Reviews 191

As Brooke notes in his study's conclu- sciousness. If that trend evolves—as I sion, this forgotten intellectual heri- believe it will—Mormon studies need tage may arrive quite unwelcomed in take note: Within its new perspectives modern Mormonism. But welcomed Joseph Smith clearly risks being or not, it is loudly knocking at the classed (as he is by Brooke) a hermetic door. prophet, and his religion the culmina- On broader fronts and of more tion of an ancient hermetic, even general importance, Brooke's work Gnostic, longing for the ultimate should initiate a much needed exami- transmutation of man into God. From nation—perhaps the first major con- the dialogue sure to ensue around this sideration—of hermeticism's little thesis neither Mormon historiogra- understood role in the transmutation phy nor the wider realm of religious of early America's religious con- studies will emerge unchanged.

Mormon Angels in America

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on Steven Spielberg," says the terrified National Themes. Part 1: Millennium but impressed man, who, this time Approaches; Part 2: Perestroika. By Tony around, is dying of AIDS. "Greetings Kushner (New York: Theatre Commu- Prophet," says the female personage, nications Group, 1993,1994). hovering above the bed, now shat- tered in brilliant white light. "The Reviewed by David Pace, theater Great Work begins/ The Messenger critic for the Event newspaper, Salt has arrived." Lake City, and regional correspon- Thus ends what one New York dent for Backstage, a national perform- critic admiringly called the biggest ing arts weekly. cliffhanger in Broadway history: the THIS YEAR, THE SESQUICENTENNIAL first part of Tony Kushner's two-part, of Joseph Smith's martyrdom, the seven-hour epic, Angels in America. founder of the Mormon church found Somewhat ostentatiously subtitled A himself holding steady in an unlim- Gay Fantasia on National Themes, An- ited run of his 1993 Broadway debut. gels is the most talked-about show in One hundred and fifty years after his memory and is the winner of the Pu- death at the hands of an Illinois mob, litzer and Tony Awards for Best Play. the "obscure" boy-prophet from up- It has been heralded as single-hand- state New York has comfortably set- edly re-inventing American political tled into Manhattan where, at the drama. Both epic and idiosyncratic, Walter Kerr Theater, an angel, sport- the fantastical and savagely comical ing "magnificent pale grey wings" Angels covers an incredibly broad so- and accompanied by a blast of trum- cial, political, and mystical terrain pets, crashed through the ceiling of from Judy Garland to Ethel Rosen- his Greenwich Village bedroom, scat- berg, from New Deal Socialism to the tering plaster and wiring below. "Very Supreme Court, and from the Jewish 192 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

Kaddish to a postmodern vision of the Prior: Except valium, in wee fist- Angel Moroni. While its story focuses fuls. on the disenfranchised gay man of the Harper: It's terrible. Mormons are 1980s and the politics of AIDS, the not supposed to be addicted to any- show's animating metaphor is unde- thing. I'm a Mormon. niably Mormonism—more specifi- Prior: I'm a homosexual. cally, the story of Joseph Smith. Harper: Oh! In my church we But the play also features three don't believe in homosexuals. Prior: In my church we don't be- Mormon characters, two of whom, lieve in Mormons. with another couple, form the parallel domestic dramas that make up Angels. Harper wanders through her Joe Pitt and his valium-addicted wife dreams, eventually ending up for Harper are Utah transplants to New some time in Antarctica where the cli- York where Joe, an attorney, works as mate seems to represent the deep the chief clerk for Justice Theodore freeze of her mind. Her husband Joe Wilson of the Federal Court of Ap- has immersed himself in the hope of a peals, Second Circuit. In the same of- comeback for conservative America fice is Louis, a word processor whose and a return to "[i]ts sacred position lover, Prior Walter, is dying of AIDS among nations." Ronald Reagan, for and is eventually visited by the Angel. him, represents "truth restored." It is Both couples are in crisis, the latter be- the historical lawyer, Roy Cohn, cause of the ravages of disease and the henchman of Joe McCarthy and a former because Joe is himself a clos- closeted gay who has contracted eted homosexual, though he has never AIDS, who ends up mentoring the acted on his desires. young, strict Mormon. Scripted as a Brooding above both couples is a vociferous, profaning bully reminis- foreboding sense that the world is on cent of Shakespeare's Iago but more "the threshold of revelation." shrill, Cohn, who is threatened with " [E]verywhere," says the distraught disbarment for illegal acts, tries to Harper to her confused husband, muscle Joe into going to the Justice "things are collapsing, lies surfacing, Department in Washington to "[c]ast a systems of defense giving way ..." deep shadow on my behalf." Worried about the depleting ozone Offended by the bald immorality layer she ponders that "[m]aybe of his adopted father, Joe refuses, and Christ will come again." In her valium Cohn flies into a rage. and grief-induced hallucinations she is spirited away by a sax-playing Roy: Boy, you are really some- travel agent, Mr. Lies, to meet up with thing, what the fuck do you think this Prior in his own dream. is, Sunday School? Joe: No, but Roy this is ... Harper [to Prior, who is dressed Roy: This is ... this is gastric in drag]: I'm not addicted. I don't be- juices churning, this is enzymes and lieve in addiction, and I never drink. acids, this is intestinal is what this is, And I never take drugs. bowel movement and blood-red Prior: Well, smell you, Nancy meat—this stinks, this is politics, Joe, Drew. the game of being alive. And you think Harper: Except valium. you're. . . What? Above that? Above Reviews 193

alive is what? Dead! In the clouds! away from here is a step fraught with You're on earth, goddamit! Plant a peril. I feel for you, Hannah Pitt, be- foot, stay a while. cause you are my friend. Stay put. This is the right home of saints. The antithesis of Cohn and the Hannah: Latter-day saints. idealistic but naive Joe is Louis, a Jew- Sister Ella Chapter: Only kind ish liberal intellectual who, neverthe- left. less, balks at that pro-active moment Hannah: But still. Late in the when theory hedges (or rather fails to day . .. for saints and everyone. hedge) real life. Terrified and nause- ated at the advancing AIDS of his In New York Hannah will eventu- lover, Louis admits Prior to the hospi- ally meet up with Prior, who in the tal and then abandons him, leaving in second half, titled Perestroika, travels a whirlwind of guilt that eventually from the Circuit Court to Central Park drives him to self-punishing behav- and from the LDS Visitor's Center iors. near Lincoln Center to Heaven, alter- That Louis, the Marxist social the- nately attempting to escape his calling orist and Joe, the Republican Mor- as "prophet" and nervously embrac- mon lawyer become lovers near the ing it. "I wish you would be more true end of part one, titled Millennium Ap- to your demographic profile," says proaches, represents just one conflu- Prior to Hannah who has scolded him ence of the many disparate narrative for assuming that he knows what she lines that Kushner pens. Other sur- thinks about homosexuals, "[l]ife is prises in this fast-paced, highly imagi- confusing enough." native, at times dramatically jolting Confusion, spawned by the end play soon follow, not the least of of a millennium, is the topic of the which is the appearance of Joe's stern "world's oldest Bolshevik" who opens but plucky mother, Hannah Pitt, who, "Perestroika" with a lament that, since after a troubling phone call from her the collapse of the USSR, there is no son, sells her home in Salt Lake City unifying theory to guide the next cen- and moves to New York unan- tury. But in the following scene the an- nounced. gel, still hovering above Prior's bed, "Know why I decided to like turns out to be neither angel of death you?" says a friend to Hannah as they nor eleventh-hour savior of the dying look out over the Salt Lake Valley. "I man, not a messenger of unification, decided to like you 'cause you're the but of stasis. It seems that God, tired only unfriendly Mormon I ever met." of humanity's relentless impulse for Hannah steals a puff from her friend's change, left heaven on the day of the cigarette. Her friend continues, San Francisco earthquake in 1906. The Angel has called the new prophet Sister Ella Chapter: This is the in hopes that he can undo the damage home of saints, the godliest place on on earth, and convince the world to earth, they say, and I think they're turn back, to stop moving so that God right. That means there's no evil here? No. Evil's everywhere. Sin's every- will return to Heaven and all will be where. But this ... is the spring of well ... or at least as before. "HOB- sweet water in the desert, the desert BLE YOURSELVES!" demands the flower. Every step a Believer takes Angel, condemning the migration of 194 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

people across the land. "There is no of mannequins converses in a hokey, Zion Save Where You Are!" story-book style about their exodus In one of the lengthier scenes West. Prior is badgered by the Angel whose Spurred on by his impending bell-like voice is punctuated by an un- death and his anxiety over what his earthly cough and whose somersaults nurse and friend, Belize, is convinced and spins in mid-air cause her attenu- are hallucinations, Prior turns up at ated wings to lift and fall. "Remove the Visitor's Center and introduces from their hiding place the Sacred himself to Harper as an "angelologist." Prophetic Implements," she says "Imagination is a dangerous amidst a flurry of pseudo-biblical, thing," says Prior to Harper. "In cer- apocalyptic rhetoric. "The what?" tain circumstances, fatal," says says Prior. She directs him to bronze Harper. "It can blow up in your face. spectacles with rocks instead of If it turns out to be true." They are lenses and a large book with bright waiting for the diorama to begin and steel pages. The angel calls the wondering where they've seen each glasses "peep-stones." other before. During the course of the scene During the recorded presentation, Prior and the Angel are both over- and to the surprise of both, Louis sud- come by sexual feeling, apparently denly appears in the diorama while prompted, by "the great work" which the pioneer father turns out to be Joe. has ostensibly begun. "The Body is "I don't like cults," says Louis as if the Garden of the Soul," intones the caught in the middle of a conversation. breathless Angel, " . . . Plasma Orgas- Joe responds, "The Church of Jesus mata." Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a That Prior gets sexually aroused cult." "Any religion that's not at least whenever the Angel is near (in the two thousand years old is a cult. . .," first half) or when he dons the glasses he says. "And I know people who and reads the book (in the second would call that generous." half) suggests, as the Angel says, that "I never imagined losing my what makes the "Engine of Creation mind was going to be such hard Run" is "Not Physics But Ecstatics." work," says Prior before leaving the Within the play's hard-driven re- visitor's center. But the visions aren't visionist view of Reagan-era values over yet. The Mormon Mother, are themes of migration. At the begin- perched on the seat of a covered ning of Part One, for example, a rabbi wagon, then comes to life. She and sings the Kaddish over the body of Harper trudge through the dark, rainy Louis's grandmother, a woman who night. "In your experience of the crossed the ocean and, says the rabbi, world, how do people change?" asks "brought with us to America the vil- Harper as the two overlook the island lages of Russia and Lithuania" to of Manhattan. "grow up here . . . in the melting pot where nothing melted." And in the di- Mormon Mother: Well it has orama room at the LDS Visitor's Cen- something to do with God so it's not ter where Hannah, accompanied by very nice. God splits the skin with a the nearly deranged Harper, now jagged thumbnail from throat to belly works as a volunteer, a pioneer family and then plunges a huge filthy hand Reviews 195

in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes But, after a month's absence, and they slip to evade his grasp but he Louis is determined to visit Prior. squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and "You don't want to see me anymore," pulls till all your innards are yanked worries Joe. "Anything. Whatever you out and the pain! We can't even talk want. I can give up anything. My about that. And then he stuffs them skin." At this point he pulls the upper back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to part of the garment off. The weather is you to do the stitching. freezing. "What are you doing, some- one will see us," says Louis. "I'm Sequestered away from Harper flayed," says Joe. "No past now. I and his mother, Joe is staying with could give up anything. . . . Some- Louis and consummating his sexual times self-interested is the most gener- desires. Even sudden apparitions/vis- ous thing you can be," he continues as itations (the text is, typically, never Louis hastily re-dresses him. "You clear) of Harper in the bedroom does ought to think about it." "I will," not keep him from going back to promises Louis. Louis whom he finds not only sexu- Perestroika is left with what seems ally compelling but intellectually chal- the impossible task of tying up the lenging. "Who if not the Right is loose ends that Millennium Approaches putting the prude back in Jurispru- almost recklessly scatters. Most of the dence?" complains Louis as they lie in loose ends are in fact resolved in an bed together. "Do you want to be "Epilogue" as serene and hopeful as pure, or do you want to be effective?" the first half is volatile and entropic. bandies Joe. "Choose. Even if our Before that, however, Roy Cohn is es- methods seem . . . extreme, even. corted into the hereafter by Ethel We've worked hard to build a move- Rosenberg (whom in the 1950s he ma- ment." liciously propelled toward execution) Later at the dunes on nearby but surfaces later, in hell, hawking his Jones beach, a famous hang-out for legal expertise at a guilty and absent gays, Louis alludes to the "Explora- God. Ultimately rejected by Prior, tion" of gay male sexuality "[a]cross Louis jettisons his Mormon lover who, an unmapped terrain." When the sub- Louis learns, was responsible for Judge Wilson's most offensive anti- ject turns to Joe's religion Louis says, gay and anti-human judgments. Prior "So the fruity underwear you wear, goes to heaven to return his prophetic that's..." mantle and demands a blessing for more life from a quorum of heavenly Joe: A temple garment. beings. And after a brief attempt at Louis: Oh my god. What's it for? Joe: Protection. A second skin. I reconciliation, Harper gives Joe her can stop wearing it if you ... stash of valium, takes the credit card, Louis: How can you stop wearing and escapes on an airplane to San it if it's a skin? Your past, your beliefs, Francisco. your... It was at the Eureka Theatre in Joe: I'm not your enemy. San Francisco that Angels in America Louis. ... I am in love with you. You premiered in 1991. Its circuitous route and I, fundamentally, we're the same. to Broadway and the Walter Kerr The- We both want the same things. atre included a workshop production 196 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought at both the Mark Taper Forum in Los on the stage were in-your-face Mor- Angeles and the Sundance Institute mons, ambivalent and human, de- in Provo, Utah, and a hit engagement voted yet vulnerable, caught up in a at the National Theatre in London world much larger than the Wasatch where the show re-opened after its Front's greenhouse of religious fo- January 1992 British premiere and is ment and its fusion of individual and still running. In October 1992 the pre- organizational faith. miere of Perestroika was paired with That a golden book of life and an Millennium Approaches in a marathon Angel might appear to a mere farm Los Angeles production. Since then boy—perhaps the least likely earth- the show has played in such far-flung ling of all—in upstate New York is as places as Tel Aviv. This fall the show fantastically appealing today as it opened in Chicago, and producer /di- was during the romanticism of the rector Robert Altaian has optioned early nineteenth century. That the con- Angels for a feature film. temporary counterpart of the boy With its odd but affecting mix of prophet is a New York City homosex- American culture and politics, reli- ual dying of AIDS suggests the per- gion and law, gay aesthetics and dra- sonal daring of Kushner. Prior matic theory, Angels might at first speculates at one point, "[mjaybe I am appear to be theatrically "over-the- a prophet. Not just me, all of us who top." Almost without exception, how- are dying now. Maybe we've caught ever, critics have hailed the genius of the virus of prophecy." Kushner's deft handling of such a Not everything about Kushner's wide swath of material which has American epic is entirely satisfying, proven to be provocative as well as especially the fact that, at show's end, breathlessly entertaining. Joe Pitt is entirely dismissed from the For Mormons, the co-option of core of enlightened individuals who our most sacred story for the purposes in the "Epilogue" gather around the of theater might at first seem blasphe- Central Park fountain, featuring the mous. In fact, Eugene England in his Angel Bethesda. It's as if Joe has been regular This People round-up of recent abandoned by not only Louis and LDS-related books and plays tagged Harper, but his mother as well, who, part one of Angels, which he saw in we are told in this last scene, "is no- London, as "offensive" and disre- ticeably different—she looks like a spectful. New Yorker, and she is reading the What I saw was three of the New York Times." most resonant, non-historical Mor- In Louisville, Kentucky, where mon characters ever to appear on the Kushner's latest play premiered last professional stage, and my identifica- April, the playwright indirectly sug- tion with them was absolutely revela- gested why Joe Pitt is out of favor by tory. Prompted by a New York play's end. Kushner is opposed to the theater critic to see the London show, relativist stance of a playwright, in- I found myself seated in the tiny Cot- dulging both sides of a social or politi- tesloe at the National Theatre and en- cal issue for purposes of "fairness." tranced by what was the most Evil, he insists, is there, and it is the compelling cultural representation of job of the artist to expose it. "I chose my religion I had ever seen. There, the Mormon church for 'Angels' be-