Joe and Harper in Tony Kushner's 'gay fantasia' of a play entitled "Angels in America" can be seen as parallel to the relationship of Lewis and Prior, despite both relationships' apparent dissimilarities. In both relationships, the two main characters exist in an unbalanced partnership, riddled with inequities. Only by suffering the traumas of a closeted gay relationship and the horror of AIDS does the nature of these essentially unequal and unfulfilling relationships become 'outed' within the structure of the play.

The relationship between Joe and Harper is perhaps the most obviously unbalanced relationship of the two. Joe is a Mormon lawyer, in the service of the homophobic, closeted gay McCarthy witch hunter Roy Cohn. Joe has moved to New York City because of his career, taking his wife Harper with him. However, Joe does not really love Harper. As he tells her towards the play's end when he leaves her,...
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