Midwinter high spirits in times of sleet and glitter

A Christmas Carol at Bristol Old Vic was never going to end with Tiny Tim saying God Bless Us Every One - like L.P. Hartley's past, they do things differently there. Yet despite burlesque overtones and operatic narration, this irresistibly engaging production stays close to the spirit of the storyline, though with the occasional intrusion of foodbanks and shopping trolleys, and even closer to the spirit of Dickens.  All the principle characters of the story are here: embittered Scrooge, his patient nephew, his loyal clerk with a small sick son, the warning ghosts and phantom-memories of loves and losses... but they're all a little bit unexpected. Bob Cratchit is a chubby deaf mute - so, uncoincidentally, is Mrs Fezziwig (Stephen Collins delightful in both roles) - and Tiny Tim and Ebenezer when very young are played by two children extracted for this purpose from the audience. This is particularly entertaining when Scrooge, observing ethnic diversity between himself and the shiny-eyed happy child he used to be, comments 'It's me! I remember the flat-top.' Our anti-hero's flair for impro is especially useful in the final scene, when he begs the audience to tell him how to make amends: on the night I was there, suggestions were focussed around drinks for all at the bar, until 'Come on you lot, this is the immersive bit!' was rewarded with the suggestion of a turkey, and the drama could move to its happy conclusion.
John Hopkins is tremendous in this central role, terrifyingly nasty until the ghosts take him in hand and the poignancy of his memories evokes a moving grief. Tom Morris's adaptation skilfully enhances the parallels with Dicken's own experiences, subtly emphasising how treatment of the poor and weak in Victorian days is emulated in our own society: it's significant that Ebenezer learnt his contempt for 'lower orders' and his desire to amass wealth when he was sent away to school, as so many of our current political leaders have been.
Historical and social relevance is fascinating but this is above all a strong story retold in a fantastically entertaining style, with great musicality, weird effects and scary puppets, funky costumes, lashings of humour and some weepy moments - everything you want from your favourite morality tale in fact. Massive credit to director Lee Lyford, designer Tom Rogers, musical director/composer/lyricist Gwyneth Herbert, and the ten superb actors - enthusiastically recommended for all ages, on till January 12th. (Images Geraint Lewis)
And another 'winter special' opened this week: Cinderella at the Merlin Theatre in Frome, also impressively re-envisaged, and also presented with masses of music and spectacular effects. Claudia Pepler, who writes and directs these shows, goes back to Grimm's tales - and indeed these original authors control the plot in their manifestation as pigeons, thanks to superb balletic comedy duo Dillon Berry and Pete White, who tell us 'We are the brothers, the brothers Grimm, we're story tellers, or disrupters, if you will - we fly from tale to tale...'
Here's the charming prince (Ben Jenkins) and his adorable Ella (Amy Maughan) watched by her wonderfully dreadful sisters (Tabitha Cox and Abi Holmes), with Victoria May as the stepmother tricked by land-grabbing Dave Merritt. This kind of plot embellishment, as well as Ella's environmental passion, brings the classic tale cleverly up-to-date while losing none of the fairytale quality - in fact Howard Vause's pumpkin-to-coach animation sequence is one of the highlights of a glittering show. This production is up for the Somerset Fellowship of Drama Cinderella Trophy, and so it should be!
(Images: Dave Merritt)
And now for something rather less visual: Writers on Radio, presented by Frome Writers' Collective, is broadcast monthly on Frome FM.  Each programme is a miscellany of information and entertainment on writerly topics, with a dash of music. The upcoming show also includes my short personal tribute to Jill Miller.  Jill will always be remembered for the cancer charity she founded but she was a writer too, and I was invited to share this aspect of her life. Here's the team at the end of the recording: Suzy Howlett, Jules Garvey-Welch, Sian Williams and Lisa Kenwright, with techie PJ - the show goes out Friday Dec 13 and is online here.

Next day saw me back at the studio for the On Air Book Group, broadcast live and online soon, a convivial session with Sheila Hedges at the helm: Books-as-gifts was our seasonal theme, with an overview from Tina Gaisford-Waller, queen of Hunting Raven Books, and a range of ideas from charity shop browsing to splendid editions, like Britain's Forest Story by Frome's Julian Hight. My other recommendations included the marvellous Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth - rapid-fire witty word-loops connecting origins with torrents of historical anecdote - Frome's bookshop will order you a copy for the logophile in your life!  Here's me with Tina and Pat Taylor talking to hosts Karen Stewart and James Ellis with Sheila Hedges - thanks Terry Stewart for the picture of us all. Our chat is online now here - number 37 (06/12/19)


Music report this week is thinner than usual, due to so much else going on: The Back Wood Redeemers at theCornerhouse on Saturday gave their usual stonking selection of dark specialities like Give Them A Good Death in a performance even darker than usual as the light bulb had been removed. So here's a snatched shot of fantastic Eddie Young abandoning his double bass and invading the dance floor - I forget what he was singing but it was awesome...

And a look back now at two ongoing projects in Frome both celebrating successful conclusion: Black Swan's boundary-breaking Listen - a Summer of Sound Art successfully signed off its final programme in a wide-ranging list of events and although contact with the town council and Frome FM to maintain new initiatives will continue, a wrap party seemed appropriate. So Sunday afternoon saw a very pleasant cava and cake party at Black Swan cafe, with a final word from organisers Mel Day and Helen Ottaway, pictured here with sound-wizard Michael Ormiston.

Finally for this week: way back in summer sunshine, a group of Vicki Burke's Fromie friends assembled with her in Rodden Meadow to dance around the big oak as part of Vicki Burke's Magic Money Tree - a campaign video for the project PIPPA (People in Positive Politics Association) filmed by Howard Vause. The preview was on Sunday at Frome's Granary, and as multi-talented Vicki is also a band member in Seize the Day, we had a rebel-rousing introduction to the showing too.
I'll leave you now to the contemplation of your hopes and trepidations for the week ahead...

Wild Goose Dreams, lantern lights and frost-fired music

Starting this week at Ustinov, Theatre Royal Bath's never-disappointing studio production space.

Guk Minsung is a 'wild goose father', a married South Korean who's sent his wife and children to America where he supports them while living alone.* Chuja Seo is a North Korean defector refugee, now making a new life alone while traumatised by the cultural differences she finds over the border.  Goosefather lives on his i-phone, she lives in her dreams: these unreal worlds fill the stage and provide the energy and the passion of Hansol Jung's drama Wild Goose Dreams as internet connections and emoticons shout and dance around him, while she is haunted by penguin soldiers with clipped wings and her interfering abandoned father.  These sequences, hilarious and tragic, are helped by a brilliant set designed by Jean Chan, and enhance a skeleton blind-date romance into an extraordinary story both provocative and informative.  Michael Boyd's direction and a strong cast ensure this drama resonates beyond the entertainment of media parody and even the gravitas of political data - go if you can, it's on till 21 December.
*Not-fun facts: 200,000 fathers are estimated to do this, to save their children from the gruelling South Korean 18-hour day schooling system. And recent studies show more than half of North Korean defectors suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders. There's still a lot of laughs though...

This is the time when towns & cities all over the UK as darkness falls begin to glitter with the strings of lights, and the traditional fir tree (six million of which will go to landfill in January) twinkles through the gloom of every town centre. Frome does this a bit too, modestly as befits its eco-awareness, but the town's real celebratory greeting to the festive season is the awesome lantern parade on Light the Night.

The atmosphere at this town-council sponsored event is indescribable as thousands watch and follow the hundreds of home-made lanterns swaying down the hill, following the parade led by Jamma de Samba's fabulous drummers. There were a smattering of religious-birth relevant songs around the time of the actual switch-on moment, taken by the mayor, following a lively set from our local Rock Choir of karaoke classics like I'm Still Standing... Yeah yeah yeah indeed.

Art exhibitions now, a plethora of them, as local craftsfolk seize the chance to present their work as possible gifts, with Saturday featuring Frome Festive Art Fair, a one day spectacular of printmaking, painting, ceramics, sculpture, illustration and jewellery shared across two splendid venues, Silk Mill and Rook Lane Chapel. Every artist had fabulous work to offer so here's two general views:

Next day, Silk Mill did a quick turnaround for the studio artists' collective own exhibition: the Silk Mill Collective's Christmas Fair, an even busier event selling classy jewellery, ceramics, designer-clothing, paintings, sculptures, and glassware all created by the 14 artists and designer-makers who work there.
This was held on market day, while in the meantime a Christmas exhibition by artists of the Black Swan Guild has also launched. Small and Mighty includes a fascinating mix of personal themes and studies, and is on at the Round Tower until December 24th.



Turning to music, there's quite a tangle to sort out as both Friday's Light the Night event and Sunday's Independent Market were thick with music, so I'll start with the relative calm of Saturday: Here's Rebel Heroes Bowie tribute band at the Cornerhouse - with apologies to Boot Hill All Stars for missing their gig that day for Shelter at 23 Bath Street.

A time-jump back to Friday night  when, after the lantern parade arrived at the town centre, there was more street theatre to enjoy as popular Frome Street Bandits band took advantage of a fine night to transfer from the Grain Bar stage to the courtyard where there was plenty of room for their massive duelling trombones.

Then a dash to the Artisan, rewarded by an evening session from top-of-leaderboard Bare to the Bones team as Paul Kirtley's assorted medley of creative jammers were joined by Hello Hopeville. Both bands gained big applause and charity donations from punters who even made space in the crowded pub to dance.

Sunday afternoon saw another charity gig at 23 Bath Street from the Back Wood Redeemers Alternative Nativity, 'an irreverent Sunday Afternoon Knees-Up' welcoming all sinners with comforting classics like Give Him a Good Death and I'll do the Wrong Thing &  I'll do the Right Thing Wrong (and Eddie's sinister Chocolate Jesus for which I can't find a soundcloud link.)

This tasty afternoon irreverence was followed by Back of the Bus at the Griffin: 'post punk pop with attitude' and ukeleles, with a particularly vicious take on Psycho-killer. I love their sinister version of Nice Day For a White Wedding too.

Sunday evening was much calmer, with a pleasant Jazz Jam at the Cornerouse. Among a varied group of performers, here's a rare picture of Simon Sax who organises this event with Nicki Mascall. And still on the theme of Frome's fantastic range of music this week, although sadly no image was possible in the stygian gloom of 23 Bath Street, credit too to the talents of The Brackish plus Rivers of England in a lively fund-raiser gig for Frome Labour party.

All of which kerfuffle brings us in sparkling style to the frosty final month of this year, with the Frome Independent Market now taking a break until March. Word on the street assured me that this festive-shopping market was fantastically busy and successful, but my personal participation was limited to Hunting Raven Books on Cheap Street, where I sat with Julian (Bugsy) Hight signing & selling books . So I'll close with a top-tip for booky presents: If you've already bought everyone Frome Unzipped, or just because Julian's latest addition to his tree saga is beautifully illustrated as well as massively informative, then Britain's Ancient Forest is a the way to go.

Autumn leaves, historic memories, and goblins

A historical thread runs through this post as last week ended with a splendid tour of the town's trees, historically spanning over 300 years from ancient oaks to self-renewing saplings in recovery from elm disease, as arborist & enthusiast Julian Hight led a Heritage Tree Walk during the weekend of walks organised by the Town Council. A sizeable troop of dendrophiles enjoyed the romp through Rodden Meadow's ancient Selwood Forest veterans, and into the heart of town where Thomas Bunn's Cedar of Lebanon is still thriving despite his grumpy diary entry in 1843 "Today I observed that this beautiful tree was despoiled of several of its spreading branches – my mortifications of this kind are so numerous that I will not attempt to recount them."
Unfortunately this was another of those weekends when Frome offers an exuberance of options, like a mast of trees shedding nuts to excess, and the Heritage Tree and the Awful Killing of Sarah Watts walks both ran concurrently with Frome Multicultural Day so I can't report on this - last year's one was wonderful.

Still on a historical theme, last Monday was the launch of a plaque sponsored by the Frome Society for Local Study in honour of John Webb Singer, the foundry manager who oversaw the making of many of the world's iconic sculptures, statues and monuments: it's said if you stand on the Embankment in London you're surrounded on all sides by works forged in Frome.  Historical researcher Sue Bucklow, who was aided by hundreds of photographs on glass slides rescued in the 1970s, is the driving force behind a long-delayed placement of J.W. in Frome's public history, with trails around town and displays at the museum: 'You can't overestimate his importance' she says, and certainly he's more deserving of a plaque than the actress playing James Bond's Miss Moneypenny who was thus honoured in 2017.

Moving on to words:  A writing-group trip to Novel Nights in Bath on Wednesday revealed the Three Pillars of Writing Bliss according to author Tim Clare. Burdall's Yard is a delightful venue, combining boho atmosphere, great stage lighting, and student bar prices - the perfect combo for a night out - and Grace Palmer & Colette Hill, who organise these writer-support events, have a good formula: three short readings from local writers, plus a feature talk. Tim offered us GUTACHE: his 'Grand Unified Theory of Achieving Creative Happiness Easily' - far more stimulating than HYGGE. Lots of his tips were ways to simply free up, outrun your self-critic, and find your characters with Proust's Questionnaire.

Another focus on writing on Saturday, this time for a session with a group who met each other nine years ago, in The Grange on the Isle of Wight, and  have continued to meet for a writing session twice a year ever since. It's always enjoyable joining this group for a catch-up and this time discussions ranged from Extinction Rebellion (Chris & Mike have both been involved) to classic TV comedies and why they're timeless, with writing exercises  and much coffee courtesy of the Abbey Hotel in Cheltenham.


So what with one thing and another, this week's report is light on music though I did get to the Three Horseshoes in Bradford-on-Avon on Sunday to hear the fabulous Backwood Redeemers - great energy and dark humour. The lighting was also energetic and dark - not image-friendly but evocative for mood and dancing...

Let's end with goblins, courtesy of Mutartis Boswell and Ann Harrison-Broninski's Goblin Shop at Three Swans on Friday, all kinds of sensual goblinalia - painting,  badges, books, weird sucky sweets, and a handy pocket guide to Goblins illustrated in full colour, with useful insights: The goblin kingdom is ruled harshly. It is not a democratic world - and yet the goblin, as an individual, is an anarchist. They also love poetry...
Have a good week, and may your goblin go with you.

.

May: rough winds and other moving & shaking stuff

Frome writers had a strong presence at the Independent Market this month, with several signing events at Hunting Raven Books ~ here's Kate Maryon delighting young readers of My Sister is Bigger Than Me with cakes and a guinea-pig too ~ and the Frome Writers Collective had their usual stall in the Magpie Market, bulging with books by local authors. As always the market offered masses to see and sample, and this month there was extra to listen to, with buskers in the streets & in The Griffin, where an open mic session accompanied the Sunday lunches. Carl Sutterby's terrific ukulele punk sounds good everywhere but my poems are mostly scurrilous or cynical... lucky my set was before any children arrived. Thanks David for the picture!
The busking stage had great bands and a big audience all morning ~ here's The Heart Collectors ~ with mellow folk music in the Archangel courtyard in the afternoon, followed by Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse.
Thus ended a weekend of sunshine and sound, with two Saturday night birthday parties: a disco at the Cornerhouse and the amazing Back Wood Redeemers, at the bar now quirkily calling itself Frome's New Venue - Name TBC but still commonly referred as The Wheatsheaves.

Now for the culture: a film, a play, and a photo exhibition this week, all with a war theme.

Ever since Frome's independent cinema The Westway reopened I've been waiting for one of their three screens to show something I really wanted to see so I could go and support it. This week I compromised with Their Finest.  It's a film about making films about WW2, set in that era, and one of the running gags is that the female scriptwriter (think Stacey out of Gavin-and, but less cute) needs to cut her scripts and leave out the part we don't need, and I wish the editors had done that too. Main attraction of the movie is Bill Nighy playing, as always, Bill Nighy, but I can report the revamped cinema is really nice so that's good. There's a useful tip in the script for writers too: Don't confuse facts with truth, and for chrissake don't let either of them get in the way of the story.

Still on the subject of war, truth, and propaganda, Bath's Victoria Art Gallery has an impressive exhibition of iconic historical photographs showing until 10 May: THE INCITE PROJECT comprises 75 photos that changed public perception of world events, from a sepia shot of Lenin's inflammatory speech in Petrograd Square in 1919 to a full-colour high-resolution image from 2014 of a rescue boat crowded with refugees. This duo from Berlin in 1945, of a Russian soldier hoisting a Soviet flag on the Reichstag reveals how the documentary photograph (top) was altered into a dramatic smoke-filled scene ~ wristwatches, presumably looted, have also been deleted from the soldiers' arms in the published shot too.

Paul Mason is best known as a radical leftwing journalist but recently he's taken his convictions on stage, first with a dramatised version of his book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere at the New Vic and now with Divine Chaos of Starry Things at the White Bear in Kennington. An in-depth study a woman revolutionary from another era sounded fascinating, maybe even pertinent in current troubled times, and an exciting way to round off my trip up-town.  Paul writes for The Guardian, which published a piece about the play that shows its complexity. Other journals have found it overly didactic and lacking in character differentiation, but there's a positive summary here in the New Statesman.

Irrelevant footnote for this post: Before it disappears from Bristol's streets, here's a picture of the promotion for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory this season.  Please note the two reviews quoted. Oh alright, you can't read it at that size, but trust me it's a massive poster, and the second reviewer is me...  what's the emoticon for a smirk?...

Spring! bonnets & budding, ducks & Daffodil Day

It's blossom time: pink & white floral canopies along streets and gardens, wild garlic tanging the air, and a fecundity of bluebells in the local woodlands. Wow! No wonder we go spring-crazy and remind ourselves we're rural folk and rush about doing rural folk things ~ a bonnet contest plus duck race in Nunney on Sunday, while bank holiday Monday is ~ with or without blooming compliance ~ Daffodil Day in Mells. This year there's an abundance of flowers, and the sun shone obligingly on the marquees & bouncy castles, and presumably on the street stalls too although, after walking all the way from Frome along the woodland river path, we didn't get far beyond Milk Street Brewery's beer tent in the field where the rocking revivalist repertoire of totally fantastic Back Wood Redeemers made religion almost worthwhile. The four mile walk was glorious too, both ways.

Back in Frome, the refurbished Whittox Lane chapel, beautifully restored by new owners Ed Roberts and Io Fox, was officially opened as the HUBnub Centre last week. Cutting the ribbon here is Mayor Toby ~ whose 'impressive moustache' gets an awed mention in the most recent Times piece discovering Frome with surprised approval. Our 'lovely old town' must feel a bit like one of those bands that keeps getting the award for promising newcomer, the number of times it's been featured as a 'less obvious' spot to visit and listed on Top 10 charts. Confirming the thumbs-up journalist John Bungey gives Frome's regeneration since Independents took over the council, last week saw two more openings: Jo Black's Black Inc tattoo shop in Cheap Street on Saturday night, and the new Bottle Shop, Cheese & Tap Bar in Palmer Street ~ locally sourced food and drink, either sit in & relax, take home, or both, suggests entrepreneur & 'helmsman' Simon Bowden.

Contrasting holiday-weekend sounds in town to round off this bulletin: mellow jazz from Graham Dent Trio with Caroline Radcliffe at the Cornerhouse on Sunday afternoon, and Dreadzone at Cheese & Grain with a wicked Saturday night of rock/reggae. Like I said, Wow...