Tony Award winner Tony Kushner celebrates his birthday July 16.
Kushner is perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Millennium Approaches, the first part of the two-play epic, directed by George C. Wolfe, opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr May 4, 1993. Starring Joe Mantello, Stpehen Spinella, and more, the drama was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning four, including Best Play.
In fall 1993, Angels in America: Perestroika joined Millennium Approaches at the Walter Kerr, where the two halves played in repertory. After opening November 23, 1993, Perestroika would go on to earn six Tony Award nominations, winning three, including Best Play.
Set in 1980s New York City, Angels in America tells the stories of a gay man who is abandoned by his lover when he contracts the AIDS virus, and a closeted Mormon lawyer, whose marriage to his pill-popping wife stalls. Other characters include the infamous McCarthy-ite lawyer Roy Cohn, Ethel Rosenberg, a former drag queen who works as a nurse, and an angel.
James McArdle and Andrew Garfield in Angels in America
The gay fantasia returned to Broadway 25 years later, opening at the Neil Simon Theatre March 25, 2018, in a Marianne Elliott helmed-production. The revival, starring Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Lee Pace, and more, earned 11 Tony Award nominations, winning three, including Best Revival.
To learn more about the productions, visit PlaybillVault.com/AngelsinAmerica1993 and PlaybillVault.com/AngelsinAmerica2018.
