Angels in America ending- Page 2

[Kad]

Posted: 3/26/18 at 11:12am

Fanboy99 said:  "This makes Joe's fate sound really depressing and cynical. Kind of also goes against the whole point of the play I feel."

Joe's fate has been given a lot of discussion since the plays premiered. Unlike the other central characters, there's no real resolution for him or even a particular hint of one.  

 

[SueBee06]

Posted: 3/26/18 at 3:20pm

I get what you're saying and I think that, yes, Prior dying would have been the more realistic choice. I also think that the play wouldn't work the way it does if that was the choice Kushner had made. By not killing him, the audience actually does the emotional work as if he did, but can walk out of the theatre with a glimmer of hope while knowing that Prior is still not well and may not live long. And that is so important when it comes to what this work is trying to do. "The great work begins" puts it in our hands to go out and make some changes. I don't think that message of hope would have made it through without Prior surviving.

I keep coming back to the choice to replace the original ending of "Get Out" with what exists now. The original ending was very realistic. By structuring the replacement the way Jordan Peele did, the audience is right there, hearts in their throats, expecting the very worst. And that moment where the audience mentally and emotionally does the work is far more effective than it actually happening on screen. The audience needed someone to root for, some way to exhale, and the original ending didn't do that.

[Fanboy99]

Posted: 3/26/18 at 3:41pm

Kad said: "Fanboy99 said: "This makes Joe's fate sound really depressing and cynical. Kind of also goes against the whole point of the play I feel."

Joe's fate has been given a lot of discussion since the plays premiered. Unlike the other central characters, there's no real resolution for him or even a particular hint of one.

"

Im glad I'm not the only one that feels this way lol. I guess I can picture my own ending for him.

[JBC3]

Posted: 3/26/18 at 5:36pm

Deep into his identity crisis and lamenting what might have been, Joe stumbles into Marie's Crisis which ignites his love for singing showtunes and transforms him into the belle of the ball.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/28/18 at 8:42am

I really didn't want to weigh in here.  The premise of this thread seems to be that a playwright has to dumb down to the dumbest members of his audience.  And this seems a completely invalid approach to a play like ANGELS IN AMERICA, which the dumbest members of an audience have no chance of even beginning to appreciate in any event.

Having said that:

Like many people who seroconverted in the 80s, Roy Cohn did not survive.
Like many people who seroconverted in the 80s, Prior survives.  How long we don't know.
Like many people whose lives intertwined with people who seroconverted in the 80s, the rest of the characters in ANGELS do not contract hiv.

As has already been noted, ANGELS IN AMERICA is not a tragedy, it's a fantasia.  A mythic epic. 
Prior is a modern day Jacob, who wrestles with the angel and is reborn, not as someone who will necessarily not die of AIDS, but, metaphorically, as someone who like Jacob is renamed.  Jacob became "Israel" which means "perevereth with God."

Finally, there is nothing in ANGELS IN AMERICA that suggests that right wing assholes die of AIDS whereas drag queens with good hearts survive it.   To think such a thing or to consider that others who might think such a thing should be pandered to with a different ending is frankly silly.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/28/18 at 10:19am

I've seen a few other critiques that seem to be coming at Angels from the perspective of "this is an AIDS play"- i.e. a play about a singular issue, documenting and addressing the AIDS crisis. Which it isn't. AIDS is the backdrop and the inciting incident, certainly.

[Sertzo19]

Posted: 3/28/18 at 11:35am

There isn't much left to say here that others haven't already said. We know the reason Pryor is still alive 5 years after Perestroika is because Belize gave him the (real) AZT Cohn left behind. There's an entire scene devoted to this exchange where Pryor expresses his concerns about the aftermath of AZT and we see those effects on him in the epilogue. Also, although HIV/ADIS was most certainly a death sentence for MANY people, it did not kill EVERYONE who had it. In fact, there are still people alive today who contracted HIV/AIDS in the 80s and early 90s. Here's a link to an article I found through a simple 2 minute Google search with interviews of some of those longtime survivors from 2012. 

This play was written to give hope to those who were still wrestling with these issues and the lethal diagnosis. The play is about hope, resilience and fighting for your right to live. I think the ending perfectly sums all of this up. Pryor didn't live because he was a "good" man, he lived because he fought (and because his friend happened to come across a large source of AZT). Also you can't compare the ending of this play to the re-interpreted ending of MFL, because no liberties have been taken with the ending of this revival of Angels in America. The ending we see today is the ending as it was written and performed 25 years ago. 

[bwayandstuff]

Posted: 3/28/18 at 8:07pm

I quite liked the ending after being so emotionally invested/exhausted for 8 hrs. Also someone mentioned that Harper, Joe, and Louis don't have HIV/AIDS... I left thinking that that was sort of up to the viewer to decide. I would think that least some of them have it although it's not said outright. That might be the medical professional in me but I also see it as it was so taboo to talk about or acknowledge plus people weren't educated enough or didn't want to believe it, so it ended up affecting all kinds of people (gay/straight/male/female/rich/poor...). I totally agree with the sentiment that it gave people hope and showed that AIDS wasn't a death sentence, which is also historically accurate since I believe the epilogue takes place after AZT became officially FDA approved.

I also had this same feeling at the end of Falsettos. Sure only Whizzer dies but it's also very likely that Marvin is sick and they'll have to go through it all again. 

Not sure if that made total sense, but just my take on it!

[poisonivy2]

Posted: 3/28/18 at 9:33pm

As for Joe I imagine he'd be living in NYC with his mom. Mrs. Pitt isn't perfect but she is a caring mom.