Much Ado about lots

This week's bulging bulletin begins with a trip to London's South Bank for a National Theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing - the final splurge of a gift-token from son2 last year. Directed by Simon Godwin with a lavish two-storey set designed by Anna Fleischle & Evie Gurney's amazing rag-time era costumes, this seemed at first a bit too 'Post-Modern Jukebox meets Hi-Di-Hi' for dark themes of betrayal and redemption but, after a frivolous start, it steered its way into a lively, funny, clever production.  Much Ado is notoriously 'difficult' although a comedy: we have to relish a happy ending that involves a mistrustful bridegroom who publicly humiliates his bride, whose sassy friend promptly demands his death from her own fiancé… some productions simply give up on resolving these aspects, but this production really has a go and, for me, really succeeds. Much credit for this is down to Ursula Dowel, Beatrice’s delightful maid, and the director's decision to created a balcony scene which tricks her as well as the watching spies - there’s quite a bit of this kind of softening of some of the bard’s rough edges, which helps to maintain much of the glamour of the upbeat opening scenes throughout. 

The sequence when a team of inane watchmen ineptly uncover the treacherous plot to discredit Hero is direly unfunny in most productions, but in this one it's somehow hilarious - big credit to David Fynn's Dogberry and his Watch. Here they are (above), and here too are Benedict (John Hefferman) whose friends tricked him into wooing and Claudio (Eben Figueiredo) whose boss did his wooing for him, though both got their girls in the end. A great interpretation of a play that's mainly about gossip, well presented and performed.  (Press image credits Manuel-Harlan)

Still with the bard, this time al fresco with the wonderful Lord Chamberlain's Men at Dyrham Park. There’s something intrinsically funny about men dressed as women, and when a man dressed-as-a- woman dresses as a man, and is played by a man-dressed-as-a-woman-dressing-as-a-man, the comedy is inevitably compounded. It can get chaotic, of course, so this company deserves huge credit for their brilliant, clever, production of As You Like It, in which seven men played every role with clarity and enormous humour. Rosalind (Ben Lynn) and Celia (Jonny Warr) are both adorable, and the rest of the team are funny and feisty, as necessary.  Handsome Orlando (Andrew Buzzeo), smitten with love for Rosalind, is excellent; Jaques’s melancholy is less turgid than sometimes, and the romance between tiny clown Touchstone and beefy Audrey is funnier than sometimes, so win-win all round. 

The set was a bit odd, though: a turd-like monolith neither palace nor forest, but probably easy for touring. The company will doubtless be exhausted by autumn - their tour schedule involves 73 locations - but they will have made a lot of people very happy.  At Dyrham Park at least 200 of us gathered on the lawn with chairs, rugs, and picnics (in one instance with a folding table) and the multi-talented cast organised us seamlessly into best-viewing positions for all. It’s a great show - go if you can.

This double-drama concluded my week-long birthday bonanza which also involved classy dining & bibbing and wonderful walks with son1 and with friends, discovering places nearby but somehow previously unknown to me - here's  Horningsham Independent Chapel, the oldest Free Church in England, build-date of 1556 and still in regular use for worship. This is within the 9,800 acre Longleat estate, famous for costly attractions - stately home, safari park - but free for walking around the lovely wooded environs where workers' cottage gardens look like flower-packet pictures and new-laid eggs from free range hens are £1.50 a dozen.

Moving on to music now, with another session at The Guggleton in Stallbridge, the Arts Centre with a difference, a wonderfully supportive community venture to foster arts of all kinds, with the Open Mic nights regular well attended. The session on a sultry Thursday evening had some real highlights, one of which was talented duo The Davenports, aka Annie and Roger, with a moving version of that country classic Please Remember me, and a very lively finale from Alan, aka The Rhythm Junkie, with a Bob Marley mashup and mass Oasis singalong. Always a good night at The Gugg outdoor venue - with pizza and bar provided too.

A fizzing finale to this week and this month, at Bath's Komedia, Chortle award-winning 'Best Venue in the West & Wales' for comedy: here Rosie Holt, aka twitter's @RosieisaHolt, on Sunday night shared a preview of her Edinburgh Festival show. 'an hour of character comedy based on her hit satirical videos'. 

Rosie's horribly accurate parodies of political personalities both real & imagined are side-achingly funny, and the evil simpering of her inventions so appallingly realistic that confused commentators become apoplectic with virtuous rage. Rosie's show is already tipped by Time Out in their top 10 best comedy shows in the Festival - if you're up in Edinburgh in August, don't miss her!

Love loss chance sex and ambition

A new season from SATTF is always something to look forward to, and Tobacco Factory is the ideal venue for Shakespeare's mix of imaginary landscapes and magic realism in As You Like It.  It's a garrulous play, in fact an extended exercise in complex word-play for most of the speeches, and the wit needs careful signposting for a modern audience. Which is why it's even more remarkable that after three hours I really didn't want it to end. Director Andrew Hilton has assembled a stunning cast who all seem to live each moment for the first time, so even the longest exchanges feel immediate and engaging. Although this production makes the most of its women (Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Rosalind and Daisy May as Celia both mesmerising) inevitably the male energy predominates, but with an electric diversity through physical spectacle, music, visual gags, meta-theatricality (Touchstone and Jacques have more than a dab of Vladimir and Estragon about them) and dark psychological twists. Especially exciting are the moments when the forest glade of good Duke Senior, a kind of Occupy/voice-camp in Arden, abruptly morphs into evil Duke Frederick's court - brilliant mood-shifts by double-duke Chris Bianchi.  Harriet de Winton's vaguely 1940s costumes work superbly, and the minimal props are all that's needed.  It's on till 22 March and then touring till May, go see this magical tale the director defines as "about human experience - love, loss, chance, sex and ambition."

And that segueways into a quick film spot: Inside Llewyn Davis is a road-movie about a 1960s Greenwich Village folksinger and a ginger cat, so irresistible to me in at least 3 ways.  As it's written & directed by the Cohn brothers this is a mythic journey too ~ the cat is even called Ulysses ~ and shot in fabulous muted tones throughout. Oscar Isaac is in virtually every shot but as he's gorgeous that's no problem, and the soundtrack is movingly authentic, like the subfusc folksy venues. Even the long drive to Chicago doesn't flag thanks to John Goodman as an obnoxious fellow-passenger. There's no real surprises but beautifully-understated detail makes this melancholy story gripping from the start. It's a lesson too late for the learning, as Bob Dylan would sing.

Meanwhile in Frome, Pip Utton presents a double bill of warmongers at the Merlin: a revival of his renowned one-man show as Hitler, paired with Churchill.  Pip has an uncanny way of looking like all his one-man show subjects, and with bulky suit with white scarf, homburg, and stick, he shared a striking resemblance to the statue in Parliament Square which, in this conceit, steps down when the clock strikes thirteen to reminisce with whisky and cigars.  Much of this biographical material is entertaining ~ the caustic wit of Winston is renowned ~ and some, like his childhood abandonment, is moving. Of the war, he insists "There is no glory in death in battle" but there is glory in victory, and his unswerving policy 'to wage war' remains unregretted. The prime minister who was tagged after his death 'the most famous man in history' ends his tale and climbs on to his plinth again.

At Black Swan Arts, Print & Clay is the new exhibition from a group of ceramicists with a quirky indifference to the common perception  of clay objects as primarily functional ~ I especially liked 's huge manic moths making the wall a vast insect box. Due to gales floods and general elemental mayhem the opening night was unusually sparse but you've got till 8th March to see this delightful show. 

Pastoral thoughts

 It's exactly a hundred years since the poet Edward Thomas embarked on a cycle ride from south London to the Quantock hills, stopping near Frome to visit friends with whom he used to go wild swimming in the river at Tellisford Weir, and travel writer & poet John Payne suggested a centenary anniversary visit to the spot.
The last time I swam here, seventeen years ago in similar glorious heat, became the central experience of my first novel Frozen Summer so this felt like something of an anniversary for me too.  John, who's written about Edward Thomas's journey in his cultural history of the West Country, poet Helen Moore, and I were joined by Claire Crowther and her writer husband Keith Barnham and three other enthusiasts for a loose recreation of that Seine at Asnières scenario on the grassy river bank as we picknicked and read poems after swimming under the willows by the weir. An amazing afternoon.

Illyria Open Air Theatre Company brought As You Like It to the Merlin amphitheatre that night. Illyria is now a company so confident of its prestige they offered no programmes to enable those less familiar with Shakespeare's later plays to have any idea where, or why, we were supposed to be, and much as I dislike harping on a detail extraneous to performance, with five players dashing through 16 characters not to mention three sheep, it really would have helped. The cast are undoubtedly skilled at leaping from robe to robe in seconds and some ~ the wrestler/King/Jaques ~ managed to change character too. There were undoubtedly sequences the audience adored, but most of those ~ viz the sheep-shearing & de-bollocking and the rock&roll finale ~ were not in Shakespeare's script and the show would have been perhaps better (and certainly less arduously long) with judicious pruning to this complex pastoral piece. Attention to historic enunciation is fine, up to a point, but when actors shriek rapid-fire into an uncomprehending but benign audience, it begins to feel unfair.