In a long and thoughtful analysis, Arthur Silber reflects upon Angels in America. It is well worth the read, and I say this even though I am no fan of Tony Kushner. But despite my disagreements, Kushner is a fine playwrite and fair is fair. Arthur calls his review a labor of love, and it really is.

A sample:

[Angels in America] is stunningly original. It's not a play or film you've seen before: it mixes politics, psychology, sexuality, religion, the countless intersections of all these issues with each other, general cultural trends, the future of the world -- and fantasy elements, lots of wonderful fantasy -- in all sorts of unimaginable ways. Unimaginable, that is, until Kushner imagined them, and presented them as a wonderful gift to all of us. For me, that above all places Angels in America far, far above almost any other new play I can think of in the last decade, or even two. If Angels did nothing else, that alone would be cause for celebration.

But Angels does much more than that. It offers us provocative ideas to think about for countless hours, it brings us characters that we care about enormously -- and it does all this in a marvelously theatrical and entertaining manner. Furthermore, in many of its concerns and the issues it raises, it is a drama clearly intended for adults. In this day and age, with most films being imitations of imitations of movies that were often not that good in the first place, and with many films being $100 million comic books, that is also an achievement of great note. And Angels is shot through with wonderful, pointed wit and humor. I think this should also be mentioned: a viewer need not be concerned with many of the issues I discuss below, or even most of them. You can, if you choose, simply sit back, and enjoy and contemplate it. That is, after all, what art is for in large measure. Angels in America is altogether a genuinely remarkable achievement, for all of these reasons, and for additional ones as well. But these are all evaluations -- so here are a number of specifics to support them. In the following, I will simply proceed through the drama as it unfolds.

I can't stand crassly politicized art, and I don't like being manipulated (as I complained in an earlier post). But at the same time, I don't think political disagreements should ever interfere with appreciation in the esthetic sense-- or the acknowledgment of artistic genius.