Wednesday, February 18, 2004
I breezed through Angels In America Parts I and II by Tony Kushner this weekend. I recently saw the HBO adaptation and was blown away and was excited to read the plays. It's a little scary how little progress we've made on this front. Sure, AIDS isn't an automatic death sentence anymore, but we don't seem to be any closer to a cure and much of the world is devastated by this epidemic. I was most interested in the LDS aspect to the play. I suppose Kushner picked that religion because of the tradition of angels and the belief in continuing revelation and communication with Heaven, but he got a few things wrong. They aren't horrible, but enough to give any member of the Church pause, namely we don't believe angels have wings (like Hannah says in her comment about Joseph Smith - how his prayer made an angel with wings or something like that), and there is no way Joe would've still been wearing his garments after sleeping with Louis, especially after a month with him. I know it makes for a better dramatic confrontation on the beach if he does, but I don't believe that he would've still had them on. Not with as devout as he'd been portrayed up till then. I can excuse those though, because they are obviously mistakes made by someone without an intimate knowledge of our doctrine. These are tremendous plays, beautiful, funny, engaging, and affecting.
|
Comments:
Post a Comment
