Play: Angels in America (Part 1: Millennium Approaches)

Today, Up in the Cheap Seats watched Angels in America (Part 1 - Millennium Approaches), a National Theatre production. Again, would you believe it, not at a time I could make - they started early, but it's very long. Well, this is one you can rent at any time, and watch on demand for three days after - so I've rented it. Hey, it's cheaper than your average NT production.. Curiously, priced at £6.66. Coincidence..?

I was right to be dubious - hardly anything merits a 3.5 hour running time. So it proved - and the first 40 minutes or so was really ho-hum. I stayed with it though, because there were some really good scenes. Predictably though, it definitely didn't need as much time as it was given, and much of it droned on. You know, they ran this as a tv series, once - and I think that's the perfect format for it. Bite-sized pieces, so you don't lose interest over the course of this epic story, and enough flashes of interesting plot to keep you coming back. It's the story of a group of, as they say, unrelated but interconnected stories, revolving around AIDS in 1985, at which time it was a death sentence. Poignant, but we get to know all the characters much better than we need to. Really, this should NEVER have been made into a play. (At least they build in a two-minute break, every hour - and actually, the running time is only three hours, the last half hour is credits.) Skip it - the group is watching the second half next Sunday, but I think I'll pass..

And so, I'm looking at returning to Undone, on Amazon Prime, next chance I get. This is an animated series about a young woman who, after a car crash, experiences a weird new reality.. Animation, of course, makes it a lot easier for the creators to realise their vision, here.

It's quite cool animation - rotoscoping is used, which is the tracing of live-action video, to give a more realistic effect. The acting is good, the lead character personable - and the plot is pleasantly weird. I'm guessing it's all a dramatisation of the mind of someone with schizophrenia, but it's very clever, and there is a plot involving her dad's murder, which he's tasked her with solving. She learns to distort reality by shifting back and forth through time..