters 1 through 3) Swan convincingly situates de Gheyn among the like-minded intelligentsia of Leiden University's faculty and local professionals. Swan is particularly persuasive in ascribing de Gheyn's in-depth knowledge of witchcraft to the relationship of his in-laws (Thomas and Govert Basson), who served as his Dutch publishers and translators, with the English witch expert Reginald Scot.

What is largely missing in her assessment of de Gheyn's witch imagery is a more in-depth consideration of the complementary northern European visual tradition of witches, one which ironically has a built-in antidote to melancholy--humor.[1] This oversight is all the more curious because Swan makes perceptive reference to the irony found in Scot's treatise, The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584). Swan notes the legibility of Scot's written irony in reaction to what he sees as the absurd, supposed supernatural powers of witches (pp. 172-174). Swan then seems to downplay the possibility that de Gheyn, too, might employ artistic irony. Instead, she subtly intimates that de Gheyn's Sabbath-imagery may be "akin" to such ironic description. Here, she stops short, lamenting the absence of any "qualifying text" appended to de Gheyn's imagery. Swan sees this lacuna as a stumbling block to "detect the ambiguity in images as certainly as readily as in their textual counterparts." (p. 174)

Fortunately, such defeatism is unnecessary. Scholars like the art historian David R. Smith have rediscovered irony in the work of artists like Albrecht Duerer, another proto-scientific artist who forms one of the centerpieces of Swan's thesis.[2] As Smith and others have shown, irony was a long tradition in northern art, often found in images exploring figures on the margins of society: fools, the lower classes, children and the elderly, and especially women.

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