Inua Ellams comes from a long line of trouble-makers: from the moose-meat-thieving grandaddy who ran 'so fast the earth gasped and forgot to take footprints', this poet-performer has skittered, scatter-brained, he says, from Nigeria to London, to Dublin and back to England, learning about life all the way. The after-show talk is one of the best I've ever heard, feelingful and generous of experience. His work is totally truthful but only 80 percent true, since "there is no such thing as autobiography - there is art, and lies." The most difficult thing to write about, he says, is ourselves, and his main influence in creating The 14th Tale was hip-hop: "a voice that pumped beauty into my ears, with rhythm, and narration." A beautiful, inspirational, voice. It was a total privilege to share a stage with Inua. My 'curtain raiser' recounted my experience of the 4th Plinth this summer - a great chance to wear The Frock again. Thanks, Howard & Chris, for doing such a great job on the visuals. (The hour is still online, if you click this link.)

The abuse of power is a perpetually relevant theme, says Simon Godwin, director of The Winters Tale concluding its national tour at the Tobacco Factory. This production is set in pre-fascist Italy, but Sicilian king Leontes - powerfully portrayed by Vince Leigh - is a paranoid tyrant whose incandescent jealousy has little to do with politics. It's been dubbed 'the difficult play', allegedly for the contiguity of brutality and buffoonery, but the repetitions of cruelty are the biggest problem. Even the 'solution' seems to owe more to psychological abuse than miracle.
For me, the men, and male emotions, were the main strength in both tragic and comic scenes of this production. The 16-years-later second act is structurally challenging, with its combination of new characters and continuing griefs; Polixines (James Buller) had convincingly hardened, but the shepherdess had morphed into Catherine Tate's granny, and Perdita was a disappointment, clad in charity shop frock and fun-run plimmies, and disturbingly hyperactive. But I did cry, a lot, and a winter's tale should be sad, as the little prince said. Before he died.

Maybe it's down to over-hype but the new series of Gavin & Stacey didn't do it for me. Barry has always been a bit of a Craggy Island, and its inhabitants several celery sticks short of a crudités medley, but writers James Corden and Ruth Jones have been insisting, on wall-to-wall radio interviews, that they want this story to be 'real'. A pity. There was a moment, as Uncle Bryn's voice soared in "Something Inside So Strong" at little Neil's christening, when I really thought the entire congregation would lift off, bouncing and bounding like in The Blues Brothers, and maybe we would have a moment of superb surreal comedy. But no, it was back to Abigail's-Party parody and low-key sentimentality. I'd so hoped to go on loving this series but ended up wanting to flick through my cellphone contacts like bad-girl Rudi "Just seeing if I can find someone who gives a shit".

The Pitmen Painters is Lee Hall's second look at the Billy Elliot fairytale: talented lad finds his creative wings and flies from Northern working class background to fulfillment and fame. Except that Oliver asks for less not more, and stays, whether from fear or loyalty, with his colliery clan. In Lee Hall's version of the Ashington Art Group history, the untutored artistry of the men doesn't appear to thrive from their contact with acknowledged masters; their paintings become generic and like the tenets of socialism lose significance except as glimpses of a pre-war era.
The play has been much admired, and the comic culture-shock between the tutor and the miners ("A Titian." - "Bless you!") certainly went down well with the Bath Theatre Royal audience. I liked the way the broad strokes of farce paralleled the men's initial crudity in artistic self-representation, evolving as did their paintings gradually into more complex and feelingful presentation of the integrity of their lives. But just as Oliver's work is ultimately critiqued by Mrs Sutherland, whose patronage he refused, as sentimental and conformist, in the second act the play too seems to lose its strength. The characters represent a range of attitudes to art and politics which like her ex-protegee's later painting is "perfectly fine, but undeveloped. No sexuality, or desire, or elemental hunger, no sensuality or yearning for the other." Mrs Sutherland admits to losing interest in painting, but she could make some salient points about playwriting.
It's a National Theatre production, obviously very well acted and stylishly put together, but it made me nostalgic not only for pre-1995 Labour and debates on the meaning of art but also for plays like Chicken Soup with Barley and The Corn is Green where characters grew from their class roots rather than representing them.

What do you do when you can't decide on a cover for your new novel? My friend Christine Coleman has an ingenious solution: put it to the vote. Chris has posted 7 options - what's your view? This was my favourite - pick yours & you could win a copy of this fascinating self-discovery novel.




And while I'm on the injunctions, will everyone in striking distance of Frome please come to see Inua Ellam's award-winning one man show The 14th Tale at the Merlin next Friday. I'm doing a curtain raiser in me posh Plinth frock so don't be late...

Finally, thanks to all those who emailed me after hearing my story Mrs Somerville's Garden on the beeb last week - I didn't even know they were repeating it, so your appreciative messages were a nice surprise.
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Paradise by local writer Nell Leyshon developed from her work with Vita Nova: a Bournemouth-based theatre group of recovering addicts. The Salt factory (tagline "stark visual landscapes and restless text") production features charismatic Lee Hart and Celia Meiras as ex-junkies falling backwards through their story to refind their love. Jay Kerry's lighting is stunning and the minimalist set, Nell says, was designed around the dimensions of the tour van.

Lots of personal stories at the Merlin too, in a full-house foyer performance of STAGE WRITE last night.
This was the culmination of the 7 Ages of Shoes creative workshops aimed primarily to encourage those who've never written monologues for performance before, and was hailed a fantastic success.
Accolades buzzed round the bar like bees round buddleia, and verbal bouquets were still ringing around the group this morning. Many congratulations and thanks to everyone who stepped out of their comfort zone to share such a wide range of wonderful stories: our writers Anna Britten, Alison Clink, Jo Day, Rosemary Dun, Rosie Finnegan, Jeremy Gibson, Gordon Graft, Peter Macfadyen, Angela Moss, Magnus Nelson, Howard Vause; thanks to our actors Jo Hole and Annabelle Macfadyen, and to Howard for the visuals. The project - my co-organiser Niamh and I are both determined - will continue...


And One-and-Other has finally ended, with the descent on Wednesday of the final human artefact, leaving the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square empty again.
But was it art? Anthony Gormley reckons so: "It's asking how art can be experienced.. if there isn't a bit of contention it isn't worth doing." It was fun, anyway, as I reminisced on a radio look-back at the one hundred days of plinthing. Had my experience led to anything? the interviewer wanted to know. Hard to quantify how standing 28 feet above London for an hour shapes a life - but one direct outcome is another outing for The Frock when I'm the curtain-raiser act for Innua Ellams when he brings his award-winning poetry play The 14th Tale to the Merlin next month...
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