Drama & burlesque, art &lit, and ancient trees

Let's start straight off with Mayfest. If you don't live in Bristol so can't appreciate the full experience, it's a lucky dip which event to choose: my pick of Birthmarked was sensationally lucky. This is the extraordinary story of Brook Tate, born into a Jehovah's Witness family and an active messenger for the cult until his gay identity compelled a rethink, an expulsion and a reincarnation. Brook relates the tale direct to audience, supported by his (actual) band of new friends, amazing props, a vast whale - which has notionally swallowed us all - and a mix of fantasy, pantomime, feel-good storytelling, and boundary-breaking devices like total costume change centre stage as part of the show. Incredible & unforgettable - there's more here.

Time travelling now back to my jaunt to the big city on the previous day, for more drama:

Earth hath not anything to show more fair, Wordsworth wrote in his 220 year-old love poem to London: Westminster Bridge in his version but it's lovely from Waterloo footbridge too. Tuesday was a brilliant day overall though the play at the Dorfman (Middle by David Eldridge) which was my primary reason for this visit was a disappointing grumpfest of marital clichés. But the Berry coach to London is fast & inexpensive, Victoria Embankment Gardens are beautiful, South Bank in sunshine is fabulous, it was great to revisit the Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall & find a my poetry collection with Burning Eye on their shelves, and to discover a nice pub - The Swan - close to Hammersmith Bus Station, so an overall ace day out. 

To get the show review out of the way: it's a middle-of-the-night row that goes on for two days - no, sorry two hours: he's money'd, she's bored: she reproaches, he smashes the china, then they help each other clean up so you think Oh good it's the end, but it isn't, and the emotional hostility just carries on in the same flat way which may be due to the script (over-even) or the production (over-level) or just the length (over-long) so no need to name & blame the actors - they've suffered enough. And if you think this summary is overly critical, you should see what Lloyd Evans in the Spectator says. Seriously, this is another of those pointless plays about affluent people bored by their own life-style (see An Hour and a Half Late, reviewed in this blog 27 Feb) - where's Jimmy Porter when we need a rant about pusillanimous irritations. With a support team of 32 plus the 2 wretched actors who had to memorise the tedious script, plays like this discredit the potential of theatre in society. Rant over.

Fabulous foliage beside the Thames - even fig trees fruiting - bring us nicely to the online talk by Julian Hight on Recording Britain’s Ancient Forest through Ancient Trees - a fascinating tour of Britain's historic forest told through the monumental oaks and other surviving trees. Did you know that in Medieval times two-thirds of England was forest - a word that meant, not dense trees as we tend to think now, but owned by the king & lords for recreational hunting.  

J

ulian has been exploring and logging ancient trees for many years, and his slides showed superb imagery of venerable trees and how to access them through the Ancient Tree Inventory, where we can also record any you come across ourselves. His own favourites are the iconic oaks that are so distinctive in English landscape, and he plants acorns wherever & whenever possible - here's the little oak he planted in Rodden Meadow a few years ago, in a bramble hedge to protect it from being nibbled by rodents while young - The thorn is mother of the oak, as the old saying goes... 

A mega-busy Thursday brought a bumper-bundle of goodies: let's start with the afternoon treat at Cooper Hall of a presentation by Amy Webber of new material for a one-woman show she's been developing during her residency there. Amy is not only an incredible singer in a range of styles, she also has great audience rapport and some sharp & very funny material. 'I've got an opera degree that's never been useful,' Amy confides, and proceeds to demonstrate its potential by composing a funeral song for an audience member (me😊) and then giving an illustrated lecture on music genres over the years. Her satirical material is very funny and her voice is fabulous.   Next, a quick dash back across Whatcombe Fields to the other side of town - so dramatically beautiful I'm including a snap of it here -   

- to arrive at the Gallery at the Station in time for the opening of the brilliant exhibition of paintings by Paris: Ultra Aesthetics 'a touring exhibition for changing times.'   The images are mainly vivid mergings of colour & energy, and the concept behind the show is fascinating as explained by the artist in his leaflet: using found items (viz used Estate Agent signboards) the images 'hark back to Protest Art through the ages, and reference the work of young artists in New York's Lower East Side in the 1970s and 80s'. This development of his street pieces in Bristol (and Frome) is planned to develop into an extensive tour.  

And then on to The Three Swans for Dirty Laundry, the new Spoken Word event run by Olly Davy, a tasty mix of storytelling and poetry. All the  contributors were excellent but sadly my images were light-blighted so here's a picture of me doing a poem (thanks Mike Grenville) presumably (hopefully) a very fleeting moment during the bit about the Beastie Boys....

While we're on the subject of me & me-pomes, this week saw the exciting arrival of a boxful of the double-anthology created by Hazel Stewart & I during lockdown, now published by Caldew Press. Snappily entitled What's It Like For You? at one end and Dance For Those Who'd Rather Not at the other end, this pushmepullyou book is filled not only with our lyrical creations but also some brilliant drawings by Mel Day - launch will be on June 6 at The Three Swans so do pop along if you live near Frome!

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!