McNally’s ‘Mothers and Sons’ Gauges a Changed America

NYTimes.com: The sky over Central Park was always full of white balloons. At least, that’s how Terrence McNally saw New York City in 1988, when he wrote a short play for an Off Broadway revue about life in the age of AIDS.
He set “Andre’s Mother” at one of the countless memorial services in the park, when loved ones released balloons as symbols of souls floating to heaven. It would be the first of his plays about gay men and AIDS. While later ones like “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” the winner of the Tony for best play in 1995, injected bitchy humor to leaven the pathos, “Andre’s Mother” is all rage: a harangue by Cal, who has just buried his lover Andre, directed at the title character, a nameless stand-in for homophobic parents everywhere.