Dragonfly days, gone too soon... and downpour drama

A dramatic start to this week's blog, with A Midsummer Night's Dream as presented on the ECOS open-air stage in Frome by wonderful Illyria outdoor theatre company, uncut despite thunderous rain throughout the second act, and with a stunning rainbow overhead for the finale.  

As Oliver Gray, director and inspirational genius behind these Illyrian creations, notes in the programme, it requires a lot of hard work to create a full production of Shakespeare's triple-layered fantasy with a cast of five, all quick-changing from nobles to fairies to workmen, with complex timing required for the hi-energy physical interaction and slapstick humour of the staging.  The cast are all excellent: Sarah Coyne as a Scots Puck as well as a delightful Hermia, Lily Carter proving 6 ft 3 is no impediment to playing queen of the fairies, with Chris Laishley, Nathan Richard Smith and Richard Blackman also effectively multitasking.  Wonderful to see again this great drama about love winning through despite folly and confusion, in these destructive days when it can seem Puck's words will be humanity's epitaph: What fools these mortals be. 

Music next, with the return of fabulous Rosco Shakes to Bar Lotte, creating something of a street party with the spillage of their sensational boogie-woogie R&B sounds -  Josh, Dom, Ned, and Tim all on top form, with Dom adding a touch of flamenco to the blues from time to time. (Steve on sax joined later too.) The lads are playing Glastonbury, at the Croissant Neuf - where Cut Capers are headlining so definitely the venue to head for if you're going.

Now poetry: And, with due sympathy for anyone who suffered, those lockdowns did encourage - as well as less pollution, increased wildlife, and time for personal creativity - the connection facility of zoom for poetry workshops and performances.  This week, Bristol-based  Flight of the Dragonflies on Tuesday evening hosted an excellent poetry event featuring guest poet John McCullough 

John's collection Reckless Paper Birds won not only the Hawthornden prize for literature but also their award for best UK book of the year, so quite a large group joined host Darren J Beaney to enjoy this session.  The poems weren't Spoken Word as a slam poet would know it, so it was helpful to have the shared screen facility giving a view of the text during the poet's reading.  Among the excellent contributing poets I especially enjoyed Michael Sindler zooming in from the USA (screenshot), and Damien Donnelly in Ireland.

As this was the week that summer made a brief appearance, before quitting abruptly at the weekend, I'm treasuring the memory with a couple of snaps taken on those idyllic hot midweek days: the pantheon at Stourhead and some of the myriad pyramid orchids in the long grass...

 ... and Friday afternoon at Marston pond - no swans, but a large brood of baby ducklings, out with mama. Hopefully summer will return next week.

What fools these mortals be! existentialist angst and funky romps

TS Eliot regarded The Four Quartets, written over two years in four different locations, as his masterpiece: they secured his Nobel Prize, yet over half a century later their meaning seems as abstract and complex as ever. They don't have the vivid, witty, characterisation of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, or the epic storytelling of The Waste Land, and while his stage work like Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party (not to mention Cats!) is readily accessible, these four long reveries. Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages and Little Gidding are obscure, disturbing, questings about existence and time in a world where Humankind cannot bear very much reality. 

Ralph Fiennes, who delivered and directed this performance at Theatre Royal Bath, found nuances of mood in his mesmeric presentation, and the subfusc lighting by Tim Lutkin and monolithic imagery on set (design by Hildegard Bechtler) support this sense of elemental isolation. The recitation lasts over an hour but Ralph Fiennes has such a strong affinity with the poet's words he might have been simply speaking aloud his own musings.  It's an extraordinary performance, forensically demanding yet ultimately emotionally unyielding.  Ralf Fiennes image by Matt Humphrey, set as seen by my phone.

At the other end of the performance spectrum, a splendid romp from start to finish - which was 2⅓ hours later:  Sean Holmes has directed A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Globe as if everyone in the audience either knows the play backwards or simply doesn't care as long as it's funny. In these trying times, perhaps chiming with national bewilderment, it works absolutely brilliantly. 

Everyone in the cast seems to play every part at some time or another - fairies, lords, ladies, and mechanicals all so mixed up that you can only tell who's playing Puck now by the labeled teeshirt.  Bottom's scene with Titania is played like a couple of tipsy landladies at a fancy-dress party, one of the mechanicals is played by an audience member (who is enticed by the cast to interrupt proceedings for a selfie) and the lovers in the woods keep morphing into fairies. 

It's hard in this medley to pick out a man-of-the-match, but if there is, it's definitely Peter Bourke mesmeric as Oberon, the ultimate magician in the crazy mess-up summer dream. He brings overtones of Prospero to the drama, which is quite some feat when everyone's dashing about looking like a party popper. Director Sean Holmes has done something quite amazing here: it trampled over all my preconceptions, and deeply-held interpretations & I loved every minute of it. images my screenshots.

Another highlight of the week was a trip to Salisbury to discuss the front cover of my upcoming collection of short stories with the commissioned artist, Helen Look. This level of involvement in the finished product is a rare treat for an author, and also became a chance to look around this historic city which I've previously explored little further than the Playhouse. Even more impressive than the cathedral, set amid long green lawns with intermittent sculptures and bordered by enormously tall trees, is the nearby church of Thomas a Beckett. After his martyrdom in 1170, Thomas became a cult hero and the city's first church in 1220, predating the cathedral, was dedicated to him. It subsequently fell down, and the 15th Century replacement has splendid stained glass windows which are upstaged by the enormous and detailed painting of Judgement Day, showing the souls found unfit to enter the pearly gates being dispatched by devils to Hell. Several appear to be clergymen, with a bishop clearly evident at the bottom. 

Back in Frome, sunshine and the relaxation of national regulations have allowed live music to return, and open-air gigs are already anticipating next month's festival. The Tribe, an amorphous group fronted by Paul Kirtley with David Goodman, took their rock medley to the beautiful grounds of Rode Mill on Saturday, and played again in Frome's Victoria Park on Sunday, joined by the brilliant Original Barn Finds. Here's the venue at Rode, and the bands in the park - with fingers crossed for more days like these.

Dreaming of midsummer and after...

And now, for anyone missing the Midsummer Night's Dream theme thriving in early June, there's another version of the streamed-theatre's favourite play: this one from National Theatre at The Bridge, and the most exciting, innovative, and enjoyable of the three. Much of the delight in this interpretation came from the unusual way the two sets of rulers, mortal and fairy, are merged: this is the usual policy in casting, for dramatic reasons as well as convenience, since the conflicts of both royal couples echo each other, but the master-stroke in this production is the reversal of the storylines for Titania and Oberon: not only is it irresistibly funny to see the besotted fairy king sharing a bubblebath with Bottom the ass, but this 'taming' of a domineering lord by his angry lady also works better for relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta. There's witty, but not over-milked, impro among the 'mechanicals', there's trapeze swinging for the fairies, audience involvement, and the soundtrack - from Beyonce, Florence & the Machine and Dizzee Rascal to the London Symphony Orchestra - is great. Nick Hytner directing this 2019 production emphasises the 'dream' aspect of the story and makes sense of the extremes of emotion in the forest by a set with floating beds as the four lovers imagine their own passions becoming confused - it's odd, but it works.

When Luke Wright's solo poetry-play What I learned from Johnny Bevan was staged in 2016 it won awards for both writing and performance and was hailed by critics as a 'blistering story of our times.' Back then, Rosie Finnegan - the inspiration behind our co-directed pub theatre production company Nevertheless - joined me in  Soho Theatre to see this powerful personal parable of hope and political disillusion and we were both overawed by the combination of drama, poetry, and polemic. Applauded at the time for its questioning of the developing values of both the main UK parties, four years on Luke's online revival is even more pertinent, and his intimate, informal, performance on Wednesday lost none of the impact.  (And Luke still looks like he'd get questioned trying to buy alcohol... an enviable problem. )

Liv Tork's inspirational weekly posting of haiflu - haiku sent to her from round the country and beyond, to chronicle lockdown - is now compiled into a 40 minute film of still shots - all poignant, not all sombre, some breathtakingly moving. The photographs paired with them are superb and stunningly well chosen - this really is an amazing pulse-beat record of this summer.

And in other word-related news: The enterprising team at Frome Writers Collective have managed to fulfil one popular Frome Festival feature despite lockdown, by organising their annual Writers in Residence contest as an 'At Home Challenge', within the usual time constraint between receiving the title and handing in the finished piece. Prizes and zoom presentation will be on July 11th. And for those missing live readings: The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio, hosted by Dawn Gorman with Peter O'Grady, offers recorded shows featuring guest poets - Frome's Claire Crowther is one - available on 'Play Again' here. This month's show on Sunday had an excellent quartet of guests including eco-poet Helen Moore.  If you have poems of your own you'd like to share and are mourning the cancellation of the July Poetry Cafe (postponed, like the rest of the Frome Festival programme in entirety, until 2021) then do consider posting your piece on the Frome Poetry Cafe page - not as much fun as seeing the audience's faces, but you can add an image and your words will be preserved! (but don't do this if you plan to submit for publication,obvs.)   Prose workshops from Story Friday organiser and skilled practitioner Clare Reddaway are running online throughout July - contact her for dates - and, still loosely on a theme of story-telling, if you missed the social history show Three Acres and a Cow (as sadly I did, though I have seen this excellent show live) then do dip into their resources - a salutary story still hugely relevant today.

Little to say about music... you've probably all got your favourite sites and connections, and if not just put on the tele for Glastonbury (very tactful of the weather to provide rain this weekend to console us to this loss) where, from a 2017 set by Frome's most famous fans the Foo Fighters to a documentary  on the history of the John Peel stage, you can enjoy the whole experience barring the aromas and the merch. Enjoy the slowly ebbing summer, everyone!

Dreams dramatically dashed - words, spoken & writ - it's another lockdown medley

Small Island, the National Theatre production staged last year, is an especially timely offering for streamed viewing, not just as a shaming reminder of recent treatment of families of those 'Sons of the Empire' lured to post-war Britain, but also with the current spate of retrospective sensitivity about historical terminology: as the producers put it "Please note that, as part of depicting the experience of Jamaican immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, some characters in the play use racially offensive terms."  Andrea Levy based her 2004 novel on her own experience of growing up in London as the child of Jamaican immigrants: it won several major book prizes and was picked by The Guardian in 2009 as one of the defining books of the decade As in the book, the action of the play moves across two continents, and the minimal set changes plus effective lighting effectively convey Hortense's culture-shock as she relocates from a sunny small island where she could consider herself both British and middle-class to a chilly, damp, small-minded island bereft of respect for her qualities and seeing only her skin. Online till 25th June, well worth watching.

And there was another dream of midsummer magic at the Globe this week, with a 2013 production directed by Dominic Dromgool three years before the Emma Rice extravaganza reported in my last post: a more traditional version of Shakespeare's drama with the fairies a darkly ominous presence in a world where mortals, both noble and lower class do all be fools in their desires and their passions.
Renaissance costumes and more traditional staging both work well for this interpretation,  the adolescent immaturity of the lovers explaining their passionate tempers, and the merging  between the mortal and fairy overlords also fits this interpretation of the drama. Matthew Tennyson plays Puck as a wayward and dysfunctional teenager - he won an award as 'best newcomer' - and the mechanicals adlib, mess about, and shove the chaos of their 'Pyramus and Thisbe' play to the limits of absurdity.  The audience clearly loved it all. These streamed shows have definitely made me avid to book live tickets for Globe's pit as soon as it's permissible.

Poetry corner again features Liv Torc, this time as hostess of the Take Art supported Rainbow Fish Speakeasy sessions - the next one in September will presumably be back in Yeovil, so this has been another zoom benefit for me.
Crammed with great contributions, this featured a totally brilliant headline set from Bristol rapper Dizraeli who introduced us to city characters like John the Baptist and Ben who sleeps under the railway bridge. Other poems ranged from powerful reflections on current issues to Mary Dickens' list poem 'I am returning this item...' compiling suggestions she felt more useful than the usual options, and the event ended with an audience-inspired poem entitled The cake of human kindness - congratulations deserved by all.

And my personal congratulations to John Chandler of Hobnob Press for lightning-fast turnaround of my error-strewn pdf into a proper-looking proof copy of The Price of Bread - already in his listings and pictured here in my hands, in John's very smart cover design featuring art work by Frome's marvellous Mutartis Boswell. If you dipped into this blog at the end of May you will have seen the image already, rather more clearly, and if all goes well for me, it will probably feature here again...





In the meantime, back from 1970s Belfast to 2020's Somerset summer glory: walks through fields of ripening corn and along river banks where bees and butterflies this year are abundant - one of pleasanter outcomes of lockdown.

Stay well, y'all.

Mostly word stuff - magical & crazy, lyrical & absurd...

Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe from 2016 was directed by Emma Rice, ejected ultimately by the management for taking too many liberties with the bard's words and using too many light bulbs, but this joyful production has a fabulous atmosphere of enjoyment and excitement. Even the textural changes - the mechanicals are hospitality workers, Helena becomes Helenus - seem like shifts the playwright wouldn't have opposed. There's big emphasis on audience involvement: indeed the lovers emerge from the auditorium, and return there to watch the cameo comedy piece that concludes their happy-ending weddings. It's a high energy performance throughout, and - unusually- the fairies steal the show, in a bold move to extend their role massively with song and energetic dance in fantastic costumes, which brilliantly succeeds.

Another real treat on screen this week: The Madness of George III from Nottingham Playhouse, directed by Adam Penford with Mark Gatiss unforgettable as the crazy king during his most renowned episode of mania, made famous by Alan Bennett in this exploration of the political machinations of his supporters and opposers while doctors vie for kudos, his heir gloats, and Mrs King weeps. Nicholas Bishop's doggedly dour Pitt is outstanding but in my Unpopular Opinion, as Greg James would say, casting women as his Whig rival Fox and the posse of royal doctors creates a kind Carry-On squabbling comedic tone that weakens the sense of terrifying domination - you have until 28th June to watch and disagree... Interestingly, this 1991 play is credited with establishing the theory that the monarch's breakdown was caused by porphyria, by emphasising the blue urine of that condition as an early symptom of George's behaviour changes: in fact, this was only noted after he had been treated with medicines derived from gentian, also used as a blue dye, and he was more probably bi-polar.

This seems a good time to take another look at Liv Torc's eclectic chronicles of lockdown days in 'haiflu', collected weekly and distilled into short films, link here. These collections combine to create a poignant and compassionate story of these strange days: glimpses range from momentarily forgetting the use of an actual coin, to reflections on painful international preoccupations. This initiative has proved an inspiration, compiling social history that's 2-way accessible and egalitarian.  Liv's amazing contribution to wellbeing and creativity throughout this time has been recognised, too, as she has been selected as one of four Cape Farewell Siren Poets, with a two month commission to 'creatively communicate climate change and the solutions in the new Covid world'.

Still with words on Sunday evening with Head in the Clouds from Pound Arts- a one-time-only opportunity to see and hear some of the genius wordsmiths who would this summer have been headlining poetry gigs with their wit, wild imagination, and powerful performances: from weirdness like Byron Vincent striding the streets insisting Eamon Holmes is a breakdancer and the marvellous dry humour of Rob Auton ("I like faces. I like faces so much I've got one at the front of my head") and to Henry Normal extolling the joy of a cup of tea, with Luke Wright, Jonny Fluffypunk and of course Somerset and Frome's Liv Torc - these amazing short films are all now available here - enjoy, and support your favourites by buying from their websites.

Frome's Hunting Raven bookshop - announced as award-winner of South West Bookshop Of The Year 2020 just before lock-down - will reopen from this Monday, and dynamic manager Tina Gaisford-Waller explained the reassuring safety measures in place during the bi-monthly book group meeting which has continued on Zoom. Proof Pudding Club is primarily a review group for proof copies of new titles, but this Sunday night's session also included a chat from Elspeth Dougall - Head of Sales for Independent Booksellers at Penguin Random House. 'What sells a book, marketing or luck?' was a question Elspeth answered frankly and surprisingly with the latter option.

Concluding this week with an image from Tuckers Grave, one of the recreational outdoor spaces we may soon be allowed to visit, and a shout-out to YogaBen whose demo sessions have given me a semblance of sane routine into the timeless days of the last three months.

Nights in and days out...

Once again this week's round-up opens with a gang of blokes in Elizabethan-style dressing-up-clothes, shouting and romping dramatically in the open-air: The Lord Chamberlain's Men have now released for free online viewing their 2019 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, an incredible 425 years after this theatre troupe was first created.  It's really good.  There's huge potential for buffoonery in this play, and the three squabbling story strands - lovers, fairies, and buffoon 'mechanicals' - are separate enough for seven men to create each strand without confusion. They are excellent in all of them,  and bring big energy and laugh-aloud-in-the-livingroom humour to the mishaps in the forest as well as the legendary story of Pyramus and Thisbe.   My screenshots here show the spat in in the forest when the young lords - who've been relishing the cat-fight - leap in to drag Hermia off her rival,  and a moment from the mechanicals' tragic play-within-a-play. The soldier Pyramus, aka Bottom the Weaver, also played lovely Hermia in one of the best multi-tasking switches I've ever seen. Recommended viewing.

Thursday was a busy night, with a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth followed by Ibsen's A Dolls House adapted by Tanika Gupta, with additional dialogue, into an Anglo-Indian drama for Lyric Hammersmith. Perhaps this evening schedule was a little ambitious, especially after the hottest day of the year so far, and a smattering of fast-forward was involved but, in my defence, many in Shakespeare's day never saw his plays in their entirety, and apparently Chinese theatres used to double as tea-houses where people ordered refreshments and carried on chatting during the shows. A darkened room with serried rows of silent spectators is a comparatively recent development in the history of theatre, and perhaps on-line at-home viewing will find new audiences for live - ie filmed in one live take - performances as the rules of how to watch are inevitably relaxed - there's a great article here about how 'stupid' silent reverence is killing theatre for the future. Anyway, here's the wonderful Christopher Ecclestone hallucinating the friend he murdered while watched by his wife Niamh Cusack in a strong 2018 production directed by RSC which manages to make the witches really scary by presenting them as creepy children.
And here for contrast is Elliot Cowan with Anjana in Ibsen's exploration of gender politics transposed to 1879 Calcutta in a set that looks neither Russian nor Indian, just a place for dour argument and mind-games. Dark, but well-reviewed by critics as an expose of the consequences of English colonialism, racism and sexism

One final theatre recommendation, as you probably have your own choices by now: A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday as presented by the Young Vic for National Theatre, a superb production that also highlights the problem with my hope that home streaming may revive live drama - the difficulty of recording a night of intense interaction. Brilliantly acted with atmospheric set and dynamic direction, but the negative aspect of filmed productions was overwhelming: endlessly altering angles, close-ups and lens-elected choice of observation all worked against the theatrical experience, controlling the interaction that makes theatre live, fragmenting the experience and wasting a clever set by isolating areas of attention.  That’s just my take, many will disagree - you have till May 28 to decide.

In Poetry Corner: Liv Torc -whose amazing Haiflu Project is collecting responses to the coronavirus in haiku from around the world - this week created a Zoom version of her Rainbow Fish Speak-Easy, with some splendid contributions from the floor as well as guests including a set with piano accompaniment from Francesca Beard. And Steve Pottinger, who like Liv has been a popular guest at Frome's Poetry Cafe, had an online launch on his facebook page for his new poetry collection with the delightful title thirty-one small acts of love and resistance -'celebration and defiance in politically turbulent times' he claims, which sounds right for now, though are there ever others?
In other 'word' news: when not walking from my house in every direction on a daily basis while this glorious weather persists, my lockdown focus has been to complete a novel about Belfast at the start of the 1970s 'troubles', a time when I lived there. The characters are imagined, but the events aren't, as there's no shortage of historical accounts of this era of simmering conflict to supplement my memory. Anyway it should be out next month, published by Hobnob Press, with a powerful cover image created by Paul (Mutartis) Boswell. Sneak preview here...

Ending this week's rather late posting - I blame the distraction of tracking Dom Cummings as he darts like a Hermes parcel van around the country humming 'doo da dee, lockdown's not for me' to the tune of the conga song - with a couple of photos from my permitted-exercise explorations along the river Frome.