Back in the real world, Frome-style

Let's start with an argument- with William Boyd's The Argument at Theatre Royal Bath,  as part of their lively Summer Season. This is a stylish comedy of manners - a Restoration Comedy for the 21st Century, perhaps, as it has all the elements: amorousness, deceit, conflict, and satiric parody of social mannerisms. There's a cast of six and action spans ten scenes and several weeks in four domestic locations, all cunningly contrived in seconds by shifting backdrops and key props. This impressive stage design was by Simon Higlett and insured an energetic pace, as did imaginative direction by Christopher Luscome, enhancing a script which has vigour but not much variety within a very narrow social strata - upper-middle to upper class, all casually announcing their pedigree in dialogue as in some early radio plays.
Meredith’s marriage to Pip is on the blink - no surprise there as she’s a shrew who'd need a Petruchio to tame her, rather than nondescript Pip - and the premise strenuously maintained is that when any two people come together, they argue.
While the oldies bicker about the breakup, Pip’s friend Tony (who Pip grabbed by the throat in an argument) even manages to argue with Meredith’s friend Jane (who was thrown out by Meredith after an argument) simply because he, Tony, didn’t like the way she, Jane, ended her sentences on an upward note so they sounded, like, questions?  You get the impression that such contemporary trends, including the ubiquitous use of mobile phones, irritate the writer enough to shoehorn them in for conspiratorial audience mirth.
The scenes with Felicity Kendal, in a role more like the The Good Life’s Margot than Barbara yet still irresistibly alluring, with Rupert Vansittart  were the most satisfying as individual cameos, as some of the other scenes seem merely pieces of the jigsaw. It takes 80 minutes to finish the picture, and from the final applause it appeared the Bath audience had enjoyed them all.

Music now, and within nine hours of touchdown after 17 hours travel and a 16 degree temperature drop, I was at Hauser & Wirth's Radić Pavilion where Canadian veteran folk singer Old Man Luedecke was joined by the Hoodoos, self-tagged 'swampy, bluesy, folksy' and featuring the fabulous vocal harmonies of sister Yvonne and Mary. This is definitely one of the 'now' bands locally - watch out for them on Visual Radio Arts next month!

Paul Kirtley's mission to raise £5000 for Bone Cancer Research continues, with another house party at the Artisan on Friday. The Bones 'house band' performed in split incarnation, as guitarists Paul and David Goodman had a change of bass and cajon player for their second set. Most of the songs were familiar favourites but Paul also included a moving song of his own composed for a lost friend: There's a blue boat out in the harbour.'

Guests once again were The Decades with a lively set including a superb version of Dido's Thank you and a sparky rendition of that Fun Boy Three's 1981 classic The Lunatics have Taken Over The Asylum - great variety and energy from this popular foursome.

Sunday night's jazz at the Cornerhouse with Graham Dent's trio featured this month the gorgeous voice of Emma Harris with a varied repertoire including the hauntingly beautiful Gregory Porter song There will be no love that's dying here for me.

And I'm including this image from a party on Sunday afternoon because it shows an instrument I'd never heard of - the ronroco, a Venezualian version of the ukelele, similar to the charango but more baritone. So there you are, the blog that informs as well as bragging about the awesome creativity of Frome.

The Listen project at Black Swan Arts has been offering a range of events throughout the month,  and the Listening Hub at the Round Tower has continued its esoteric 'Playlists' available daily on headphones - on Saturday I caught some of composer Helen Ottaway's choice, a Peter Greenaway film about John Cage, who she has worked with and much admires.  This is project of fascinating diversity but it's difficult to illustrate the concept of listening as art, so instead here's a more visible display, from the current Hauser & Wirth exhibition of Unconscious Landscape - works by female contemporary artists.  Spider, a bronze piece by Louise Bourgeoise made in 1966, dominates the gallery, and apparently represents protective motherhood. I liked it.

And despite the systemic trauma of returning from sizzling sunshine to rain and unseasonal chilliness, it's lovely to be home in Frome, where blackberries are already hanging along the path across the Dippy and the purple blaze of rose-bay-willow-herb is becoming a white forest of feathery fans as the petals fall. Autumn is arriving, surprisingly early, but then autumn always does...

Apocalyptic drama in Bristol, Festival fever in Frome

Big stage news of the week - Kneehigh's Dead Dog in a Suitcase is back at Bristol Old Vic - until 13 July, when the tour continues on to Galway International Arts Festival - and it's as fearsome and funny as it was five years ago and, grimly, even more recognisable as a darkly-mirrored but realistic world. I see was too overwhelmed back in 2014 to blog a coherent account, and feel much the same now: this production is a jaunty remake of The Beggar's Opera, a show-case of performance skills, and a fiercely furious satire, all mixed apocalyptically into a kind of real-life Punch & Judy show. The performers - there are fourteen, including musicians and puppeteers - are all incredible, especially Rina Fatania whose evil vivacity will haunt your dreams, while Dominic Marsh as murderous philanderer Macheath must be the sexiest hitman in the galaxy (after Stephen Mangan in Pinter's Birthday Party - unless you count a psychotic terrorist as a hitman, in which case Aiden Turner in The Lieutenant of Inishmore remains unsurpassable) - but back to Dead Dog... Writer Carl Grose and director Mike Shepherd worked with composer Charles Hazlewood whose 'mongrel score' ranges from evocations of 18th Century opera to ska, disco, grime and 'songs culled from the edge of existence'. And like John Gay's 1728 bawdy backstreet parody of grand lives which provided the characters and the plotline, there's a serious punch beneath the fantasy and frivolity - as significantly forewarned in the opening scene of the show: "Look closer, you might realise this world is no different from your own.” Except perhaps that this one has unforgettable special effects at the finale - no spoilers, but the standing ovation was well deserved.


And now to spectularly sunny Frome:
Matt Owens, founder member of Noah & the Whale, has since moved on to a successful solo career (and don't ask where he'll be in five years time) - entertained an enthralled crowd at the Wednesday Grain Bar Roots Session with Kerouacian tales and original songs.

After that, Frome moved up a gear to festival mode: there's an impressive exhibition of the work of JW Singer's foundry & its aesthetic impact around the world at Rook Lane Chapel, and - with 23 more visual arts venues poised to open - there were two excellent events on Friday: painter Mark Jessett at the HUBnub centre (he says he does try to use laid-back, calm, colours but it just doesn't happen, you can see the vibrance right across the gallery!) and Ann Harrison-Broninski sharing her sketches of the life of Frome in the gallery room at The George with sunset views across town, accompanied by folksy sounds from Crossing the Rockies. Both delightful events.
 








The focus shifts to literature on Saturday morning, as Frome Writers Collective took over the Silk Mill for their Small Publishers Fair, a superbly organised, very busy, event. Barry Cunningham, MD of Chicken House and patron of FWC  opened the day with a few perfectly pitched words about the need for imagination in order to create change, and the famous festival cantina opened at noon to provide refreshment outside. For me this was an anniversary: one year ago Frome Unzipped - from prehistory to post-punk was launched here, so it was really nice to meet up again with my publisher,  John Chandler of Hobnob Press.

Also on Saturday, the sofa on Catherine Hill returned to feature the striking sound of Otto Wilde, dubbed Cab Calloway channelling the future soul of Jack White, and Artisan pub garden enjoyed sunshine and swing with Alexandra's Washboard Band.

For the evenings, Cornerhouse was the go-to music place: an exuberant set from quirky Back of the Bus, and Pete Gage Band excelling even its own usual brilliance on Saturday night.

So as you can tell there was much to enjoy but I can't tell you anything about the official festival opening at the International Food Feast with its tantalising stalls, or the traditional flamboyant entry led by the Street Bandits, the excellent bands and entertainments... with an afternoon dress rehearsal for our Nevertheless Pub Theatre show Where the Fault Lies too, something had to go...  (There'll be a same-night second performance at the Cornerhouse now, too, at 9.30 as the 8.00 tickets sold out so quickly)   So I'll end on a comedy note, with Peter Fleming- have you seen? at the Granary with an ageing BBC children's presenter, nostalgic for the old days of glove puppets and making things with sticky-back plastic... endearing and very funny, this should go well in Edinburgh.

Final non-artsy footnote, purely because my recent gloomy forboding of curtailment in reports met with several concerned responses from kind blog-followers: normal service now expected to resume, as I've had an alternative diagnosis with much more positive prognosis.  Smiley face - and thanks all.

Unavoidably seasonal!

December ended with  mild weather, a lustrous solstice dawn and enormous silvery full moon, plus festivities nightly all around town. There was much festive spirit around in the week leading up to the big day, with great live music too. Artisan was the venue for another of the Bare to the Bones gigs organised and led by Paul Kirtley, with a dozen musicians entertaining with songs ranging from classic rock -with Annie Davenport's lyrical sax - to a delightful spot from a young performer apparently perched on a snowman.
By the weekend Frome was as lively as you'd expect, with music all over the place and Pip Utton's acclaimed reading of A Christmas Carol at the Merlin, but my report is a bit patchy: you know how when you're young and get over-excited and your mum says, stop dashing about - you'll Get Ill, and you don't, and you do... well, it appears it's the same when you're old too, so a few events didn't make the final cut. The Cornerhouse hosted a particularly lively session on Friday led by Geoff Younger and Colin Ashley, with great guests and much dancing, but I can tell you nothing about the following night's events (though luckily I was mobile enough to respond to Hunting Raven's urgent call for another delivery of Frome Unzipped to fulfil demand in their christmas rush.... twice!)

On Sunday the Three Swans hosted an amazing afternoon of festive singalong music - classics, folksongs and even carols - involving a gathering of murmuration proportions of amazing performers of all ages, definitely the best possible way to ease into the official crux of the season especially when topped off with the Pete Gage Band, in top form as always, at the Cornerhouse in the evening.
Cornerhouse kept the musical  flag flying high with the final Jazz Club of the year, which featured the Keith Harrison trio with guest Knud Stuwe, whose playing on the esoteric oud - an ancestor of the lute - added a wistful mood to the crowded pub.
Change of mood again at Cornerhouse with the New Year house party - host Martin Earley providing a smashing buffet and the lovely local musicians and singers creating the smashing party atmosphere.


I did manage several walks, coughing gently, so here's an image from midway through that bit between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve when the holiday shifts from public to personal: high above Eastville Park (which is really lovely btw and features a lake with swans and a heron) there's the remains of a WWII look-out station, inherited now by brambles and graffiti artists. We came across it at the same time as a group of local walkers and one was happy to tell the story. This was the site of legendary supergun 'Purdown Percy' - a massive ack-ack gun that shot down countless enemy aircraft. Legendary indeed - there was no such weapon here, only a battery of small guns  showering shrapnel all over the city. Perhaps height enhanced the sound, or maybe it was patriotic optimism, but actually between 1939-45, only two of the hundreds of German planes flying over Bristol were ever shot down.
And the traditional year's end to a writer's blog is always a poem. I was going to write you a satire on the Majestic message delivered this year beside a golden piano, which began by commending the might of the RAF and ended without apparent irony vaguely commending the notion of universal peace,  but I lost heart. Here instead is the passionate voice of Dylan Thomas reflecting on the passing of a lifetime as we all sail away from that other country called 'the past.'

Nothing I cared, in the lamb-white days, that time would take me

up to the swallow-thronged loft by the shadow of my hand

in the moon that is always rising,

nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

and wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh, as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, 

Time held me green and dying

though I sang in my chains like the sea. 

Makes me feel glad I missed out on a happy childhood.  Go well, may 2019 be tender with you.

Beltane bulletin: summer ahead & the Greater Good

To begin in the middle: This week was the 10th anniversary of possibly the most momentous moment in the impressive history of Wells: the special premiere of Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, with unmistakable town locations thinly disguised as the Sandford, the rural village that made murdering Midsomer look like sanitised Stepford.
So significant a date clearly required celebration, and what better way than hoisting a giant screen in the Bishop's Palace Garden and inviting a few hundred people to park their chairs on the billiard-table smooth & verdant lawn to enjoy a Hot Fuzz quiz, Hot Fuzz fancy-dress contest, and ~ of course ~ a late night screening of Hot Fuzz. The event sold out in days. It was all tremendous fun: the rain stayed off, organisation was amazingly smooth, speedy & good-humoured, and ticket price included barbecue, drink & goodie-bag. Now I want to go back for the Hot Fuzz walk...

Back in Frome, it's been another busy week.

Spoken word first: Frome Poetry Cafe enjoyed two terrific guests and an outstanding open mic session.  Matt Duggan read from his new chapbook Metropolis, evoking the moods of Bristol life through sounds and visual details: glass shards, city sirens, and no stars...  Lindsay Clarke, our other guest, reading from his recent collection A Dance with Hermes, imagining the trickster god still present in our world, timeless and deathless, reminding us the only remedy for life is love. Poems from the floor chimed with these powerful themes of time & place and life & death: there were moving memories and inspiring glimpses as well as delightful lighter moments. Huge thanks to all who came and all who read, including Rose Flint and Rosie Jackson who shared the her award-winning poem in the 2017 Hippocrates Competition.  (Thanks Matt for the picture)

Not one but two great bands at the Grain Bar this week: Wednesday's Roots Session featured fabulous blues trio The Spoonful, and on Sunday night we had a fantastic jazz special from John Law's Re-creations. This virtuoso quartet comprises John on (double) keyboard, James Agg on bass, Sam Crockatt on sax, and drummer Billy Weir, dynamically 'recreating' other composers' tunes like you've never heard them ~ just check out their Norwegian Wood...

Now here's the thing: we all know Frome is twinned virtually with the Eden and the national press bubbles with adulation for for its quaint cobbled streets, entrepreneurial market, entertainment options and general creativity, but the outcome of this,  combined with market profiteering, has pushed the cost of a house up by an average of £36,000 on last year's prices, scarily out of reach of most young local people wanting to buy or even rent.  Fair Housing for Frome, a community group run by volunteers with support from the Town Council, held a public meeting on Saturday afternoon to outline the problem. Solutions won't be easy, but there's clearly support for finding initiatives and answers.

Merlin Theatre 'Short Play Competition' performance of the winning submissions, fully-rehearsed script-in-hand, is coming up: the winning scripts have been picked from a strong long-list ~ in fact so strong, there was no short-list as such: these six very different scripts should create a fascinating evening of dramatic action.

Looking further ahead to July: an exciting but somewhat confusing headline appeared on Frome Festival website last week: FROME FESTIVAL RECEIVES EU AWARD. Nope, our town hasn't been exempted from Brexit doom, but our festival did pass the rigorous application procedure of the EFA, a prestigious organisation of arts festivals part-funded by the EU. The ECOS stone circle helped: built in 1992 to celebrate the European Union, this amphitheatre hosts summer productions, with two in the festival ~ check the brochure, out now, for these and other July delights.

So now it's May, and officially summer. Beltane is traditionally celebrated with bonfires but we celebrated it here with a dawn trip to Saxonvale, an unofficial park/wasteland hidden in the heart of the town, part public dump adorned by amazing creativity, part woodland waist-high with cow parsley and thick with the scent of wild garlic.


We sang a few songs, in old English and rather randomly in French, and listened to the birds, and then had an excellent picnic of home-made bread and marmalade, with coffee, all provided by members of the East Mendip Green Party. They public-spiritedly stayed on to do a big litter-picking blitz of some of the messy bits, and I went back home to bed.

Now that April's here... sunshine, singing, & some spoken stuff too

This illustrated edition of Frome life starts with some of the week's great music sessions ~ from Olli's Open Mic
at the Artisan on Monday to Sunday's afternoon jam at the Archangel and Jazz the Cornerhouse with Graham Dent's terrific trio with Simon Sax guesting ~ wish there was sound for their magic version of John Coltrane's Impressions.)

Music too at the first Sunday Market of the year on the first of April, a glorious day of sunshine as solid as the crowds at the wonderful Frome Independent. Here's Gina and her Company of Men rocking the busking stage, and the ever-rolling stream of market-goers crossing the river.

Big civic news of the week was the opening of the new Town Hall, an impressive Victorian building on the southern hill of the town ~ Frome has hills at every turn ~ now elegantly refurbished since Somerset CC moved out. You can read more in the Frome Times, or even in a book, but here's the splendid Italian Renaissance exterior, and a couple of our splendid civic dignitaries: Mayor Toby with Deputy Al and secretary Rebecca, greeting Froomies all keen to take the guided tours on throughout the afternoon.

There was a party in the evening too, which I missed as I'd already opted to go to Toppings in Bath to hear TS-Eliot-prize-winner Jacob Polley reading from Jackself.  Described as 'firecracker of a book' by the judges, the poet blends Jacks of rhymes and fables with memories of a Cumbrian childhood to create this loosely-autobiographical collection, 'playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling.. an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood.. one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.' Jacob sees his writing process as "doing a jigsaw but without the front of the box" & I relate to his 'kind-of-strategy' too: "I would never stop it going where it wanted to go, even if it didn't seem very poetic or seemed stupid." An interesting event, and also a chance to catchup with Diana Cambridge who runs writing groups from her bohemian home in Camden Road.

No report from the Grain Bar this week as Wednesday was booked for another away-from-base event: As the Crow Flies at The Salberg studio theatre in Salisbury Playhouse, written by Hattie Naylor. The last play I saw by this writer was Bluebeard, a powerful piece produced in Bristol four years ago which I reviewed as 'tautly shocking from the opening line, words chosen with precision and cuttingly delivered, poetic and visual ~ not so much filmic as a series of savagely erotic paintings.'  So I was interested to see what this drama about a woman and her pet crow would be like. I have to say the crow was brilliant ~ Tom Brownlee totally charismatic with or without his superb mask. It’s an ambitious aim, to extend a story that could be summed up in a sentence (lonely woman finds wounded crow, keeps it for a bit, becomes less lonely) to a two-act play with story-telling through exposition and songs, but there's some interesting science: I didn't know before that birds fly using quantum entanglement:throwing out two electrons in opposite directions to inform each other and relay information instantaneously back to the bird. There is no way of knowing which particle is ahead in time and which is past. They both exist in the same moment.

Footnote for this week: a look back at the Poetry Platter at the Merlin, courtesy of photographer David Goodman. Frome's next poetry night, on 24th, will be back at the Garden Cafe with readings from Lindsay Clarke and Matt Duggan. 

So here in running order:
me, XJX, Hannah Teasdale, Chris Redmond, Liv Torc, and Buddy Carson.
You're welcome!