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.
In many ways, going to see Season’s Greetings at the National Theatre is a very different experience from seeing Antony and Cleopatra in the Swan theatre the light before. Here we have a lavish set, consisting of three floors of a house and lots of doors. Without knowing the play, I kind of guess that…
Read more Season’s Greetings (National Theatre, 5th March 2011)
When anyone says that they were at that last night of Wigan Casino, I always wanted to know what it was like, because being there on such a momentous occasion seemed really special. For example, I was fascinated to know how did it feel when the three before eight played for the last time? I…
Read more Being there when…Was I at the opening of the RST this time?
23rd February 2011. The RSC are coming home. There is no fanfare or long speeches, but there is an energetic buzz moving across the audience for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first night in the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre. This was what they called a soft opening. Nearly 7:15 pm Edgar (Charles Aitken) is already on stage. I…
I really liked this exhibition and the way it was curated. I liked the fact that you could go back into rooms you’d already visited without feeling you were going the wrong way round it. I didn’t know what to expect so it was really helpful to go back to things and take them in…
The National Theatre’s production felt like it was a GOOD polished clean production, without some of the roughness that makes a production not just a good, but an exciting and thought-provoking one. It was the kind of production that didn’t leave me disappointed, on the other hand it didn’t leave me thinking about the text in ways that I…
Read more Twelfth Night (National Theatre, 12th February 2011)
I was really sorry to hear that Kathryn Hunter had resigned from the RSC midway through the Roundhouse run. I realise that she had not had some good reviews with some reviews being really cutting, but I had thought that her work with the current RSC ensemble had been really thought provoking. Her two performances…
I thought that this was really amazing. Here is Jonjo O’Neill singing in the foyer of the Roundhouse only about 15 minutes before a performance of the RSC’s As You Like It. He is due on stage in 15 minutes. It made me think about Simon Annand’s book The Half: Photographs of Actors Preparing for the Stage…
Some productions play Shakespeare in what some people might term as traditional and it can be fine, but what I really enjoy is when I come across a production that takes risks, because when they come off, they can be exciting and memorable. Propeller’s The Comedy of Errors was such a production. Set in Mexico…
Read more The Comedy of Errors (22nd January 2011, Sheffield)
Theatre: Shakespeare 1. Romeo and Juliet (RSC). 2. King Lear (RSC). 3. As You Like It (West Yorkshire Playhouse). 4. Measure for Measure (Almeida). 5. The Winter’s Tale (RSC/Roundhouse). 6. Henry IV part 2 (Globe). 7. Macbeth (Globe). 8. Antony and Cleopatra (RSC). 9. Antony and Cleopatra (Liverpool Playhouse). 10. Hamlet (The Crucible, Sheffield). 11.…
As we climbed the stairs up to the Circle at the Donmar, we could feel the heat hit us the higher we went. Wearing several layers of clothes because of the cold weather outside, it was clear that we were going to be hot through the production. It was very strange watching King Lear feeling so hot on a…
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 