SOURCE: "Of Wings and Webs," in New York Magazine, Vol. 26, No. 20, 17 May 1993, pp. 102-03.

Although he admires Millennium Approaches, Simon finds the work truncated and incomplete without its second half, Perestroika.

How nice it would be to have stumbled upon Angels in America on some far-off stage in London or Los Angeles, unencumbered by the hurrahing heralds of "Genius!" or the demurring trumpeters of "Trumpery!" One could then have mused, "Who would have imagined that Tony Kushner, the author of the grandiosely vacuous A Bright Room Called Day, would make such progress? At least now he is writing from the inside out rather than, wrongly, the reverse." But before we elevate Angels in America to the rank of masterpiece, we must ponder both its surtitle and its subtitle.

The surtitle, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, should remind us that this effort to be national or ecumenical is...