I saw the latest Royal Shakespeare Company Hamlet in previews and I am sure that by the Opening/Press night, the production will have changed considerably since I first saw it. What struck me was on the two nights that I was in the audience was that there were standing ovations on both nights which suggests…
Read more The new RSC Hamlet is out of joint? (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 14th and 15th March 2013)
This Macbeth was set in a dystopian future, and it was a violent and fast-moving production. I had a stage seat, and I was in the middle of the second row on an aisle. This meant that I had a very good view of both the actors and the audience. The reviews have picked up that this was a very bloody…
Read more Macbeth. Trafalgar Studios, 28th Feb 2013
At a Press Conference in London today, the Royal Shakespeare Company announced its five-year strategy and its Winter 2013 season. The headline announcement was that David Tennant will return to the RSC to play Richard II in their 2013 Winter Season. The news, though exciting to hear officially, had been circulating for some time. Richard II will be a short six-week run in Stratford from…
Read more David Tennant returns to the RSC to play Richard II
‘Experiment begins‘. The audience is entering the auditorium of the Cottesloe Theatre, and they are also entering the waiting room of the Raushen Pharmaceutical Company where drug trials will take place. We are given wristbands to add to the effect that we are also patients in the trial. Sitting on mustard yellow seats, on the red carpet the next a small coffee…
Read more The Effect (National Theatre, November 2012- January 2013)
Updated 6th January 2013. Thanks to updates from RSC long ensemble audience members. After I saw Debbie Korley and Dharmesh Patel in the RSC’s young people’s King Lear at the Theatre Royal in York recently, I started to wonder what the rest of the RSC’s long ensemble were dong now. I had seen some of…
Read more What happened to the RSC’s long ensemble?
Last night, I went to the A Christmas Carol dining experience at the Lion and Lamb, a pub in the centre of York. This is a show directed by Tom Bellerby for the Flanagan Collective. The show is a mix of theatre and a dining experience. As we enjoyed a drink in the bar of…
Read more Short Review: A Christmas Carol (Flanagan Collective, Lion and Lamb York)
2013 will be another year for celebrity Shakespeare. James McAvoy will play Macbeth early in the year. The Michael Grandage season continues with David Walliams and Sheridan Smith staring in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jude Law in Henry V. In autumn, at the Old Vic, Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones will be playing Beatrice and Bendick…
Read more Looking forward to Shakespeare in 2013
2012 was the year that I kept thinking, I will blog about that and then never got round to it. I always wanted to write some longer pieces on some of the productions, but I put it off, because I am working on a larger project that is taking up my time at the moment.…
Read more 2012
It’s often the case that there are several productions of the same Shakespeare play around at the same time. I saw the Globe production of Richard III on 29th September after seeing the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) production develop over the summer from its first previews in March until the final performance in September. The RSC production…
Read more Looking for Richard III (RSC March to Sept 2012 and The Globe, 29th September 2012)
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, worlds mirror each other, and sometimes we are not sure if we are dreaming or in the real (play) world. For some the play world is a fantasy for seething brains! Watching both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Troilus and Cressida in the Swan at the RSC last week, I felt…
Read more Dreaming Troilus and Cressida (The Swan and RST August 2012)
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 