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.
I experienced this exhibition as an exploration of blurring reality both literally and metaphorically. I was fascinated by the images in this exhibition, and it felt really uncomfortable looking at some of the images which are actually blurred, in contrast to viewing images in recent exhibitions such as the Face 2008 and the Annie Leibovitz…
Read more Gerhard Richter (National Portrait Gallery, 2nd May 2009)
It was very busy when I went to see this exhibition, so I felt rather claustrophobic and the viewing felt pressured. I wanted to get close to the paintings and stand back as well and this wasn’t always possible and often viewing was over shoulders or from the sides of the works. This shows how…
Read more Picasso: Challenging the Past (National Gallery, 2nd May 2009)
Twelfth Night is always a popular play and there are several productions this year. There has been the Donmar Warehouse production, which I wrote about in this blog and there is to be a RSC production in the autumn with Richard Wilson as Malvolio. The York Theatre Royal production is entertaining and thought provoking and…
Read more Twelfth Night (York Theatre Royal 29th April 2009 and 1st May 2009)
Michael Boyd interview: transforming the RSC – Telegraph
Read more Michael Boyd interview: transforming the RSC – Telegraph
Many of my recent posts have commented on how much the performances have referenced theatre. I couldn’t discuss this production of Waiting for Godot without commenting on the metatheatre. The set is a derelict theatre. We watch the action through two frames, one is the proscenium arch of the Theatre Royal and the other is…
Read more Waiting For Godot (Theatre Royal Newcastle, 23rd April 2009)
I think I was surprised. I had read other reviews and I didn’t think that I would enjoy this production, but I had a really good time. it just shows though how diverse the reviews can be. The Telegraph gives the production 5 stars, but Charles Hutchinson in the Yorkshire Evening Press found flaws and…
Having seen this Baxter Theatre/RSC production in Stratford (Courtyard Theatre), I was really keen to see it in a different playing space. The proscenium arch theatre in Sheffield did present a very different viewing experience, but none of exceitement I felt when I saw the production in February was lost. In a proscenium arch theatre,…
Read more The Tempest – again (Sheffield Lyceum, 23rd April 2009)
I am a great fan of Doctor Who and look forward to each episode. Unfortunately, the special ‘Planet of the Dead’ was not, in my view, one of the best episodes of the TV programme. With any Doctor Who episode, viewers are confronted with the layers of narratives surrounding the production. It is as if…
Read more Doctor Who, Planet of the Dead (BBC 1, 11th April 2009)
When I wrote about Don John and Red Riding I talked noted that the two productions were set in a nineteen seventies which was presented as dark and bleak. The Damned United is another production set in the seventies and also uses a sense of bleakness as its backdrop. However, the scenes in grays and…
I thought that Tim Supple’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was an amazing piece of theatre, and this is why I booked for As You Like It at the Leicester Curve. The cast created some really interesting readings of the play and there was some very thought provoking moments. However, this was a very different production…
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 