Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches

Part One of the two-part Angels in America, Tony Kushner's epic drama set during the Reagan years in America - now recognised as one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century.

Prior, visited by ghosts of his ancestors and abandoned by his lover after his diagnosis with AIDS, is wondering if he is still sane when the angels select him to be their prophet. Powerbroker Roy Cohn also has the virus - but he believes that only the powerless can have that particular illness, and so kicks back against his diagnosis.

In the 'melting pot where nothing melted' of modern America, the nation's reaction to the sickness – and its sufferers – is laid bare.

Millennium Approaches was premiered in May 1991 by the Eureka Theatre Company, San Francisco, directed by David Esbjornson. In London it was premiered in January 1992 in a National Theatre production at the Cottesloe Theatre, directed by Declan Donnellan.

The play received many awards, including Best Play at the 1992 Evening Standard Awards, Best New Play at the 1992 Critics' Circle Awards, Best Play at the 1993 Tony Awards and the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Tony Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Tony Kushner's other plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Hydriotaphia, or The Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Corneille; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures; and The Visit, adapted from the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. His translations include S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk; Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the libretto for Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister's Brundibár, a children's opera for which he wrote a curtain-raiser, But the Giraffe! He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Among many honours, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.