Extravaganza: a spectacular entertainment or production.

Other towns do Switching-on-the-Christmas-Lights. Frome has an Extravaganza. On a cold but fine night literally thousands lined the main road cheering as Jenson scorched up and down in his Formula 1 car doing donuts, and also more sedately in the Santander open-top, waving and sometimes dismounting to give a hug or an autograph. Oh, and he switched on some lights too ~ not that we cared, most of them were on already but we'd saved him a tree: a suitable pagan emblem for a demigod. "Frome is just a dot on the map but he's shown you can go out and conquer the world" declaimed the emotional compère introducing our most illustrious export, as the Youth Town Band played. I didn't get a close-up so nicked one from the BBC (who also made a great video for Points West) showing the switching-on moment with the Frome Mayor on the left, because I really like mentioning that Dicken is the youngest, tallest, Mayor in the country. Warm-up acts included bands, choirs, Muriel Lavender in a viridian corset, and the three sweet little winners of the Christmas card competition.

 In fact having a street party was such fun we did it all again next day, though without Jenson, but with street music and an amazing Food Fair at the Silk Mill where the yard was filled with stalls of amazing scoff ~ lush fish soup from La Paimpolaise ~ with a noon-till-late all-age party with blues & reggae disco. Frome Library edged in on the festivities discreetly by ensuring their evening talk on historical fiction had a focus on Christmas celebrations through the ages, with four local writers on the panel (Jenny Barden, David Lassman, Kylie Fitzpatrick and Tricia Wastvedt) all entertaining as well as interestingly informative. Eras ranged from Elizabethan 'Lords of Misrule' to Nazi suppression, and saw the first emergence of media-message impact: the picture of Prince Albert's decorated tree that changed England's festive focus from burning yule log to dressed pine forever...

And then we did it again, the street celebrations thing I mean not the library talk, as Sunday was Frome Super Market day with roads closed to traffic and open to stalls selling everything you could imagine to wear, give, eat, drink, or put on your bike. Mayor Dicken was out in a different role hawking ties ~ yes, if you're inspired by tales of the independent state of Frome, you can buy the tie: colours still available are bright blue, bright red, bright green & bright orange... bright yellow has sold out. Lots of tastings of local products, and the busking stage extra good this month with Tell-Tale Signs poguing out Fairy Tales of New York and world songs from massed voices of Jackdaws choir. And as the disco lights in the Silk Mill go out and the glittering street lights in town come on, we settle down on facebook with greenie grumblings about Buttonmania versus consumerism....
So to end this Frome-obsessive posting: photo-journalist Edward Johnson has created A Story of Frome on his gallery website. It's told entirely in portraits of locals who work creatively here, and I'm delighted to be included (penultimate picture) and to see some good friends there. I can think of several more who deserve a place, so hopefully there'll be a second gallery soon.

Writers take heart from the history of The Seagull, a play so catastrophically badly received at its premier that Chekhov vowed he would never put another on stage if he lived for 700 years. Two years later, in 1896, the next production met with a response described by director Stanislavski as "colossal, like a second Easter. Many people, myself among them, danced a wild dance for joy and excitement."
The new adaption by John Donnelly directed by Blanche McIntyre for Headlong deserved similar rapture in the streets outside Theatre Royal Bath. The dialogue dazzles, pain and poetry mixing with precision, authentically personal without ever becoming prosaic or predictable, and is often spotlit suddenly by quirky humour. Cast ~ especially Alexander Cobb as conflicted playwright Konstantin and Abigail Cruttenden as his self-absorbed, insecure, mother ~ are individually riveting in their private passions and in the tableau scenes Chekhov loves to create. Intimate moments are offered directly to audience, houselights rising to remind us of our complicity in these dilemmas of life and art, a device that enhances the meta-theatrical theme at the heart of the play. You have to write what's inside, even if everyone says you're wrong, Konstantin declares, like everyone in this story fearing to 'sleepwalk through life': he alone keep to his pledge I'd rather have nothing than a lie. Laura Hopkins' set supports this integrity: no attempt at lakeside landscape but a strangely blank backdrop daubed with images and scrawl throughout the action, with a plank that morphs with striking simplicity from garden seesaw to supper table. It's all simply brilliant ~ 5 stars, read more here.

The Dug Out at the Tobacco Factory is a kind-of proxy site-specific performance combining two tales in one location: the 1970s 'Dug Out' nightclub, convincingly recreated by Halla Groves, also represents a refuge from rioting in 1944. The war story is a romantic encounter but 30 years on, city life is more complex. Black American soldiers stationed in Bristol during WW2 met no racism from local people but their white colleagues found it unacceptable to see them with English girls, so there's innocence as well as ignorance in the encounter between Rita and GI Curtis. By 1974 the clubbers have more conflicts and concerns than racism to cope with: there's drugs, pregnancy, transgenderism, prawn cocktails, Germaine Greer and the IRA to name a few. Writer Amanda Whittington has researched both eras in detail, as evidenced ~ perhaps too clearly ~ in her characters' dialogue. But there's much that's thought-provoking, some excellent individual performances and a soundtrack to totally relish. (image: Farrows Creative)

Still on the subject of exploring one's own locality, photographer Edward Johnson is creating a story in images about the artistic life of Frome, and I feel very pleased and privileged to have been invited to sit for his gallery. We went to the gardens of the Blue House, abundant with indigo aquilegia aptly, for the shoot. Edward kindly took a snap on my camera so I had a preview of his pose and here it is. Here too, just because I love this place, is an evening view over the lake at Stourhead...