Setting
The entire play takes place in the Julia Lukin Music Centre, an uneasy mixture between a public music facility and shrine from Joe to his daughter. The room in question is Julia's room as a student (albeit a far more tidy version than the real Julia's room), now with a walkway installed for public viewing.
In a format used only the second time in a full-length Ayckbourn play, Haunting Julia is a 'real-time' play (Absent Friends being the first), with a single continuous scene running throughout the whole play. It was intended that the entire play would be performed without an interval in order to maximise the tension. However, an interval was inserted in certain productions due to pressure from falling bar takings.
The published script is for the proscenium, but the Stephen Joseph theatre used both this format and the round format in various productions. The version in the round originally had the problem that the door to Julia's room that flies open dramatically at the end was invisible to part of the audience. This problem was addressed in the 2008 revival by making the entrance to the room a trapdoor instead.
Read more about this topic: Haunting Julia
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The trees stand in the setting sun,
I in their freckled shade
Regard the cavalcade of sin,
Remorse for foolish action done,
That pass like ghosts regardless, in
A human image made....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)