Скачать или смотреть "Perestroika (Angels in America, #2)" By Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner’s Perestroika, the second part of Angels in America, continues the story of the characters introduced in Millennium Approaches, while deepening its exploration of the political, spiritual, and psychological landscapes of late twentieth-century America. The title itself, borrowed from Mikhail Gorbachev’s term for restructuring in the Soviet Union, sets the tone for a narrative rooted in the necessity and pain of transformation. In this work, change is not optional—it is an elemental force, propelling characters toward self-reckoning, dissolution, and eventual regeneration.
Kushner blends realism and fantastical elements with equal commitment, allowing the personal and the cosmic to interact without contradiction. Angels fall through ceilings, ghosts speak across time, and yet the emotional truths are always grounded in human vulnerability. The characters are united by their sense of displacement: Prior Walter wrestles with a prophecy he cannot understand, Louis is torn between guilt and ideology, Harper navigates the dissolution of her reality, and Joe is trapped between the constraints of his Mormon faith and his burgeoning sense of self. In each case, identity is in flux, constantly being redefined in relation to collapsing political certainties and shifting interpersonal loyalties.
The central image of the angel announcing Prior as a prophet embodies Kushner’s theatrical daring and metaphorical reach. Prior’s resistance to the angel’s command—that he accept the immobility of mankind and renounce change—is a powerful reversal of traditional religious narratives. Instead of venerating divine wisdom, Prior champions human restlessness, even at the cost of suffering. His defiance becomes a political and spiritual manifesto: “We can’t just stop. We’re not rocks—progress, migration, motion is... modernity. It’s animate, it’s what living things do.” In this act of rebellion, Kushner aligns the personal struggle for meaning and survival with a larger cultural mandate to keep evolving, even when systems fail or deities fall silent.
Roy Cohn’s lingering presence in Perestroika, now as a ghost, emphasizes the cost of political corruption and moral bankruptcy. While dying in the first part, Cohn clung to power and denial, using his influence to preserve a legacy that ultimately decays. In death, he becomes both a symbol of the past’s refusal to yield and a grotesque relic of conservative resistance to progress. Belize’s interactions with Cohn are particularly poignant, filled with sharp wit and layered with both disdain and reluctant compassion. Through these confrontations, Kushner exposes the ideological rot that has fueled American power structures, yet he resists turning the narrative into moral absolutism. Every character, even Cohn, is treated with a complex mix of critique and tragic empathy.
The play’s structure, sprawling and non-linear, mirrors the thematic chaos of transition. The fragmented scenes, overlapping dialogues, and frequent shifts between locations and dimensions reflect a world where the boundaries between politics, theology, and personal desire blur. Kushner does not aim for tidy conclusions; rather, he immerses the audience in the turbulence of change itself. The unresolved tensions—between justice and forgiveness, love and abandonment, history and utopia—are deliberate. The characters move forward not because they achieve closure, but because stasis is unbearable.
At the end of Perestroika, there is no utopia, only the fragile, defiant hope of continued life. Prior’s final monologue in the Bethesda fountain scene is an affirmation of endurance and solidarity: “The world only spins forward.” It is not a declaration of triumph but of resilience. The AIDS crisis, homophobia, political cynicism, and spiritual emptiness have not disappeared, but neither have the people who resist them. The fountain—a symbol of healing—offers no cure, but it becomes a place where community, memory, and courage converge.
Kushner’s Perestroika is a theatrical act of political imagination, fiercely compassionate and intellectually rigorous. By refusing finality, it opens space for renewal. It suggests that progress is not linear and justice is not inevitable, but that in choosing to continue—through grief, through crisis, through transformation—there lies a deeply human form of transcendence.