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…
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…
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.…
It felt a little bit strange going into a theatre that looked like a theatre I had become very familiar with, but was slightly different. In reconstructing the Courtyard in the Roundhouse, the RSC have created a version of the Stratford theatre, rather than a replica theatre. There’s no upper circle and the rusts and reds are transformed to…
Read more Romeo and Juliet again..(RSC at the Roundhouse, 4th December 2010)
Two productions of the same play in Theatre Royals in the North of England, yet very different experiences. In the past month, I have had chance to revisit the RSC’s production of Romeo and Juliet in Newcastle and have seen the Pilot Theatre’s production of the same play in York. Having seen both productions so…
Read more Romeo and Juliet (Theatre Royal, Newcastle and York)
In the Doctor Who two parter, ‘The End of Time’, the time is clearly ‘out of joint’ for the Doctor. He has been having fun instead of being there to sort out the Master’s usurpation of the human race. In trying to set this right, the tenth Doctor hurtles towards his own death. Does this remind us of the…
Though I enjoyed the South Bank programme about the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) because of my interest in the Company and its work, I did start to feel that it was more like a promotional DVD, than an in-depth study. It is sad to see a long running show axed and I hope other shows take its place,…
I felt that I was privileged to be able to attend the premiere of the Illuminations/BBC TV film version of Greg Doran’s RSC Hamlet at the BFI (British Film Institute). This blog is about the experience of being there at the screening, and I’ll wait until after the Boxing Day, when it is aired on…
Outside Waterstone’s in Newcastle, young women wearing clothes with flashes of pink, are queuing to see Katie Price signing copies of her new novel. The former glamour model, who is also known as Jordan, experiments with different identities, and she could be described as an independent woman making it on her own in the savage and brutal world of a celebrity-focused culture. About 100 yards away from…
Read more As You Like It (Theatre Royal Newcastle, 24th October 2009)
The image of the DVD cover for the production of The RSC’s Hamlet has now been released. I’m sure that this will provoke lots of conversations about what the film will be like. When I first saw the cover, I must admit I was a little disappointed I had thought that the image would have…
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 