by Annette Rubery | May 14, 2024 | Architecture, Art
We went to Blenheim on bank holiday Monday because I wanted to walk from the Ditchley Gate right up to the house. Well, it was pouring down with rain so that wasn’t happening. I managed to check a few aspects of the parkland that I wanted to, but we were soon...
by Annette Rubery | Mar 24, 2024 | Shakespeare
Macbeth, Dir. Simon Godwin, London 2024. Just back from London and the blasted heath of Canada Water to see Simon Godwin’s production of Macbeth. It took place in a gigantic warehouse, where audiences filed past a burnt-out car in an imaginary war-torn city, and the...
by Annette Rubery | Dec 5, 2023 | Architecture, Theatre History, Woffington
York Watergate, Embankment Gardens, London, Dec 2023. On my way to review an exhibition at the Courtauld, I had a closer look at the York Watergate in Embankment Gardens. It was built around 1626 in the grounds of York House: the Duke of Buckingham’s mansion. The...
by Annette Rubery | Dec 1, 2023 | Theatre History
I am still reeling from the news that Robert D. Hume, the American theatre historian, died last week. I debated whether to write anything about him here because I was not a colleague or friend and did not know him very well – beyond the exchange of a few emails....
by Annette Rubery | Nov 29, 2023 | Opera, Theatre History
Bedford Row, London, November 2023. I wrote the other day (in Operatic foundations: A relic of the Haymarket theatre) about the curious stones in the front garden of a law office in Bedford Row and how I think they once formed the foundation of John Vanbrugh’s...