Today we're celebrating the groundbreaking original production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, which began its great work on Broadway on this day in 1993.
As politically incendiary as any play in the American canon, Angels in America also manages to be, at turns, hilariously irreverent and heartbreakingly humane. It is also astonishingly relevant, speaking every bit as urgently to our anxious times as it did when it first premiered. Tackling Reaganism, McCarthyism, immigration, religion, climate change, and AIDS against the backdrop of New York City in the mid-1980's, no contemporary drama has succeeded so indisputably with so ambitious a scope.
When it first premiered, Angels in America won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, seven Tony Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Evening Standard Award for Best New Play. HBO's 2003 screen adaptation won both the Emmy® and the Golden Globe® Awards for Best Miniseries.
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