Women being men, men being men, and life in Frome

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is an acknowledged classic, a novel with prescient awareness of the social cruelty inherent in the rampant materialism of 1920s of post-war America. The theme and the plot are contained in one of the last lines of the book: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."   It's a great read - a story by a man about men fighting over their status and over their women, quintessentially a tale of male rivalry set in a landscape of that luxurious, careless era. So you wouldn't expect two women,  with basically a settee as their set, to create the entire story so evocatively, powerfully, wittily, and movingly. Although as this production is from Bristol's  Wardrobe Theatre, you probably would.  Tamsin Hurtado Clarke and Jesse Meadows take on every character in Scott Fitzgerald’s novel to evoke the doomed romance between Daisy and Jay Gatsby as seen through the outsider eyes of Nick Carraway, often role-shifting several times in a single scene. They’re helped by excellent filming and music, and a set that, like the story itself, evolves from its frenzy of self-indulgent hedonism into violent chaos. Director Tom Brennan with director of photography Jack Offord & their teams filmed it all live in January, and you can book here to see the performance until the end of March - recommended. 

Also now streaming, Hymn at the Almeida is another two-hander but a more traditional and weightier affair: the story of two men who shared the same father, written by Lolita Chakrabarti and dealing with Issues with-a-capital-I, like parental responsibility and race and policing, with much weighty dialogue. Despite the fact that the actors actually shared the set, they were filmed separately for 99% of the story, so although Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani were very good, the sense of their interaction was disappointingly absent. Directed by Blanche McIntyre, here's a screen shot of a rare lighter moment.

Another of those of Best-Place-To-Live polls has revealed once again, that the top town in Somerset is Frome, for its 'arty artisan indy businesses and cafes' - let's hope they all survive the shutdowns. River House on the bridge is enterprisingly taking orders online for speciality donuts.  And fittingly for our notoriously dissenting town, Frome's own Tolpuddle Tree, a descendent of the famous Tolpuddle Martyrs' tree in Dorset, has been planted in Rodden Meadow exactly 187 years after the original memorial - Julian Hight, Frome's Mister Trees, gives more of the context and tells the story here.

A brief note on visual arts now: Banksy, Bristol's most famous 'unknown' son (also a friend of several street artists in Frome) featured on TV last week in an excellent documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art.  Sadly this isn't available online in this area but if you missed this inclusive look at how art was reclaimed from the investors and returned to the people, you can take a look at this short trailer.

And finally, poetry corner: Winter Warmers is a collection of seven heart-warming poems supporting pubs in a difficult year by celebrating their role in within their communities. Bristol poet Malaika Kegode performs the poem for the South West, and also don't miss Steve Pottinger representing the Midlands with The Best Pub in the World.  Over in Bristol, David Johnson, always a well-received guest at Frome Poetry Cafe, featured on a zoom event on Saturday at which the highlight for me was his reverie as Edward Coulson tipping into the Bristol harbour ("only a quick dip / no time to dive").  And looking ahead to June, the brilliant news is that Frome Poetry Cafe will be joining the town's Festival celebrations with an event on the ECOS amphitheatre - note our fantastic guest Liv Torc, and get the details in your diary now! (Thanks Suzy Howlett for the flyer)

 

Lights, music, action - for one last week...

A balmy evening and Merlin's ECOS amphitheatre last Saturday combined to create the perfect setting for great entertainment from the Unravelling Wilburys,  Frome's riposte to the supergroup septet (Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, in case any of the names slip your mind as they did mine...) These Wilbury boys are the real thing, spotted and copied by the assorted musicians who nicked their name, so in response the Unravelling clan have nicked some of their songs - that was the story we heard, anyway, along with fantastic renditions of the songs of those rich eras.. Only the Lonely, Mr Tambourine Man, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps were my personal favourites but the entire show was brilliant, with humour as well as passionate nostalgia: "Don't make fun of the young people", ersatz Roy chides his mainly post-mature audience, "You probably take more drugs than they do."

With our local gigs now once again taken off the menu, words became the main theme for me last week, with the good weather allowing individual & small group outdoor writers' meetings, four in all, and two - yes TWO, poetry performances.  Merlin's ECOS proved excellent for our long-delayed Poetry Cafe event, easily big enough for social distancing all around the amphitheatre: here's Kieron Bacon at the mic early on - with fourteen poets and 9 o'clock finish, all the lights were needed by the end of a wonderful evening with a rich variety of subjects and styles. One of the highlights, in an event glimmering with them throughout, was Liv Torc's premier performance of her latest poem, There's Something About Mary, enriching and moving in equal parts - you can read it here.

More live performance to end the week, with a 'Pop-Up Poetry Party' at the Silk Mill, hosted by Jo Harrington for 42 Acres, who joined in on the open mic. Among my other favourites were Rosie Jackson's poem about reconnecting with the natural world, B's moving words to her imagined daughter, Cathy's sizzling riposte to an insult, Mike's bicycle-related histories, Owen's mum's poem about the granite hills of Talyllynn, and the unexpected guest spot from pro-performer Dave Hubble whose witty musings on humanity included evidence that humans offer less to the world than a sea anemone. Here's Jo, and the picture she took of me. Thanks Steve for providing sound for both these gigs. 

And if you've ever wondered what an Indonesian birthday breakfast party looks like, this wonderful spread will give you a clue: the eggs are a birthday speciality spiced with chilli, ginger, and garlic, and the vegetable centerpiece Gado Gabo was suffused with the flavour of coconut. The leaves are calaloo, in a light tempura. All delicious!

So there won't be much more from me about Frome's creative life for a while, and a community arts blog has no place for comments about hedge-fund racketeers raking in billions from their bets on a collapsing deal with EU while our portly buffoon of a PM fantasises about being leader of the gang, but I do recommend you read, or re-read, Orwell's Animal Farm. It's full of plangent relevance.

Ending this post with a personal pleasure that the new edict can't ban: yoga with YogaBen. As well as longer online sessions, this excellent tutor & practitioner generously offers free support in shorter youtube videos: check him out here, and subscribe or just try them out. 

Mostly outdoors: words, music, & other sounds

It's been a hot week, perfect for long walks in the countryside and safe outdoor gatherings. Last Saturday evening combined elements of both, with a large group of nature-loving Fromies staging a peaceful protest-party in Rodden meadow in response to an excessive and ill-timed assault on the trees of Willow Vale on behalf of the quarry railway. A barrier-side  meeting between representatives of both sides of the dispute resulted in a pledge to restore the treeline once the work is completd, which won't restore the habitat of this year's birds, bats, and myriad other wild life, but is at least a civil compromise, and the gathering became more of a musical soiree as the warm evening darkened.

Another musical gathering next day: this time in Victoria Park where Paul Kirtley's We Don't Scare Easy Tribe continued their support of the slow return to live music in Frome with an afternoon session on the bandstand.  Several guest performers were also accommodated before the end of this four-hour session, without any breach of spacing or sanitising, so hopefully there will be more of these excellent sessions - strong songs, excellent performers, and great sound.

An unusual art report this week, as Breezeblock Beats put on an exhibition at the Bennet Centre inspired by the early 20th Century electronic audio art movement Musique Concrete. Eleven individual 10-minute compositions ere played on a loop throughout Saturday afternoon, each one created in response to recordings of the ambient sounds of that building. I was particularly drawn to Carl Sutterby's evocative piece Ghosts, which reminded me of the Tristram Shandy banquet held in that very two years ago - though with shadows and sunlight replacing the opulent costumes and aromas... an interesting & unusual event. 

With my new novel The Price of Bread now beginning to raise interest in the US, it was great fun to chat with Suzy Howlett about the background and origins of this story for the FWC Writers on Radio broadcast aired Friday 21 August at 2pm (and online soon after.) Here we are in Suzy's lovely garden, snapped by Jane Battye.

And also on the subject of writing, Frome's renowned eco-poet Helen Moore is offering a programme of 'Wild Ways to Writing' - online mentoring for 'a unique creative writing journey into deeper Nature connection.  Hopefully Helen will be one of the poets coming along to the return of Frome Poetry cafe on September 3rd, on the ECOS amphitheatre outside the Merlin - I've already had the wonderful news that Frome favourites Liv Torc and Deborah Harvey and John Christopher Wood intend to be there! It's b.y.o. tipples, nibbles, and cushioning for the stones, and  £2 entries will go directly to the theatre. Big thanks too to Suzy Howlett for this snazzy flyer!

 

Realism and lyricism and rain

Writer Will Eno has called all his characters 'Jones' which might seems to suggest they’re ordinary folks, just like you & me - but who else in the world could be like these couples - needy, evasive, self-contradictory, incoherent then exquisitely lucid? Well, perhaps all of us in our different ways. The Realistic Joneses, at Theatre Royal Bath's Ustinov Studio takes under two hours to remind us that everyone has secret sorrows and joys and if this sounds like a long play about nothing, you should know that it’s a superb script, beautifully written and acted - an absolute delight of a production, laugh-aloud one moment, poignant the next.  Bob Jones (Corey Johnson) is recuperating though it’s unclear from what (he won't say, except that his syndrome's name sounded like a jazz quartet) with support from his wife Jennifer (Sharon Small): their neighbours, John Jones (Jack Laskey) and Pony (Clare Foster), have problems too, though the owner/holder relationship here is less clear.  There is no incisive moment of conflict and no carnage, only the story of something unknowable, and it seems over too soon when it ends. Great direction by Simon Evans intensifies the sense of quest for connection of both couples, and designer Peter McKintosh has created an evocative set, with glass doors enhancing and sometimes mirroring the precarious vulnerability of all the characters, neutral removal boxes as seating, an astral void above and emptiness beyond. Written in 2012, timeless in a modern world and will probably remain my 'best drama' for 2020 right to the end of the year: it's simply superb on till 7th March, see it if you can. Images: Simon Annand.

A delightful Frome Poetry Cafe too, with Deborah Harvey and Dominic Fisher, two of the Bristol-based IsamBard poets, guesting at our spring session. 'Green Shoots & New Beginnings' was our theme, selected hopefully although in current global conditions it might have seemed sardonic. However we had a really lovely evening: as well as some even more recent work, Deborah read from her new collection The Shadow Factory and Dominic shared from Ladies and Gentlemen of the Dead. Both poets have the ability to distill the extraordinary from the commonplace, combining visceral imagery with tender memory, with form stripped down to its essence. Fourteen 'Open Mic' poets shared impressive and entertaining words too - some moving, some funny, and all much enjoyed. Here's Jo Butts, current Frome Festival Poet Laureate, reading her witty history of Saint Valentine. 


Words with music now, starting with Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday.   Jon Amor denies that he has the longest fingers in the world but it's hard to believe him: they must certainly be among the fastest strumming ones. He leads the Jon Amor Blues Group as well as performing solo with his mainly-original songs - the scorching 'Stitch in her party dress' was my ear-worm all week. A brilliant session: great rock-bluesy music and sharp lyrics.

Paul Kirtley, indefatigable organiser of local music gigs, excelled himself this week with not only a late night charity event but an afternoon acoustic session next day. The White Hart at Corsley was the venue for Saturday evening and as storm Dennis kicked off outside, the small friendly group in the bar proffered song requests and shots and turned this event into something of a party.

Next day's session in The Three Swans,  by contrast, was completely full, with most of the audience also performing. Lovely informal atmosphere and great range of styles and instruments, plus performers of every age, all crammed into the baroque-style decor of the upper room there. These three images may give some idea of the range of performers: Paul's house band (not all, just as many as fitted in to one frame) playing rock classics - probably Wagon Wheel, the Callums, (Sarah, Vin, and Annie) with Dakota by Stereophonics, and me doing some semi-scurrilous wordage of my own. (thanks David for the snap) A rich event indeed.

Tyrants, storms, poetry, drama, bees and murmurations

There's been quite a lot of everything this week, weather included, so let's start with the fun side of drama: the Merlin One Act Play writing Competition Winners Evening when the six chosen scripts were performed on stage: costumed, with set & lighting, and fully rehearsed by director & senior judge Claudia Pepler-White, on the Merlin main stage - a prize to make any writer drool if they're serious about creating plays for stage. Sadly one of the winning writers, Jonathan Skinner, was defeated by the storm from coming to see the show, but Vivian Oldaker, Clare Reddaway, Alexandra Ricou and Alison Clink were all in the audience to enjoy the applause and the discussion & feedback in the bar. From Romeo's Juliet on Jeremy Kyle to a daughter confronting her jailed child-killer mother, from thought-provoking issues like a transplant causing personality change, and life-trading in a dystopian near-future, to a role-reversal comedy and a bizarre farce, the mood zig-zagged between each short play, creating a hugely varied evening of well-performed drama. You can see more about the plays and masses of pictures on the link above.

Now to Bath, where Sophocles' Antigone, the ruler whose tyranical abuse of power destroyed everything he valued and drove those around him to despise him, is a good choice currently for dramatic production, and the Bath Theatre Academy students at The Egg last week created a strong sense of the issues and the inevitable ending of the conflict. Antigone's challenge to the tyrant about her right to bury her brother enhances the relevance, as she is responding to a more powerful law than the cruel king can comprehend.  There's not much scope for a wide range of mood in a narrative trajectory from deadlock to mass self-slaughter but Issie Sallows found dark humour in her role of the soldier. All this young team had commendable stage presence, and director/facilitator Kate Pasco encouraged them to reinvent the ancient roles and 'breathe new life' into the characters. Impressive.

And still with words: Frome Writers Collective monthly meeting on Monday featured a short talk on the Golden Egg Academy given by Abigail Kohlhoff and Nicki Marshall, both of whom contribute to the mentoring programme for children's authors, with advice relevant advice also to writers in any genre looking for professional publication. A quirky addition to the event, held as always at the Three Swans, was provided by the formal presentation to landlady Lucy Cooper by FWC member John Walton of a Remington typewriter circa 1920, to join the medley of unusual memorabilia in the upper room where we meet.
There was a spate of public writing on Saturday as Extinction Rebellion Frome collected love-thoughts to nature from passers-by to create a message of positive praise for the earth which will be published in the upcoming issue of Frome Times. I was invited to help at the final stage, and with XR's Pippa Clarke had the delicious task of compiling these heart-shaped fragments into a cascade of word-imagery, creating a moving valentine poem to our planet.

A brief mention here for the Proof Pudding Club, where Tina Gaisford-Waller, Hunting Raven Books manager & initiator of this inform-then-indulge monthly meeting, was dispensing chocolate sponge and gathering our opinions.  Overall winner in our group was The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christuana Figueres. Yuval Noah Harari - he wrote SAPIENS - calls it 'inspiring' so definitely one to go for when it's officially released on 25.2.20.

Bees now - Fifty of them, in fact, all realistically crafted from fabric by artist and textile worker Lydia Needle who became concerned at the loss of our butterflies and concluded that 'something is missing from our ecosystem' and that the bees could disappear too. Lydia, here talking to bee-keeper James Bartholomew, produced lifelike versions of each different type of bee - they have a surprising range of size and structure - and invited other artists to research and respond in their own medium. The result is FIFTY BEES, an unmissable exhibition at Black Swan Arts, which has created a real buzz (sorry) with each bee accompanied by the art work it had inspired - here's the Squat Furrow Bee, and wildlife artist Hazel Mountford's accompanying imagining of secret life in the field margins that are its habitat.

The related ekphrastic poetry group Words at the Black Swan drew 15 writers for an excellent session led Claire Crowther - some of the poems in response to the artwork will be on the group's page very soon, and the exhibition is showing in the Long Gallery until March 14th.

All of which brings us nicely back via words to performance, still on theme as Frome Poetry Cafe had invited thoughts of 'green shoots' as guests Deborah Harvey and Dominic Fisher are 'IsamBards' with an interest in poetry walks - this picture is from a piece in the Guardian about them. Deborah's visceral and visual imagination and Dominic's thoughtful, personal words proved a great combination, and 14 'open mic' readers treated us wonderful range of ideas.
There are images of all the readers here courtesy of David Goodman, who also took this pic of me enjoying listening to Jo Butts, Frome Festival Poet Laureate, on top form with her Valentine ditty.

Concluding this lively and varied week with music: Nunney Acoustic Cafe defied storm Ciara with a cram-full audience for an afternoon of classy bands, duos, and soloists. Main guests were The MellowTones, Jane Langley's new band playing songs composed by Jane herself. Also exciting, and new (to me), Quiet Man, wonderful Mountain Speaks Fire, the well-named Don't Scare Easy Tribe, Decades, and other combinations & soloists. Here's Jane's band and Mountain/Fire duo Vin Callen & Helen Robertson performing their encore, In the Pines, and a link for more pix here.


Ending with the magic of murmuration... This is the moment the swirling clouds of starlings abruptly began to drop into the reeds of Shapwick Heath wetland.

Lights, music, curtains...

Frome Festive Poetry Cafe on Monday evening had a focus on the community aspect of these bi-monthly-ish get-togethers at the Garden Cafe: we've enjoyed some fantastic guest poets at these events, and will continue to do so, but this time the metaphorical mic was given over entirely to the floor - or rather to the creative people who come as audience. Here's me somewhat randomly allocating the gifts donated by Hunting Raven Books and Merlin Theatre but the prize for everyone was a really lovely night, rich in imagery with poems ranging from poignant memories to witty word-play. Several 'debut poets' took the plunge, including a touching 'thankyou letter to Frome' from Chloe Rayburn, joining popular regulars like Mike Grenville (with a piece inspired by the current Black Swan exhibition you can read here) humorists Moira Andrew and John Christopher Wood, and John Payne, who read and distributed a moving poem from his current research on the workhouse in Bath, consulting leather ledgers in the Guildhall basement: They list the money spent, the figures, / but not the suffering / of children, elders, the mad, the sick./ We must hold them in remembrance ourselves.  Thanks David Goodman for the photos.

Next night's illuminating imagery was the literal kind, with an evening walk over the Wiltshire border into neighbouring Longleat Festival of Lights rewarded by an awesome scene of myths and legends in massive scale filling the park right down to, and including, the lake. This extraordinary spectacle is on until Jan 5th and it really is, also literally, fabulous: I've been critical of this costly 'spectacular' in the past for tacky cartoon figures and badly re-envisaged storybook characters, but this year's theme-envisaging is truly awesome - every mythic monster and hero from legends around the world is here, aesthetically beautiful as well as posed in thrilling story-telling moments - the illuminated tags beside each were being extensively used by visitors, I noticed, to succinctly fill the sad omissions in our 'education' system. There are hundreds of beautiful images there to enthral and photograph - I picked two that chime currently for me.


For the rest of the week Frome seems to have been wall-to-wall music. Raggedy Men at the Cornerhouse were a perfect choice for Friday, with dancing from the start and lots of shout-along moments to great songs from Jonny Rotten and The Clash - classic smashing punk, but with riffs! Andy, Bugsy, Carl, and drumming dervish Pat - you were just what we all needed.


Dancing-from-the-start at Cornerhouse again next night for amazing Bristol band Flash Harry, who claim to be a folk rock-balkan-cajun band but it's not that simple (!) to describe them - they can sing&play at fast-forward, make a sea-shanty sound like Deep Purple, make a hoe-down song jazzy or the other way around, and have a penchant for hamsters. I can't find their wonderful Get Out Of Bed song online but here's a sample of their style from a Bristol gig.

Sunday afternoon Acoustic Club in the Three Swans, co-ordinated by Paul Kirtley, was a pleasantly casual affair, with a series of enjoyable performances including a great set from Mountain Speaks Fire who were joined for their version of Where Did You Sleep Last Night by guest singer Anna Callan making an early debut. (I always thought this was a Nirvana original, but it's actually traditional, first recorded in 1939 by Lead Belly)

And the tempo stayed relaxed back at the Cornerhouse for Graham Dent's Sunday jazz night, this time with Caroline Radcliffe as guest singer with Graham's regular Piano Trio and John Plaxton on trumpet.

As this is primarily an arts blog, there will be no comment about what also happened last week and I'll leave you with a seasonal poem from William Yeats: The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spirtus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
 A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
 Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
 That twenty centuries of stony sleep
 Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?