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.)

Street life with castle, beach, murder-mystery & more...

Nunney Street Fayre on Saturday, as you'd expect from the spelling, is an extravaganza of stalls selling cakes and summer-festival style attire, interrupted at intervals by cider & prosecco bars and ice-cream vans - but with a magnificent USP: ruined Nunney Castle, in the centre of the village and surrounded by a moat. Here the awesome Acoustic Cafe team gave us a day-long stream of live music, on two stages so no set-up breaks, and you could lounge on the grass listening to fabulous folk, blues, and punk classics for hours... I was there for five, fortified by fizz, leaving then for a theatre date. Here's the punky Raggedy Men but I also really enjoyed the other bands and individual artists, especially Splat the Rat ranging from In Hell I'll Be In Good Company to gentle Bees Wing... (thanks Stephen for the snap)
So a swift bike-ride home got me back in time to de-hippify for the rather posher environs of Corsley Manor, to join friends for the Illyria production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.  Oliver Gray, who designs and directs the summer season, warns in programme notes that four actors on a tiny stage in a complex tale involving multiple characters is 'ridiculous' but of course it's the ridiculousness of this clever quartet we love. Liv Spencer's haughty Holmes, Nick Taylor's broad-Yorkshire Watson, Rachel O-Hare and Lee Peck in multiple roles were all hilarious, even in the scariest moments as the unlikely story unravelled. With the villain finally triumphantly identified, Dr Watson - not unreasonably - asks what the motive could conceivably have been. 'That is of no concern to me,' the great detective huffs, 'I am only interested in problems of the present and the past, not those of the future.' Not just a riotous romp, a sly critique of genre detective stories too...

Next day was the first Sunday in August so Frome had its monthly Independent Market - the seaside one, with a beach and donkey rides in the marketplace, and Mojo Moves from Rare Species street theatre leading a startling-energetic aerobics session - think human-glitter-ball in shocking-pink lycra romping like a baby hippo on speed.
For calmer enjoyment, there was the Busking Stage - here's Kevin Brown and Duncan Kingston playing blues.
Sunday early evening jazz is back at Cornerhouse: Simon Sax and friends gave a great jam session, with songs from Nicki Maskell & Graham Dent on piano. Midweek highlight was Lazy Daze, a charismatic trio - great rapport & fabulous original songs superbly played.

Ending this busy post with an update from Frome Unzipped, with my first serious, with-a-reading style, launch on Tuesday at Hunting Raven Books where lovely Tina set the bar high in her introduction but audience response was brilliant:  questions good and comments fabulous. (Thanks Tina for the sneaky shot of me holding forth.) I've been delighted by all the feedback, on facebook ('a cracking read'- thanks Mike Grenville) and from people I meet around - like, 'I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I am!'... I do hope everyone who buys it feels that way...
And Pete Lawrence has just posted a chat we had for the Campfire Convention: you can listen to the 'Firecast' here:

Summer loving and summer days, in and around Frome

Costume drama from Theatre6, a London touring company whose current production is a nearly-3-hour epic from an energetic sextet of impressive young actors. Persuasion has been re-imagined for stage and for modern minds by Stephanie Dale and if the lovely Ceri-Lyn Cissone as heroine looks rather more Jane Eyre than Anne Eliot, there's a reason: the UST factor looms large in this version of Jane Austen's last novel and we are never far from wild soliloquised regrets for the lost love of handsome Wentworth.

Jason Ryall, superb in this role, also plays his own rival - the louche deceitful Mr Eliot - which may have confused audience members not familiar with the story, though as we were in Dorchester Arts Centre most of the full house probably were. Other parts were shared out - there must have been thirty costume changes for Siobhán Gerrard, gaining and losing both rank & age in her many roles. Persuasion, even as an intense love story, is primarily critique of the social conventions and manners of its author's era, and director Kate McGregor highlighted humorous opportunities here, sometimes to the point of panto, but with live music on piano, flute, clarinet and violin from all these talented young performers, this was certainly an impressive night of theatre.

As a small digression, if you feel uneasy about being encouraged to sympathise with poor Mrs Smith's anxiety to recover 'some property of her husband in the West Indies' - presumably one of the sugar plantations worked by slave labour - it's encouraging to know Jane was herself actually an Abolitionist.  Slaves of the British Empire were all officially freed in 1833, 17 years after the novel was written, but there's a grim connection that will never go: Lyme Regis was where the Duke of Monmouth landed from Normandy in 1685 to conduct his ill-fated rebellion, and hundreds of his supporters in the southwest were sent to these plantations to work as slaves,  many dying en route and at the docks on arrival.  Just another of those things that twirl in one's mind, like those whirling parasols making fantasy carriage wheels on cross-country canters and capers.

Fast forward a century for another slow-burning love story - a medley of them, in fact, as PG Wodehouse’s golfing romances are recreated in a club house somewhere in the Home Counties, some time after the end of the Great War (which was 'not all that great', according to the morose barman) in Love on the Links at Salisbury Playhouse. It would be impossible to recreate the iconic wit of these tales without the narrative voice of Wodehouse himself, and this adaptation wisely didn’t try: the anecdotes are presented as told by the Oldest Member, with absurd Charades-style enhancement from the small team of club members.

Jon Glover and Edward Taylor adapted the tales for stage, and the cast have tremendous fun with them. Designer James Button has created a handsome set that works as a flexible stage for multitudinous shenanigans, with pot-plants that double as tropical jungles, a couch that operates as a boat, and even dangling lamps that work as escape swings - and the seven actors vigorously created the absurd scenarios devised by director Ryan McBryde. Jenna Boyd is especially delightful as various damsels, and Tim Frances as Fitt the barman adds absurd surprises when least expected. The cast apparently had guidance on their golf swings, but the exuberance seems to have needed no coaching. On till 23 June -images Robert Workman.

 Finishing a big writing project always brings a strange feeling and, like other major deliveries in life, you always forget what it's like - until next time. It's a sense of relief mingled with unappeasable existentialist bereftness, which settles into a chronic frenzy of anxiety that you've done it all wrong anyway.
With Frome Unzipped, the transition was both eased and complicated by the fact there are scores of direct quotes from people who I'd promised to show before publication, in case errors had crept in between transcript and page. And of course they had, with a hefty sprinkling of typos. Thank you to everyone who responded, mostly speedily, encouragingly, and without deciding to rephrase.
And time now for long walks: here's the last of the bluebells making a faerie ring on Roddenbury Hillfort, and the path through Vallis Vale, another of Frome's magic places: this is the point where Frome's little river joins Mells stream, hauntingly atmospheric and beautiful. A good week too for re-connections with writer friends - a meet-up with the Friday morning group, and a reunion of the Fromesbury set to share plans...


Time too for a shot of art and music. Frome Community Education has an impressive exhibition at the Round Tower of paintings, pottery, prints, basketry, textiles and upholstery by students and tutors. Amanda Bee, whose exquisite mixed-media landscapes are both evocative and personal, and Andrew Eddleston, with a great selection of his earthenware pottery, hosted the opening on Friday. Here's a small sample of the students' work: chunky pots by Bob Spode and Keith Kemp.
A very jolly Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse on Sunday evening, with an assortment of Frome's amazingly talented musicians including Simon Sax, Mike Peake, John Plaxton, Graham Dent, Jim White, Nicki Mascall, and more. And of course, now it's June it must be time for another Frome Independent Street Market, with the most glorious weather of the summer so far shining on the stall holders and browsers.

And while it's still on i-player, if you missed A Very English Scandal it really is worth three hours of your life to remedy that: Not just Hugh Grant revealing himself a sensational actor, but a script by Russell T Davies which is masterpiece of story-telling scattered with dazzling gems of dialogue that ricochets between powerfully understated to graphically startling... very English indeed, as the judge sums up with blatant bias that would seem like a parody, if it wasn't actually on record. One of those infrequent times when TV really does it well.

Buzzy week in Frome: bells, blossom, bands, books and boxes

A crowded week in Frome began for me with another Word Play, Visual Radio Arts' quarterly digression from music to poetry, and an excellent session from four Bristol poets: Paul Deaton, Pauline Seward, Elizabeth Parker, and Bob Walton all have new books out and their varied voices and thoughts combined to a create a great session - you can hear it live here. Thanks again to Phil and Mags, for this amazing facility, another of the specialnesses of Frome.
Mark Steel reckons he's finally perfected the Frome accent. He gave us a sample at the opening of his show at the Cheese & Grain: "Basically, when we bought it, it was just a farm," intoned in deepest North London merchant-banker-ese. He got a roar of appreciation for what was probably the funniest gag of the night (the ones that hurt usually are). Mark's political satire is always snigger-worthy but his attempt to stir up local small-town rivalry with Trowbridge met an uncomfortable silence. It seemed a bit like asking a swan if it was bothered by a beetle. And there far was too much about his recent divorce, so I took advantage of the interval to head for 23 Bath Street and bop along with Subgiant at the official warm-up party for Once Upon a Time In the West festival.

Other music this week: Chris Jagger Trio at the Wednesday Grain Bar Roots Session, showing how different two brothers can be, and the indescribably marvellous Beef Unit turning the air punk at 23 Bath Street.
SickOnes, back from their debut tour of America's West Coast, gave Frome a raucous free taster of their at Gents Street Sneakers, and rock tribute band Purple Fish came back to Cornerhouse for landlord Martin's birthday bash.. I might've got a better image but was too busy dancing...


With the arrival of May bringing sizzling sunshine just about everywhere in the UK  ~ we topped 27° here ~ our monthly Independent Market had a seasonally floral theme, as masses of sprigs of fresh blossom were entwined into hundreds of crowns and headdresses in workshops provided by a team from Somerset Garden Day ~ one of the best features the ever-inventive Marketeers have yet provided. Popular Boss Morris from Stroud brought a nice pagan touch and bright lime green socks too.

The Frome Book Fair at the Silk Mill returned for another successful event, attracting bibliophiles from far and wide with collectibles from children's illustrated fables to rare military histories. And as a footnote to the RAISE (Refugee action in Somerset East) art auction in February, the exquisite composite artwork representing 'Home' which was created by visitors' contributions during that event has found a permanent home at Black Swan Arts. Here's us celebrating this with Kate Cochrane whose guiding hand completed the compilation.

In a bulletin already too hectic (this is Frome-related, though, as the Merlin provided rehearsal space) I'm including in this post an impressive one-man show at Bath's Rondo: Too Pretty to Punch is the concept of Edward/Edalia Day whose 80 minutes of analysis and rhetoric on being trans is engrossing and seriously entertaining. Edalia is a superb performer: narration is mainly dialogue ~ with himself/herself, with imaginary others, and with the audience ~ blended seamlessly with poignant poetry, and the focus explorative rather than political, finding new ways to share old understandings: "We play at being adults until we’ve learned it off by heart… we’ve farmed ourselves into the shapes we are now." For Edalia, trans is not a dysmorphia that leads to surgery, it's about whatever you need to do to cope, and everyone who finds themselves boxed in by a rigid conformity should get out of that box and make their own. Basically it's about being human. The graphics (by B. Mure) are brilliant - there's a taster here.

Rites of spring... and some older wrongs

April 1st meant only one thing in Frome: forget fool tricks and mystic elevations, the market is back! Frome Independent had to cancel its original spring return due to the slush-fest that heralded March, but on Sunday the sun shone, the crowds came to enjoy the stalls and the snacks and the musicality that makes Frome so special, in streets in the morning and in bars during the afternoon and evening.

Next day we were promised thunderstorms but luckily, since the river was already spilling, they didn't arrive. I usually go to Mells for the daffodil festival, but this time went on an Edward Thomas walk based around Tellesford village and weir, with exceedingly good refreshments at the mill. This old flocking mill has been superbly renovated by  Rachel Feilden and Anthony Battersby, and now generates enough electricity for 80 houses, yet the location still looks exactly as described by Edward Thomas from his journey In Pursuit of Spring. John Payne read some of the relevant prose sections of this book, with related poems interspersed by me & Martin Bax. This Easter Monday is 101 years to the day since Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras, so it was especially poignant to read his 4-line poem: In Memoriam:  
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood 
this Eastertide call into mind the men,
now far from home, who with their sweethearts should
have gathered them, and will never do again.


Hunting Raven Books on Tuesday had a big audience for David Lassman's Frome launch of The Awful Killing of Sarah Watts (written with Mick Davis) - a richly researched and thrilling account of the days when Frome was seething with pickpockets, cheese-rustlers, and ruffian gangs with names Dickens would envy (was Magwitch, in Great Expectations written 1861, inspired by the Maggs gang terrorising Frome in the 1850s?.... just a thought!)  'Crime capital of the kingdom' may be a tad hyperbolic, but certainly Frome was in a desperate state after the cloth trade collapsed, with around 97% unemployed workers and no professional support for the duo of citizen constables, as Somerset inexplicably ignored the County Police Act of 1839 for seventeen years. This fascinating tale will rank with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher as a vivid and informative show-reel from the past - interestingly, Mr Smith, the London inspector sent to solve the crime, was a friend of Mr Whicher, preceding his colleague's legendary visit by nine years.

Apart from these outings, if you've turned to my blog for a roll-call of the never-ending stream of Frome's events you'll be disappointed: I'm still on short-time for another month. I couldn't resist Al O'Kane and Rivers of England at 23 Bath Street, but other than that I've been self-exiled from the temptations of the town, so have missed most of the excellent music acts around last week.


Instead here's a picture of what spring appears to be doing, from one of my thinking-plods. Nietzche said all great thoughts are conceived by walking, and I bet he kept to his deadlines... mind you Douglas Adams claimed to love deadlines because of the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. I may have to learn to love that sound too.