HBO’s Most Ambitious Miniseries Is Still One of the Best Ever Made 23 Years Later

In 1993, the play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes premiered on Broadway. Created by Tony Kushner, whose screenwriting collaborations with Steven Spielberg include Lincoln, West Side Story, and The Fabelmans, it’s a play that follows the lives of those in New York City during the late 1980s, in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, which blossomed into an epic of quite literally biblical proportions. The experiences and affairs of a dying prophet, an unhappy couple, an arrogant prosecutor, and all those who surround them collide as a new era begins. Angels in America was a special moment in the theatrical world. Part 1: Millennium Approaches alone won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards, along with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It never fails to receive a trophy when it’s revived for the stage, with Kushner solidifying himself and his work in the canon of legendary playwrights.