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.
Future Me really unnerved me. I was really unnerved because I really liked the main character when I left, but deplored what he had done and his crime. I felt I had had some insights into the other characters and what their motivations were. The problem with this for me was that the main character…
Antony Neilson’s The Wonderful World Of Dissocia deals with bipolar disorder and sets the action in two sphere’s Lisa’s journey and then her hospitalization. The contrast between the two parts of the play comment on each other and create a series of layers which makes this play very powerful as well as entertaining. Neilson’s Edward…
Read more Edward Gant's Amazing Feats of Loneliness (WYP, 12th March 2009, WYP)
“Deliver us from evil” a character in Red Riding quotes from the Lord’s Prayer. “Hell” flashes above the stage at the conclusion to Don John at the Lowry. This is the nineteen seventies in the North of England. In these two productions, the seventies has become very bleak and dark. Channel Four’s Red Riding piles…
Read more Don John (Lowry, 7th March 2009) Red Riding (C4, 5th March 2009)
The epistolary novel was very popular in the eighteenth century, and there have been examples of this form of story telling since, but in a world of email, letter writing has been transformed to the digital format and used less frequently than it was. Can any Mother Help? takes us back to paper, pen and…
I remember seeing Boeing Boeing when I was a teenager and finding it really funny. I seemed to remember its fast pace and the how timing was really important to the comedy. When I saw it again at York Theatre Royal, I realised how out of date the comedy was. I suddenly felt uncomfortable at…
Read more Boeing Boeing (York Theatre Royal, 24th February 2009)
Wow, this is a production that as well as being entertaining, is also very political and makes you think. Superb casting of Antony Sher as Prospero and John Kani as Caliban really emphasises the postcolonial themes in the play. The play makes us think about the Caliban and Propsero relationship in terms of relationships…
Read more The Tempest (The Courtyard, 26th, 27th, 28th February 2009)
I think I was really pleased that Law and Order was on last night, because I am finding that Coronation Street is really struggling to keep me interested. Ken is seeing another woman again. Tina is lying for David again. There’s a new boss at the Factory again. Steve McDonald has moved a woman into…
Read more Coronation Street, Law and Order, Who Do You Think You Are? (February 23rd 2009)
For one week in February, when you walked up to the West Yorkshire Playhouse you would have been confronted by two large poster images of David Oluwale and Othello (Lenny Henry). I’m not sure whether it was a deliberate decision for the West Yorkshire Playhouse to put on The Hounding of David Oluwale and Othello…
This was a very interesting exhibition from a group of artists who challenged what art is and tried to move away from art being representational. The exhibition takes you through the development of Rodchenko and Popova’s work, each room containing examples from a short period of time. Rodchenko and Popova defined Constructivism and it is…
Read more Rodchenko and Popova (Tate Modern, 14th February 2009)
It was Valentine’s day when we went to see Twelfth Night at the Wyndham’s Theatre, and we’d spent the day in London, which had been decked out with red hearts, so it was a very appropriate day to go and watch a love story. Though Twelfth Night explores different relationships and different forms of love.…
Read more Twelfth Night (The Donmar in the West End, Saturday 14th February 2009)
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 