Hi, I’m Julie.
I am a retired Principal Lecturer. I continue to research contemporary Shakespeare performances. In retirement, I no longer teach Shakespeare but I now get to visit new places. I love theatre, outdoor swimming and writing about those experiences in my blogs.
The Heart of Robin Hood took a different twist on the traditional story, but this approach isn’t new and so having a strong Marian and wayward Robin was not a surprise. There were some good things. For example, I really liked the way the actors presented animals using musical instruments. The problem I had with…
Read more Heart of Robin Hood (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 6th January 2012)
The Olivier stage is a large space and this production uses the space extremely well. The large towering buildings move around to represent different parts of the city, and even become the shipwreck where the twins were separated. There is a sense of the commercial business taking place in the city as well as the…
Read more Comedy of Errors (National Theatre, 31st December 2011)
In 2011, the sublime was a popular topic of discussion. At the National Theatre there was Frankenstein and in the John Martin exhibition at the Tate, the sublime was on show in a spectacular way. The John Martin exhibition was my favourite exhibition of the year. The epic was presented on grand canvases, but what…
Here is my best of.. lists. The following post discusses what I thought about the year. Shakespeare in the Theatre 1. Romeo and Juliet (RSC at the RST) 2. Much Ado About Nothing (Globe) 3. Hamlet (The National Theatre) 4. Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham’s) 5.The Comedy of Errors (Propeller at Sheffield) 6. Antony and Cleopatra with Katy Stephens and Darrell D’Silva (RSC…
Textures, light and form are so enticing in the Jaume Plensa exhibition coming to a close at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. What is striking about this exhibition is the way the exhibits interact with the natural light creating shadows and colours around them. The visitors become the gallery as the shadows created by the exhibits…
The year started for me with the National Hamlet, and since then I’ve seen the Northern Broadsides Hamlet, and the Globe’s touring Hamlet. In contrast to all these productions along comes a very unnerving production with Michael Sheen as Hamlet. The play is set in a psychiatric hospital and the concept works in some places and not as…
Looking back on the 2011 RSC Macbeth.. Susannah Clapp writing in The Observer noted that there was a little bit of the Turn of the Screw about the RSC production of Macbeth and this was one of my thoughts when I first saw it for the first time back in May. Indeed, when I first…
I’ve just spent a week at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s been a week full of references to Coldplay, an obsession with social media and a focus on teenage anxieties. I’ve spent a lot of time in wet clothes and I have walked up and down steps and hills. It has been a frustrating, tiring,…
There’s been a lot about the celebrity and Shakespearean performance recently and I think that the Old Vic production of Richard III is a really good example of a performance that centres around one star performer. This is to be expected because Richard III centres around one character, but there is no doubt this production has Kevin…
It’s a little ironic that down the road from the Wyndham’s Theatre in the National Portrait Gallery’s Now and Then: Portraits by John Swannell exhibition is a portrait of a young George Michael in his Wham days looking extremely handsome and tanned. This image is very in keeping with the aesthetic of the eighties focused and…
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 