A dramatic week for personal passions

Sorry, You're Not a Winner, the new play by Samuel Bailey produced by Paines Plough & Theatre Royal Plymouth and currently ending its tour, arrived at Bristol Old Vic for only three nights so unless you live in Newcastle you won't be able to see it now, which is sad because it's absolutely brilliant. The title is an ironic comment on a social setting the writer knows well - but Liam has stepped up, he's got a place at Oxford, moving away from the drab neighbourhood that limits his options, and leaving his best friend Fletch who's too ready-to-be-rough to ever succeed. This 90 minute play is about friendship, lost yet enduring, and how hard it can be when you come from a place where success feels a bit like shame. It's also immensely rich in humour and insights that go beyond social cliches, tightly written, and superbly acted. 

Eddie-Joe Robinson is compelling as the clever lad who doesn't feel comfortable with the Oxford crowd but can't reclaim his home territory; Kyle Rowe is utterly believable as his irrepressibly reprobate home-town 'bestie'.  The storyline focus is so strong that this feels mostly like a two-hander although the lads' women are also very well-played, especially Shannon (Alice Stokoe) with Katja Quist as posh Georgia. Also integral to the production's success is Jesse Jones' tight direction and Lucy Sierra's superbly simple set: an immovable environment where doors both invite and abruptly bar entry. As a social comment on Unequal Britain, this is unarguably convincing; as a drama it's mesmeric.  Images: Steve Tanner.

As a footnote, Sam Bailey won the Papatango Prize with his first play Shook which was released as an online production after plague stopped play on the stage of Southwark Playhouse: you can read my review in this blog Feb 7th last year. 

Back in Frome, the Merlin stage was filled with elaborate costumes from the decadent end-game days of the French 'Ancient Regime' as revived in Frome Drama Club's production of Les Liaison Dangereuses. This version of the epistolary novel by Pierre Choderios de Lacios is from Christopher Hampton: it's all about decadence and deceit, and this production involved fantastic costume and a lot of scene changes - in fact the set-movers were on stage more frequently than several of the characters. It's also a tour-de-force for Laurence Parnell, onstage most of the time as the tirelessly immoral Vicomte de Valmont. Director John Palmer confesses in the programme notes to a longstanding desire to produce this saga of decadence and abuse on a delirious scale in pre-Revolution France.

As a footnote, blatant sexual importuning unexpectedly became topical at the weekend when news broke - on every national media outlet - that Frome's MP is suspended for sexual shenanigans & drug use. And we thought all he did in parliament was abstain!

A very different performance event came to Frome with the first session of Dirty Laundry, an evening of story-telling and poetry at The Three Swans on Wednesday. The brain-child of Olly Davy, a superb raconteur himself, this was a really brilliant event with a wide range of themes and styles offered by the ten performers to an enthusiastic audience - I'm chuffed to have been one of them, and look forward to the next session on May 19th. Here's guest headliner Chris Redmond, currently working with the 'Hot Poets' at "the hopeful end of climate change" with a brief to change the narrative to 'imagine a future we love rather than one we fear.' 

 

The Three Swans upstairs room was also the choice of Vicki Burke, multi-talented musician who plays sax in funky-folk band Flash Harry as well as performing on harp and singing her own compositions: she used all her self-expression talents on Monday at in the launch of her new CD, Beauty in the Beast, a Musical Journey into the Labyrinth. These compositions complement the spiritual journey described in her book, from which Vicki read extracts, supported by violinist Gina Griffin. A well-planned and fascinating event.

Pete Gage, widely admired as a talented musician, became well known as a poet after publishing 44 Poems with Hobnob Press last year, and has followed this with his second collection Gerontius: deeply-felt personal reflections illustrated with atmospheric colour photographs also by Pete. His launch for this collection was at Hunting Raven Books on Thursday, and Pete talked about his influences and his central theme of light and darkness, to an attentive & appreciative audience. He also brought his piano and played some favourite songs that chimed movingly with the themes of his poems: Evening, Motherless Child, and Nobody's Fault But Mine - these links are to live performances by Pete with his band at The Cornerhouse in Frome and The Bell in Bath, but Pete is just as impressive on his own, in a bookshop... We're privileged, in Frome.

Art top spot this week goes to Si Griffiths' exhibition at Spacecraft in Westbury, a wonderful shop selling arty things of all kinds, including guitars handmade by Lucas Vermeeren.  Si's work is in a separate gallery and looks terrific: there are several paintings featuring his iconic clown character, some sinister but most poignant, but a street-art influence is emerging in Si's newer work which is really impressive. This image (right) is one of his largest, and visitors all found it fascinating.

(You can see the painting I bought last year in his 'Sold' gallery - line 8 down, 2nd along, which he has titled Grief but I saw as My Parents' Marriage. So, same thing really.)

And a shout-out to Tony, the kindly bus-driver who generously drove me all the way back to Frome when I'd misread the timetable and there were actually no more buses running beyond Dilton Marsh.... 

Still with paintings: Artists for Ukraine, the new exhibition at Black Swan Round Tower, is showing works donated by over 30 local artists for auction, with all proceeds going to the Town Council's fundraising for Frome’s twin town Rabka-Zdrój in Poland, which is arranging to take in over 500 Ukrainian refugees.  This painting is Freedom and Truth, by Sabrina Rowan Hamilton: There's a wide range of styles and themes, some from very well known names, and the exhibition is showing until 24 April so plenty of time to view and bid - you can see all the art works and bid online here.

And finally: Sunday could not have been more busy, with a Frome Independent - market, that is - in the morning, including the usual busking stage where Back of the Bus drew a large crowd of supporters (and several toddler-dancers) then the brilliant Rosco Shakes at Bar Lotte all afternoon, with a Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse in the evening... So I'll end with an image of each, and hope you can work out which is which... Good luck everyone with next week's promised snow!

 

Spectrums and celebrations as we move into winter

A spectrum in terms of colour perception, 'blue-orange’ is also a psychological term for a kind of amorality most often found in alien fictions. Such characters are not exactly immoral, but their actions are random and not codified in socially normal ways.  A new production of Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall at Bath's Ustinov Studio revisits the dilemma facing two psychiatrists as they argue over a patient who may be one of these: Chris (Michael Balogun) claims to be a son of Idi Amin, and his main carer Bruce (Ralph Davis) thinks he should remain in psychiatric care, but Bruce's superior, Robert (Giles Terera) insists his detention was based on ethnic prejudice - the topic of his upcoming book, for which he needs another case study. Who is right?  The drama swings painfully between the arguments, and so does Chris. The only thing he seems sure of is that the inside of an orange is blue. Is he mad, or is the playwright evoking the surrealist perception of Paul Eluard that the world est bleue comme un orange?  

A stark, dark, set defined by strip lighting (designer Simon Kenny) holds the three volatile conflicting personalities, each fighting for acceptance of their own reality.  Previous productions have cast both carers as white so it's interesting that director James Dacre has gone another way, perhaps to encourage his audience to disconnect from any preconceptions - in which case, would it have been even more interesting to challenge perceptions even further by swapping roles after the interval? With or without such permutations, this 21-year-old 'best play' winner continues to raise questions about the use of incarceration in society, and whether labels are helpful, and who has the right to decide... much to ponder while waiting at Vino Vino for the last bus home. images: Marc Brenner 

Art now, and lots of it, starting with In Movement from Marian Bruce at the Gallery at the Station, where Thursday's opening was filled with fascinated viewers. Marian has long been widely respected for her representations of the plight of the oppressed and the dispossessed, but these vibrant images show a different aspect of her empathy: the passion and vigour of  Cuban dance, which she experienced while in Havana as the designer for Rooster, Chris Bruce's acclaimed production with Acosta Danza in 2018. The energy in these tiny figures and drawings is incredible - a highly recommended exhibition open Wednesday till Sunday until 27 November, late nights Friday and Saturday. 

The Whittox Gallery is hosting Somerset Printmakers in an exhibition which opened on Friday and has already proved popular: this group formed in 1998 to promote their passion and professionalism and showcase 'the best of printmaking' in the county. Using a range of techniques, eleven of the artists in this group are showing one-off unframed prints and cards for sale. Here's Gail Mason with one of her imagined landscapes, and the splendid gallery - a superb arena for art.

 

- and also in the in the list of don't-miss shows in Frome, the pandemic work of Frome Wessex photographers, Closing Down and Opening Up, first exhibited in Corsley (& reviewed by this blog in the October 24 posting) has now arrived at the Round Tower Gallery at Black Swan Arts. Intimate and moving, these images are really worth seeing.

Final exhibition piece for this posting is the Sinking House above the weir in Bath - a tourist attraction as well as a message to the leaders at COP26 and a warning to communities throughout the world.   

Words now, as another Frome author from the Hobnob Press stable prepares to launch their debut novel: John Killah, well known in Frome as an erstwhile 'legal bulldog', is now writing fiction and his first book is a biting tale about shenanigans in a lawyers office leading to a crazy chase to catch the culprits...  STRUCK OFF is a comic novel with many elements Frome inhabitants may feel they recognise in the setting, and a plot that is outrageous, clever, and totally gripping.                        

Here's me and John discussing his plans for an exciting launch on publication day - 9th November - now sadly struck off, so to speak, by the possibility of Covid closures, but you can read more about the story here.  Look out for the classy cover - you may see it in the posh paper reviews soon, too!

A musical fanfare to finish the week, as one of Frome's most popular bands took over the Cheese & Grain bar/cafe area on Saturday night. Back of the Bus is brilliant at creating a party atmosphere, and although the line-up was one short (condolences, Mary) their performance was hi-energy from start to finish, with costume melodrama for White Wedding and closing their set with the magnificent menace of Hazel O'Connor's Eighth Day...

And our first-Sunday-of-the-month Independent Market busking stage presented its usual range of talented performers: I'll leave you with Francis Hayden, plus Danny Shorten on bass, singing his brilliant though gruesome tale of The Carpenter Ant, with its ominous final line: "the one who runs the show may be the parasite..."  Horribly apt, as our chaotic year totters towards an infectious end.(You can find the full cordyceps history, and Frances' lyrics here.)

And it's festival lift-off! Music, art & drama everywhere!

Frome Festival has begun its ten-day tour of the heart&minds of Frome, spreading dramatically and musically from the Merlin theatre to Marston Park where the lakeside band-stage is proving sensationally popular.  Talented singer/songwriter Leander Morales opened their festival bookings with a great set presented on Folk'n Funk Friday, and Saturday gave us a superb double bill: Al O'Kane with Andy Hill (above - you can hear them on 'Soundcheck' here) followed by Back of the Bus: covers that sizzle, from (to quote)"a 7-piece punk pop band, fronted by four female vocalists and backed up with a throbbing badass rhythm section, covering punk and pop classics with their own memorable twist." And their copy doesn't lie: a dynamic set that gave gothic drama to White Wedding as the sky darkened over the moonlit water. 

We Feed the World is an amazing photographic exhibition at The Station, the new complex opposite Frome's train station, with an overflow at the beautiful gallery in Whittox Lane. Both these venues are filled with photographs of small-scale farmers and fishers around the world, whose practices contribute to protecting, restoring, and rewilding as well as reviving and promoting traditional practices. Beside the striking photographs, explanatory wall posters clarify the grim facts about the way industrial practices degrade the soil and create wastelands for future generations. You can read more in the Frome Times - and definitely visit the venues. Here's Zuzana Pastorkova in Slovakia, posing for photographer Tina Hillier, who cultivates herbs, fruit trees, and 40 different kinds of vegetables on a small-holding that was her grandmother's, and claims her success is 'about being in tune with nature'. 

The Frome Festival Art Trail will feature in next week's bulletin, but here's an exhibition which is touring Somerset : Inch by IN:CH aims to bring art out of galleries and into public spaces. Frome Museum basement doesn't really fall into that category but it's interesting to get to see that area, especially filled with suitcases of curious work. I especially liked Fiona Campbell's decrepitised umbrellas as 'hope of a tree' and the glimmering lights in Philippa Edwards case, representing the bioluminescence of nature.

The big exhibition at Rook Lane is a tour through the 20 years of the life of Frome Festival. Succinctly and elegantly curated by Sue Bucklow, who must have had a dumper-truckful of events and memories to wade through, this shows the story-arc of the festival that came to grow from a dream in the mind of Martin Bax to one of the most highly rated festivals in the country, known for its enterprising diversity and egalitarian events. I was on the smug side of pleased to find that several events which were important to me personally have found their way onto the display screens. Especially pleasing is this reminder of the 2015 contribution from Nevertheless Productions: Midsummer Dusk was a site-specific theatre piece performed at the Dissenters Cemetery and probably my favourite production ever. (If this chimes fondly for you, too, you can check it out in this blog: type the title in the little box offered top left and you will be transported to13 July 2015 and offered images & a full review.)  

God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's 2008 popular play about squabbling parents, translated from the french by Christopher Hampton, was the festival choice of Frome Drama, who managed to stay within regulations at the Assembly Rooms by limiting audience seating. The storyline - two parental couples meeting to agree how to ameliorate their offspring's quarrel and instead become fractious themselves - should be easy to make hilarious but actually the steep escalation of cultural & financial oneupmanship makes it hard to avoid over-egging, but the team did well, achieving a lot of laughs throughout. I particularly liked the brief boxing-ring fantasy that preceded the demure actual meeting of the two couples. 

And in other dramatic altercations: Flash-mob opera invaded the precinct on market day to the delight of a gathering crowd who heard a medley of arias wrought into amorous and acrimonious encounters by four incredibly talented performers. My comprehension of the lyrics was limited to andiamo so there's little else I can tell you, but it was magnificent - big thanks to the Cooper Hall foundation.

Finally, in this back-to-front, slightly late, report: last week also saw the launch of a new book from  Corinna Sargood, artist extraordinaire and Angela Carter's favourite illustrator: The Village in the Valley arrived at an elegant soiree in the garden of Rook Lane chapel on Wednesday. Corinna and her partner Richard have visited this Mexican village every year, since they discovered it over 20 years ago; her lino-cuts inspired by that first visit illustrate the second Virago Book of Fairy Tales, and now the village has its own story, along with other travels. It's published by Prospect Books, an elite London establishment which clearly has no notion of Frome culture as her publisher Catheryn brought only 2 boxes of books for this launch and was surprised that all copies were bought before many of the guests had even arrived. But the night was balmy and the bar was open, so we partied on. 

Nearing the end of Twin-Terrors' year

The annual preoccupation with creating a sparkling feel-good factor in the darkest days has had more than usual to contend with this year - in fact, more the average horror movie. My autumn walking routes having turned to sludge, the alternative of wet streets became a chance to enjoy all the illuminated displays: an expression of community hope and a visual delight - if you ignore the planetary damage, of course, but that's true of simply existing these days.  

Also in the real world, the big news for the week before Christmas was the sensational return of live music in Frome: Back of the Bus filling 23 Bath Street to legally-permitted capacity for an afternoon session last Sunday, with all the glitz, pizazz, and passionate punky hi-energy performance that we expect from this wonderful septet.  From their funky upbeat opening with You Gotta Have Faith to their awesome version of Hazel O'Connor's anthem Eighth Day - never more spine-chilling than this year - this performance was memorable. Huge appreciation to Lark Porter and all the team at 23 for making this happen.

No carol concerts or street singers this year, sadly, but with amazing ingenuity here's a seasonal song from Frome coordinated by Patrick Dunn: 'Carol for the Cabinet from a 'Bleak Choir' of musicians and singers. And do click on this offering from Nick Van Tinteren's Tiny Desk Concerts.

Indoors there was the winter balm of telly, and this season's big feel-good epic Strictly Come Dancing, pulling out all the stops with generous marking and a small but noisy studio audience. This series has had a massive following and deservedly-approving critiques from commentators across the spectrum ... and no-one could have looked as shocked as Bill Bailey and his partner Oti Mabuse when he was revealed as the series winner - great series, great result.  

Also on the box, a double treat from Sky Arts (triple, if you count Stephen Mangan presenting) as Portrait Artist of the Year final night not only gave us Eddie Izzard looking splendid in a frock, but also followed the progress of the contest's overall winner,  Curtis Holder, as he created his commissioned portrait of Carlos Acosta, director of Birmingham Royal Ballet. This is now hanging in the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, but just as exquisite is this portrait of the artist's partner, which confirmed the judges' final choice.  

A homebound Christmas left most of us tuning to the tele, rummaging among the repeats & reruns for personal gems: among mine were Grease, now 42 years old but still appealing despite its 'teenage' cast all clearly in their 20s & 30s, and a feisty version of Pride & Prejudice with some emotional scenes shot in Stourhead.

Ending this final post from a year of twin terrors with a poem, which was going to be TS Eliot's soliloquy from one of the Magi, but though beautiful it is very melancholy, so instead here's Kahlil Gibran reflecting on love in The Prophet: 

    Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

     But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

     To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

     To know the pain of too much tenderness.

     To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

     And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

     To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

     To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;

     To return home at eventide with gratitude;

     And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Time-slips in Bath and a blast of music in Frome

Bath city, noted for elegance and style, has an alternative history that began in mud with Bladud and his pigs in 863BC and continued in muck and dubious morality, and Natural Theatre Company has been exposing scurrilous tales from the long and frequently outrageous history of that not-always-fine city in their sell-out show at the Rondo. Dirty Bath is hilarious. Three delightful women performers with a vast array of costumes and wigs take audience participation to its limits, scouring the steeply raked auditorium to identify lovers, gang members, murderers and more, responding to the resultant unscripted contributions with inventive vigour,  coaxing startled audience members on stage to enact exchanges of unlikely historical exactitude and in one instance to model male genitalia in plasticine..
it's all bonkers, and very funny. We met lovely Eliza Linley, painted by Gainsborough, eloping with Sheridan, inspiring duals among her lovers. We met Chaucer's raunchy Wyfe of Bath,  Hugonot refugee Sally Lunn, the murdered Nymph of Avon Street (enacted by puppets), a bedhopping fake castrato, the absurd duelling suitors of courtesan Fanny Murray, and many more outrageous characters before notorious gangleader Carroty Kate hands out peaky blinders caps and newspaper boulders for a mass street fight finale to the show. Massive appreciation to Alison Campbell, Amy Vickers, and Florence Espeut-Nickless for their titillating tales, to Andy Burdon who directed, and to whoever created the gloriously glamorous costumes.

Roots Sessions at the Grain Bar this week featured a Frome-grown band: Back of the Bus, four feisty women singer-players with backing from three strong musicians, featuring mainly '80s covers - the great ones, like Hazel O'Connor's apocalyptic 'Eighth Day'.

And another fantastic night of music from The Raggedy Men, also a local band with massive talent and a big following, who rocked the Cornerhouse on Saturday with their iconic re-styled punk - with all the best angry classics, from Brixton's guns to burning Babylon and beyond - with awesome riffs and fantastic drumming.

This week's review-round-up of local events is thinner than usual, what with one thing & another - well, mainly one thing - so to bump up the medley here's a reading recommendation: This emerged originally through the Proof Pudding Club started by Tina Gaisford-Waller, enterprising manager of Frome's Hunting Raven book shop. The Future We Choose - Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac may sound like it will be another gut-wrenching summary of the appalling state of the planet and initially it is, but it goes on to make a convincing case for hope. We actually have, in prototype or possibility, all the means to improve the global situation and survive - in fact to improve our species into a more caring one, with a sense of stewardship of the earth. It's really well explained and well argued, and brings a blast of hope to our blighted world.  Next week's top tip: The Plague, by Camus...

Ladies dancing and a happy new year

The eighth day in the carol is ladies dancing though I never remember where you start counting from, but the highlight of an absolutely brilliant gig at the Old Bath Arms from Back of the Bus was The Eighth Day The link here is to Hazel O'Connor's version, but it gives some idea of the impact from this amazing hi-impact septet. All of us in Frome are so lucky to move into the difficult year ahead in an egalitarian town that bubbles with live music!

And now after a week of those traditional seasonal celebrations of eating, drinking, walking, dancing, quizzing, and sneezing, it's time to start on another year, still box-fresh and unsullied - let's see if we can keep it that way. To finish the old one and start the new, here's a story and a poem.

Growing up post-war, Little Women was staple re-reading for me, along with my absolute favourites The Secret Garden (unloved little girl turns out to be adorable) and A Little Princess (unloved little girl turns out to be adorable).  Of the four sisters in Louisa M Alcott's tale, tomboyish Jo seems most favoured, with practical Meg in second place while Beth is clearly far too angelic to survive and Amy is selfish and vain - but as the reader is invited to disapprove of her, she's the closest to an unloved little girl so I preferred her to Jo who was too much like Worrals (the female version of Biggles). Jo in the movie doesn't come across like that although she does literally rewrite the book, and it's all visually entertaining with some excellent acting (especially Meryl Streep) and a charming Laurie, although the girls all seem a bit hefty for their ages & era and the time-jumps are a bit confusing. It's been criticised for focusing on the lives of white characters but that's what most girls' books in the 19th century were like, and at least we had the eye-candy of all those pastel puffed-up skirts at the parties like massed macaroons. Nostalgia encouraged me to revisit my mother's copy of the story dated 1917 and published by the Religious Tract Society of London who appear to have economised on their cloth covers as the binding is in shreds: the colour plates by Harold Copping are still glowing though so here's Amy from this book, being vain, and Timothée Chalamet as Laurie in the movie, being the fairest of them all.

So here's hoping your 2020 will impossibly good, and some helpful words from Brendan Kennelly.

Begin:
Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

Wicked queens, naughty nuns, and more lights & music

I don’t go so often to Tobacco Factory Theatre since the whole area became a permit-parking-only zone, and the promotion image for this version of Snow White didn’t entice me, but luckily a friend tipped me off I was missing a treat so on a dark and icy afternoon I plodded the 40 minute trek from Temple Meads Station and was opulently rewarded. This is a fabulous production - not, though there is fair bit of audience interaction, a pantomime but a great classic story, spiced gently and entertainingly with environmental and social values. New International Encounter, here in collaboration with Cambridge Junction as well as Tobacco Factory Theatres, has a reputation for superb, accessible, story-telling - inventive, succinct, and with lively musicality. The four musicians are on stage throughout: they carry the narrative thread, create the spirit of the magic mirror, and enact the seven dwarves with (mis)calculating insistence about their number. This happy band of social misfits have all left stressful jobs to live an alternative life-style, growing seven kinds of onions and serving vegan stew in a non-gender way. They do their incompetent best to take care of Snow White, but the wiles of the wicked Queen initially wobbles the community into frightened calls for "locks, keys, fence, wall - 42 feet high, with barbed wire! and a buzzer… We’ve got to take back control!" Luckily they quickly decide,  No - this is not us. Love is what matters - an open heart.  But clear personal boundaries! 
All this is fun but doesn't distract from the Grimm focus in the tale on the wicked queen and her terrible plans.  Stefanie Mueller in this role is absolutely fantastic, swinging from near-recognisable family stuff at the start - the exasperation over teenage defiant fibs - to demonic obsession with her appearance and evil plots to kill her step-daughter (I got the blame for that, actually - one of the dubious delights of a front seat in an interactive show!) But even she is allowed a small, thought-provoking, voice when she laments, I was told I had to be 'the fairest,' nobody told me that just 'fair' would be enough. Multi-talented Ms Mueller also designed the set and costumes. This is genuinely an all-age show and it's on till 19th January - a great antidote for dark days ahead. Images Mark Dawson.

Meanwhile 700 years ago in the real world no-one was having a good time in a society dominated by the draconian rules of sex-starved, sex-obsessed church officials. Based (surprisingly closely, though the dummy left for burial probably wasn't a mop&bucket) on the true story of a nun on the run, Breach theatre created Joan of Leeds - a lusty end-of-year romp with mirth, bawdiness and song, in keeping with the Yorkshire Medieval Players they claim to be, which sounded like a fun idea and worth a trip to New Diorama Theatre although central London isn't my patch for reviews. Medieval texts abound with explicit imagery of nuns involved in all kinds of activities not associated these days with holy orders - the penis-gatherer here is at least demurely clad - and Breach seized the opportunity provided by erotic visions for much scurrilous activity and scandalous costume. There was a short unconvincing attempt to evoke a parallel with the social struggle of lesbians in the last century, but the best bits by far were the lusty erotica and hysterical absurdity.


Another evening prowl in search of festive illumination, this time to Stourhead, didn't reward nearly as well as Longleat: the concept of blasting heavy colour on specific buildings and trees benefitted neither, and the elegant vista of the lake on arrival was obliterated by oscillating vividly-coloured bobbles. You don't have to be a cantankerous dendrophile like me to recognise that Stourhead is an elegant example its era's respect for the grandeurs of antiquity and the concept of beauty in nature, and fierce floodlights detract rather than embellish.

A blast of music now:
The 'Last Bones Gig of the Year' was at the The George at Nunney,  courtesy of manager Tania, and with the massed instruments & voices of the entire village, it seemed, especially for the finale version of Fairy Tale of New York which Bones leader Paul Kirtley reckons as good the original...  certainly more celebratory. I also liked the the guitar solos on Come on Baby Light My Fire, but it was all enjoyable - big appreciation to both Frome and Nunney gangs for a great gig, to the customers who contributed to Paul's charity bucket, and of course to the man of every Bones match, Paul himself. The sound was fantastic but historic buildings don't cope well with biblical-scale downpours so my images caught the convivial atmosphere rather than the event.

Back in Frome, we've had a goldrush of brilliant bands: amazing Purple Fish bringing classic rock to the Cornerhouse on Saturday, followed next night by the utterly awesome Pete Gage band with Craig Crofton on saxophone.. two sensational events from passionate professional performers - Frome pubs must lead the world for treating their customers to great gigs like these.

The Three Swans took over to fill the gap on Sunday afternoon with an all-afternoon session from the massed forces of several local bands as traditional folk musicians from various traditions joined up with singers and players in a variety of styles from swampy funk to 80's pop. This was a real party event, with all ages crammed into the upstairs room amid the rococo furniture and startlingly retro wall adornments.

Happy celebrations whatever you choose to do - see you after the flack has settled on a new year.