Play: Antony and Cleopatra

Today was a bank holiday (VE Day) - so I needed something to do, on principle. And I was thinking I'd follow Up in the Cheap Seats' (UITCS) lead from earlier in the week, and have a look at a livestreamed Showstopper! show, filmed in the Lyric a month ago without an audience (!), now available on Facebook..

..and then they advertised Antony and Cleopatra, screened by the National Theatre from last night, as it happens, for a week. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okenedo. Now, that sounded interesting.. so that's what I watched. Eventually, once there was a gap in good tv programmes.

Oh dear. See, it's very, very long. Now, I've seen longer - including longer by Shakespeare, who also wrote this. But if it's compelling enough, you don't notice the length. Now, this is really well done - the acting is excellent, done in modern dress, as usual. Antony starts off in holiday mode - flowery shirt, expansive trousers - hanging out in Alexandria with Cleo, who spends almost all the play dressed in a variety of fabulous outfits in white. He then gets called back to Rome - for a brief period, there are a lot of meetings in military uniform, then it gets into the battles. The National's rotating stage served well to switch action between Alexandria and Rome.

But as I say, it's oh so long. And I fell asleep. I did catch mention of Antony marrying Octavia, then the next thing I knew, Cleo was pretending she'd killed herself and it all went to pot. Their lives, not the play. I do acknowledge that I missed an awful lot of stuff in the middle, but even trying to watch it again, I kept finding myself scurrying to the next bit. It is good, but as with many good plays, you could chop a lot of it. Hey ho. Kudos to them for using a real snake for her suicide, though!

I'll probably catch up with another episode of Planet Earth tomorrow - next up is Shallow Seas.

On Sunday, back with UITCS - conveniently, an afternoon Meetup, where we're back watching an Andrew Lloyd Webber offering. This time, it's By Jeeves. The discussion afterwards will be on Jitsi, though - so I'll have to position myself closer to the router, as I had terrible trouble with this before.

Monday sees London Literary Walks' next quiz.

And on the 16th, I'm back with UITCS for The Midnight Gang Musical, from Chichester Festival Theatre.