Midsummer edition: drama, music, art, and a glorious garden

Bristol Old Vic director Tom Morris hosted a webinar on Wednesday to launch the theatre's upcoming season - that's Autumn/Winter, grim thought - and to discuss how the team had coped with the last 18 months of cancelled income and lost shows. Remarkably well, it appears. Aside from the inevitable hardships, Tom's team used the time to affirm creative priorities, accelerate essential change, and devise wide-reaching ways of audience connection that the theatre will maintain, in tandem with live contact, when the pandemic is over.  Their 'engagement programme' throughout the city, currently responding Black Lives Matter, will continue, and the success of Touching the Void enhanced online has encouraged the team to think of adding an online option to other shows.  So the following night I was able to watch from home their current production, Outlier, developed from 2020's Ferment Fortnight and co-produced with performance poet Malaika Kegode and brilliant fusion band Jakabol supporting throughout as she narrates her coming-of-age story based on her teenage years in Devon. It doesn't have the ferocity or raw humour of Trainspotting, but it does have poignant credibility, enhanced by Malaika's confident and connective stage persona and supported by lighting graphics in a party atmosphere: sad as well as wild, this is one the exciting new projects outlined in the season launch.

Back now to Frome, for an extraordinarily vibrant art exhibition at the Silk Mill, where David Moss has managed what few solo exhibitors could do: he has filled virtually every inch of this massive hall with huge canvasses, all brimming with vivid colour.  The opening was on Thursday night, and these stunning canvases will be showing throughout next week.

Also highly recommended - but you'll have to wait till the 'Hidden Gardens' event in Frome Festival -  is the superb 'secret garden' in Critchill. I was introduced to this amazing place by Eleanor Talbot, whose Variations on a Theme radio show this week explores its nooks & crannies and discusses gardening and garden design. It's hard to choose a single image to convey the amazing range & display of colour and foliage created by the inspiring couple who have created this garden, but this one, from the far end, may give some impression of the care taken in design, and the vista beyond. And that wild flower area on the left will have burst into bloom by then.

Concluding now with a flurry of music: The Bookshop Band, a talented duo who create songs about books, have throughout lockdown been entertaining online, holding their final concert on Friday. They've crept into this blog before, as their concept originated in Mr B's Emporium in Bath, and Ben & Beth often return from their home in Scotland to perform live - hopefully, one day in Frome.. Here's one of the songs they played: In a shop with books in -which works just as  well with Beth singing.

And on sunny Saturday, Frome's popular busker Ron Tree shared his spot and joined in with Luke Philbrick's Solid Gone Skiffle Invasion after arriving to discover a pitch invasion in Cheap Street.

Saturday was until recently the much-longed-for date of the Cornerhouse out-of-lockdown gig from popular local band Back of the Bus, but like the bands booked there for next week's festival, this had to be cancelled. The Cheese & Grain however has more audience-space, and managed to book Get Cape Wear Cape Fly - aka Sam Duckworth - at short notice. It's fifteen years since I fell in love with his first CD The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager, and Let the Journey Begin on his second album became the emotional soundtrack of my life. Bristol in September had looked my best bet to catch his current tour, so his arrival here was a brilliant treat. GCWCF is now 35, still looks like a bohemian teenager, and still sounds fantastic. Good support from Frome's Henry Wacey, too.

 

All the world's a screen... (with sunshine breaks)

And once again National Theatre Live has shown why lockdown may actually provide some of the highlights of 2020. Twelfth Night, that often tedious Shakespeare comedy about a girl and her brother looking identical enough to cause fights and fury, turns out to be not merely doable but timeless, funny, and moving. Imaginative casting helps: Sir Toby is an aging hippy, Sir Andrew a pretentious hipster and the Fool a faded flower child, with the other gender switch making Malvolio a lusty lesbian - Tamsen Greig in this role is unforgettable.  Soutra Gilmour's rotating stage brilliantly evokes every scenic shift, from manor to clubland, enhancing the essential theatricality of the story: scene changes in an ongoing drama of ascending and descending statuses, in a world where rank is all. Director Simon Goodwin, you can watch it online until April 30.

Spoken word now: and Clare Reddaway, Bath's talented writer & creative supporter of other writers, has taken her monthly live 'Story Friday' event online, combining with Kilter Theatre to ensure some great readings for their premier event on 26th on the theme Dark Clouds, Silver Linings. Seven ultra-short tales took the theme in wide-ranging ways, including two charming everyday stories of local folk:  Jonathan Evans The Pillars of the Earth read by Ollie Langdon, and My Dad the Superhero by Judith Adam, read by Eve. Clare will continue to select and post stories, so do follow A Word In Your Ear, and contribute if you feel inspired.

Last week online saw more music than may blossom in the hedgerows - you probably found plenty, but among those I've appreciated are  Flash Harry, and Al O'Kane who hosted a fundraiser on Friday for a Bristol NHS Charity. Frome's individual musicians are doing lock-in solo spots too, on their personal pages: guitarist-singer Steve Loudoun has made his public - here's a great Tom Waits track -

and Pete Gage has posted a moving guitar version of St James Infirmary Blues as well as some terrific keyboard-accompanied songs - these aren't public but I'm sure he won't mind me sharing the screenshot of I need your love so bad. -
Sofar Sounds gave us a free session from Jade Bird - donations optional - and overall there's been no shortage of music as a backdrop to this sensationally sunny week - including the intriguing Bookshop Band, who exclusively sing their own songs about book recommendations, an impressive specialism that originated in Mr B's in Bath and has brought them followers all over the UK and to America, including BBC radio.  Here they are with their regular Lockdown show - you can see them live on Fridays at 8.30.

Poetry, like mercy, drops everywhere like the gentle rain, - various online sites will pipe it to you daily -but  April 25th was a day of special dousing: this is the day of the Universe in Verse celebrates 'the splendour and mystery of the natural world', as featured in Brainpickings. Liv Torc is still collecting haiku for her Haiflu project - you could send her one of your own or post any longer poems on the Frome Poetry page if you're missing our meetings.

Ending with another image from a walk: out of over 20 miles of happy traipsing, this one is close to home - right in the centre of Frome: wild garlic, looks beautiful, smells sensuous, tastes great...