Matthew Tennyson as Penrose and Andrew Sheridan as Francis (c) Over a weekend I saw Robert Holman’s A Breakfast of Eels, and Simon Stephens’ Carmen Disruption at the Almeida. The former was on the last day of its run and the latter at the second night preview, but both laid bare the core of the theatre building…
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…
I decided to go to the three new plays at the Hampstead Theatre, as part of the RSC long ensemble project. To do this required some complex travel arrangements and a hit on my budget. I’d been watching this long ensemble for three years, and really wanted to see their final performances together on British…
Read more Little Eagles, Silence, and American Trade (Hampstead Theatre)
The vision behind the RSC Long Ensemble was for a group of actors to work together for a sustained period of time to produce work. It seemed fitting then, at the end of the Stratford run and two and half years together the long ensemble got together and put on a Gala in the newly…
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 final episode of the television series ‘Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes’, we learnt that everyone was dead after all. Sam Tyler and Alex Drake had been catapulted back in time into a kind of purgatory which resembled an old-fashioned cop drama. Gene Hunt had been shot dead as a young policeman on the beat on coronation day. He couldn’t…
Read more Romeo and Juliet (The Courtyard Theatre, w/c 17th May 2010)
Julie Raby: A Dyslexic Writer 