Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Act One

Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews (played by the same actress playing Hannah Pitt) stands onstage with a small coffin. It is late October, 1985. He delivers a eulogy for Sarah Ironson, Louis’s grandmother, in a heavy Eastern European accent. Sarah, whom he says he did not actually know very well, represents an entire generation of people who “crossed the ocean,” who landed in America, “the melting pot that never melted,” and who struggled “for the family, for the Jewish home.” He urges the mourners to preserve their ancient cultures and traditions, because “Pretty soon… all the old will be dead.”

It is the same day and we are in the office of Roy Cohn, a successful New York Republican lawyer with tremendous political influence. Roy is juggling several phone calls with various clients, spitting and cursing as he does so, while Joe Pitt, a chief clerk for the Federal Court of Appeals, patiently waits in his office. Finally, Joe asks Roy to stop taking