A good week for drama on screen & birdsong outside

Performance arts have been major victims of the ramifications of the past year, yet continue to respond with initiative and vigour. SHOOK by Samuel Bailey at Southwark Playhouse won the 2019 Papatango award for new writing and was set to transfer to the West End before the pandemic ended that option, but until the end of the month you can see this powerful piece of theatre online for a tenner here in a film of the show "dedicated to all the productions that never were."

Despite the grim institution setting, and the appallingly sad real-life glimpses, there's huge compassion and tenderness as well as humour and even hope in this story of three young men submitting to parenting skills education to while away their incarcerated days. Josh Finan as Cain and Ivan Oyik as Riyad are simply brilliant. Direction by George Turvey, with the effectively, depressingly, realistic set & costumes created by Jasmine Swan, SHOOK is definitely worth a tenner and 95 minutes of your life - highly recommended. 

Performance poet Rob Gee is one of the 'names' who has guested in Frome - he brought his first show Fruitcake to the Merlin for a Poetry Platter evening back in 2015. Undaunted by lockdown, Rob has devised another one-man show based on his combined of experiences of nursing and performing.  Death - A Romantic Comedy, staged at the Arthouse Southampton, was a zoom event, and though the story was on the Trainspotting spectrum in terms of anarchic behaviour, Rob's genial narration of a mortuary party prank that went pear-shaped and a lost-&-found second-hand pacemaker leading to terminal romance is a delight. Interspersed with these antics and in the same droll tone, Rob recalls the blasé stoicism of this older, war-surviving, generation: 'They'd faced death in their '40s and now they were just facing it again.'  Rob's narratives of deranged geriatrics is the sort of humour probably essential for a psychiatric nurse but it's not black, more a sort of Stygian sable, delighting in any eccentricity not actually fatal. And then those too. 

Still with performance, Artsreach, supported by Dorset Council, provides constant menu of options, the latest including Winter Warmers from the Inn Crowd - warm-hearted poems about pubs, online every Wednesday. This one's from East Anglia's Charley Geneve, it'll take you back to the better days. Here in Frome we're proud to claim haiku queen Liv Torc, still providing her fabulous HAIFLU film chronicles of the passing weeks - currently celebrating the one hundred thousand milestone, and featured in The Times as well as on BBC4 - I'm inappropriately pleased one of my photos made it into this.

Bob Marley's birthday was, or would have been, on Friday. Kevin Macdonald's iconic movie Marley, released in 2012, was premiered in Bath's Little Theatre - apparently a favourite venue of Haile Selassie during his years of refuge 1936-40 in the city. It's a fantastic authentic biography and social history of the era, still available to view.

And now for something completely different: Italian baroque arias accompanied by archlute, one of those esoteric events that turn up randomly in Facebook's eclectic mix. I had initial doubts about Musicke in the Ayre but a proxy visit to Iford Manor's beautiful grounds was an irresistible lure. In fact the whole event was delightful, a compilation drawn from several open-air concerts, subtitled with translation, superbly performed, and with wonderful shots of the Peto gardens.

Art spot now, which should have been in the poetry spot, but my visit to Poetry Ireland on Monday for a Celebration of Women Poets marking Brigid's Day & Black History Month was foiled by late arrival, but googling St Brigid led to a wonderful exhibition in Dublin's Hamilton Gallery two years ago.  The gallery is now hosting exhibitions online, currently with an amazing celebration of Bram Stoker - there's a great little video viewable here - so this year let's celebrate Imbolc with gothic horror for a change.

Tuesday was World Wetland Day, and Frome has plunged whole-heartily in the celebration of wet with waterlogged fields and swollen river. Until Roman intrusion in the 13th century, February was apparently called Solmonath - Mud-month - according to the etymological almanac of Susie Dent Word Perfect, but the plethora of rainfall hasn't deterred local enthusiasm for nature-watching. 

As well as several facebook groups keeping an eye on encroachment of protected reserves, others simply share enjoyment of natural beauty: trees, birds, and all life wild and precious in & around Frome.

Otters - here's one posted by Nathan Slee - deer, dormice, red kites & kingfishers were all spotted last week, offsetting dismay at the invasion of Easthill Field's precious biodiversity by a grave-digging team who mistook the ancient hill for a practice pitch... Mendip officials, ruffled by probing from -of all unlikely champions- a Daily Mail journalist, announced themselves 'satisfied' that the lugging of a mechanical digger into ancient land currently under disputed threat of development was merely 'a misunderstanding' - just one of current areas of concern for the town, with a disappointing outcome to the long debate over Saxonvale and the misnomer of 'Selwood Garden Community' looming - appreciation to the hardworking objectors... And If you can't get out as much or as far as you'd like, enjoy this evocative film created by poet Linda France in a project to record 'the natural world in a time of Climate Crisis and Coronavirus'.

Ending this post with a massively belated THANKYOU to all my readers who have been leaving  messages after my postings. This is apparently an option offered by the new blog format I moaned so much about, and I've only just noticed.  Do keep it up, 'Paul' and all of you: your comments are really appreciated, and in future you will get a response!

Wicked spells, beasts, ghosts, and all things festive!

Opening again with drama! Enterprising performances  despite these stop'n'start lockdowns and the catastrophic effect on theatres, starting with a live production at Frome's Merlin: Bea and the Winter Winds, whipped up by Black Hound Productions in a short space of time and despite cast changes, is a delightful folk-tale-inspired story of the triumph of good over evil as a brave girl sets off to break the spell of constant winter so the community feast can be held once more...

So, with their land withering in the thrall of Jack Frost (Pete White), young Bea (Anabella Fairgrieve) sets off to find the the imprisoned ‘good fairy’ (Amy Morgan-Bell). Of course she has helpers: a greedy squirrel and an narcoleptic mouse (Patrick Withey and Tiffany Rhodes) who intermittently steal the show with their entertaining comedy. And of course, they succeed in their quest. Patrick Withey and Ben Hardy-Phillips devised the storyline, Patrick writing the script and Ben creating the songs: the musicality is delightful throughout, as Bea has a fabulous singing voice and her guitarist brother is played by Ben, a popular local performer. Visually, it’s enchanting: the set design by Patrick is superb, featuring a semi-realistic tree and fantastic snow-swirls on the stage, which William Holmes’ lighting design plays on exquisitely, changing illumination on the branches and creating snow crystals on the imaginary drifts.  Evocative of memories for older viewers, exciting and comforting for younger viewers, entertaining for everyone, Bea and the Winter Winds is a huge success for the company and for the Merlin Theatre.  (As a footnote, Nevertheless Pub Theatre followers will remember Tiff as a Jane Austen heroine in Time Slides, our 2016 Frome Festival production... So good to see young performers continuing in the profession despite all problems.)

Beauty and the Beast from Living Spit onstage at Bristol Old Vic was about to open when Bristol moved into Tier 3 and tickets for the show were transferred from live to streamed audience. (For anyone confused by the image above, beauty is the one on the right.) Stu Mcloughlin and Howard Coggins seen live have a wonderful and chaotically distinctive duo-persona that doesn't totally transfer to screen. Perhaps we're used to comedians with the kind of subtle self-awareness of The Richardsons on our TVs, or perhaps a stage feels less magical when filmed close-up, but it's not until after a monologue introduction, a clunky role-changing first act, and a quiz, that this became really entertaining.  And when it's good, it's very good. 

Filmic tricks help - as in this screen shot - but more importantly the script begins to make life connections. 'I wanted someone else to know how I feel...' whines the beast in defence of his imprisonment of Belle. 'You have no idea how it feels to be this beautiful,' she counters, 'To know everyone wants me, whatever room I walk in...'  The absurdity in this case doesn't make this concept less thought-provoking, and when Stu sings his melancholy song about Stockholm Syndrome ('It's not going to happen to me...') another huge social issue is covertly identified. This unexpected depth in the story interpretation increases the interest immensely, and the bursts of filmic trickery do too... Make what you will of the ending - in which Beauty can accept her partner as only by pretending he's still a beast - there's some great comedy and provocative opinion in the mix somewhere, but served only in thin slices.

And now another churlish individual redeemed: Artsreach, the Dorset-based organisation bringing performance to rural areas in the southwest, is promoting a one-man version of of that classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol on Youtube, as narrated by David Mynne. David was a co-founder of Kneehigh, so it's not surprising this is a more-than competent adaptation, gripping from the start. With minimum props - a couple of scarves and atmospheric lighting - David evokes all the extreme drama of the action and morphs convincingly through a wide cast of characters. Purists might complain that the ending is slightly altered, but it's a tour de force of narration, and never fails to grip.

 Pound Arts Open 2020 has transferred the 12th Annual Visual Art Exhibition to Flickr, so if you can't get to this gallery in Wiltshire, you can see the 60 wonderful artworks here. This is Wilderness at Benham: apologies to artist John L Harris if my screenshot doesn't do justice to the colour tone or brushstrokes, but you can see it's very atmospheric. The exhibition can be viewed till 23 January.

And finally, music... Sadly the session planned for Saturday's Frome Market was cancelled, but musicians are resilient and many gems have been posted online - you probably have your own favourite groups to follow - Open Micsolate & Postmodern Jukebox are two of mine - but if you haven't already, do click and enjoy Patrick Dunn's Gaudete.  A Tier-2 Triumph.