Prior Walter, who's been abandoned by his lover Louis (Ben Shenkman) and who is seeing visions in the throes of his own AIDS-related dementia;

Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who's attracted to Louis in part because his guilt-ridden self-loathing mirrors Joe's; and

Harper, Joe's wife, who regularly checks out on her passion-free relationship through pills and free-form fantasizing. At least three of the characters experience visions in the first part of the play, but only Prior gets to see the prophesizing angel (Emma Thompson), whose coming is announced by two Dickensian ancestral ghosts.

Kushner's drama is set in Reagan Era America, so there's a lot of talk about impending millennium in the piece. If that aspect appears a bit dated (so what'd the millennium really bring us? More fear than we had before?), the basic issues of personal responsibility (note how Louis, the most loud-spoken liberal in the play, is the one who leaves his lover when the going gets tough), disconnectedness and the American promise remain relevant. As does the willful blinkeredness of the people who govern us, unfortunately. (Cohn, who in real life died from AIDS-related complications, is the primary exemplar of this: unwilling to publicly admit what he has because he knows it'll compromise his power base, he hides behind a cover story of lung cancer.) For all the grimness in its storyline, there's a fallible human vibrancy in Angels that calculatedly mopey fare like Carnivale can't even come close to capturing.

Great play; really good production; can't wait for part two.