'Angels' issues

In their last student production, we found university theater and dance students in an upbeat, happy-go-lucky musical about optimism and finding love.

Next week they will perform what could be considered the polar opposite of that show.

"Angels in America: Millennium Approaches," which starts March 26 in Rust Flexible Theatre, covers all the unmentionables and uncomfortables: homosexuality, AIDS, politics, ethics in politics, casual and anonymous sex, loyalty and disloyalty, religion and God abandoning humans.

The play talks about everything your momma told you not to talk about in good company: politics, religion and sex.

More than that, though, it talks about the politics of love and government and acceptance.

Tony Kushner wrote the play in the 1990s. It debuted in Los Angeles in 1992 and received the Tony Award for best play in 1993 and 1994 as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993, just to name a few.

Dramatic and powerful, it most definitely is. The story focuses on two couples, one gay, one straight. Louis and his lover, Prior, discover Prior has AIDS. Louis cannot deal with Prior's evolving sickness and ends up leaving him.

Meanwhile, Mormon lawyer Joe and wife Harper are happily married, and Joe is edging toward a promotion to work in the Justice Department with Roy Cohn, his extremist right-wing mentor. Roy learns he has AIDS. Joe admits he is gay and his mentor is an unethical bigot.

Prior has hallucinations of an angel telling him God has abandoned them in heaven because he was disappointed in man's migratory nature and that humans need to settle and be happy in the present so God will come back.

The stories wrap up and play out more clearly than in the above description.

If you choose to go see the play, it might offend you. It might make you uncomfortable. But you'll be seeing an award-winning, beautifully written play and supporting the arts and our growing theater community.