theatre, art, music words - the 'Back in Business' one!

When theatre goes real-time live again, these free treats from London's costliest theatres will be much missed- do grab them while they're around. The Globe's offering this week was Romeo and Juliet, weighing in at just shy of three hours but superbly performed - Rebekah Murrell as Juliet and Petra Letang as her nurse especially brilliant - and thrilling viewing (unless you're one of the students whose laments that an English lesson is only supposed to be hour long littered the comments online).
Dominic Dromgoole's direction brings out the unruliness of the rival gangs and the youthfulness of the lovers, both initially naive in their notions of romance until sobered into the harsh reality of transgressing clan rivalries.  The sword fights are thrilling but have been filmed rather too close to follow the vital dynamic leading up to Romeo's fatal thrust, but overall there's good coverage of audience excitement.

Thursday night's National Theatre offering of 'Danny Boyle's monster hit Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein' was as unforgettably amazing as you'd expect from the first two names. Unforgettable especially for the long opening section of electric birth through the creature's long lonely struggle to articulate movement and sound, watching the thing grow into a humanoid and then a lover of poetry and a philosopher under the tutelage of the blind old man: this was full of charm as well as poignancy. When this connection is abruptly broken by the seeing world and the quest for vengeance begins the trajectory is set steadily for melodrama. Mary Shelley's tale of the motherless creature, completed while living in Bath, is a psychological drama as much as a monster story, and the parallels with her own life in terms of loss and disregarded needs are plangent. This brilliant interpretation of a timeless tragedy is on all week, well worth viewing.

 Bath Festival went virtual too, with a varied menu of free options including Grayson Perry's Art Club, in which he invites viewers to submit their own work, with the chance of  inclusion in his next real-time exhibition "when this is all over." His theme this week is portraits: here's one that artist Nathan Wyburn made of him, using soy sauce and noodles. Grayson was also much taken with the latest trend on facebook, even more popular than the 'ten-albums-that-define-me' one: Recreate artworks with things you find at home now has over 50,00 members and there are some fantastic efforts out there - if you haven't started following yet, you're missing a treat. And in the Golden Oldies corner. Channel 4 is releasing to the world 'Bingeable Box Sets' of comedy classics - every series of Seinfeld, and Father Ted to name but two.

As always there's masses of music online - if you don't have enough of your own favourites tune into Visual Radio Arts where Phil Moakes and Maggie Gregory continue to add new shows: here's No Fixed Abode who played last week.

Sofa continues to stream international acts for free viewing, and individuals musicians are increasingly posting on facebook: Martin Dimery, ex Sergeant Pepper's Only Dartboard Band, has made several of his Beatles songs publicly viewable. Here comes the Sun is one of my favourites.  Frome's jazz-fusion giant John Law offers a preview of his new album CONFIGURATION here prior to its release, and looking wider, Radiohead has posted their archived tour concerts.

Words now, and a fascinating talk from Andrew Ziminski's from his workshop organised on Zoom by Pippa Goldfinger, describing his work as a stonemason, with a focus on the landscape of Wessex. His slide presentation included discoveries from neolithic sites including Avebury, Fyfield Down, West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill Stonehenge and was supplemented by workshop demonstrations of skills like creating sarsen polishing stones and repairing the carvings in the temple of Sulis Minerva. Buy the book, if you haven't got it already!

From fabulous fact to intriguing fiction, with Bath's Story Friday, the popular community platform initiated by mega-skilled Clare Reddaway, went online last week and continues its Friday evening sessions on the theme of 'Dark Clouds, Silver Linings' read by a team from Kilter Theatre. This week's set included a story from Chiara Vascotto, whose sensuous, visceral, personal style I remember from last year in Skyros. You can listen to her story, read Amy Vickers, here, along with five other intriguing short tales - one by Clare herself.
Liv Tork, indefatigably innovative and creative, continues to collect submissions of 'haiflu' (haiku in time of plague) to create weekly compilations: here's week 6 online, sombre but plangently sincere. Meanwhile Frome Poetry Cafe  is open for any original poems, especially with some tangental connection to 'revenge or redemption (which happened appropriately to be our theme for April) as the page becomes virtual 'open mic' for lockdown times.

And as April moves into May in Frome, where we're lucky enough to have lanes and footpaths close enough to walk miles in any direction, I'll end this week's roundup with images of blossom - the wonderful Judas tree in Victoria park, and a small burst of the hawthorn blossom brimming on every hedge.

Autumn medley: art, words, & a brilliant SLAM in Bristol

Stourhead in October consoles winterphobes like me for the ending of summer. The Temple of Apollo is particularly consoling as he was a major inspiration to Keats and other romantic sun-worshippers.

A further attraction last week was the work of Frome painter Kate Cochrane who has combined with Olivia Clifton-Bligh, Tanya Hinton and Tim Rose in First View Gallery on the edge of the park in a show they call Quartet. Here's Olivia with her massive bronze lion Bee-speaker, who has a tiny gold bee in his mouth. There's a strong connection between lions and bees from a biblical story cannily utilised by Tate & Lyle when they canned their sugary waste with the slogan Out of the strong came forth sweetness. (The quote, from Judges, begins 'Out of the eater, something to eat', so it's a kind of Ozymandias theme about power never enduring, really, but we all loved Golden Syrup anyway...) I like too the notion of telling your secrets to the bees: they don't care or tell.

Frome author Peter Clark sees his writings about his time in the middle East for the British Council as "in the genre of the Subaltern's diary: fly-on-the wall observer, not someone important in his own right." The Emirates Diaries are the latest to be published: "I didn't want to go to the Emirates," the author admitted to an attentive audience for his talk in Hunting Raven Books on Tuesday. "I thought it was an unreal country, modernist and consumerist". In the event he found much to admire among the people of the sheikdoms, and as he speaks Arabic, Peter could contribute much as well as enjoy his experience. As well as the Sheiks, other colourful characters featured in Peter's fascinating talk, like Wilfred Thesiger, who consented to an exhibition of his photographs of arabs in the 1940s & 50s, and Mrs Thatcher who left without paying her bill... This book like his previous ones is based on a daily writing habit which has accumulated into 50 volumes of page-a-day diarising. Peter's writing has been described as "quirky, digressive, and indiscreet" and he says he's happy with that. It sounds perfect to me.

The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever has quit the Serpentine to come west, filling all three floors of Bristol's Arnolfini dockside gallery. The Analphoney, as some disenchanted Bristolians call this prestigious institution, is usually renowned for esoteric items in unfrequented rooms, but when I went on Saturday it was totally rammed for Grayson Perry. This is a show that sends you out into the city finding you are gazing at strangers with compassionate intensity. I've only experienced this after a really great play before, but then Grayson Perry's art is like theatre: he dramatises life in extreme and vivid ways. He weaves our lives in tapestries, we are bottled in vast ceramic vases, he depicts everyone from world leaders to the dispossessed. He has a special empathy for men, struggling to define manhood without jobs, money, or status. It's all very political and personal and indescribable, and you really should go and see it ~ if you haven't yet ~ before 24 December.

Grayson Perry wasn't the only sensation at the Arnolfini on Saturday: the evening brought an influx of poets and poetry fans for Bristol Poetry Festival Poetry Slam, a dazzling presentation of talent and passion as 18 performance poets presented slices of their life-view: acutely insightful, mostly witty, sometimes painful, each one showing why this art form is so extraordinarily powerful and exciting. Judging was on writing, performance, and audience response, and scores were high all round with Shaun Hill the final winner and Melanie Branton a nano-fraction behind him ~ but the 'competition' aspect becomes an exciting part of the enthusiastic appreciation in the superbly capable hands of host Claire Williamson together with Elvis McGonagall ~ who will be in Frome later this week: cue quick final push for Elvis at the Granary!!!

A busy week left me less time for enjoying the bar music sessions but Thursday gave us an extra treat from Frome Jazz Club at the Cornerhouse, where Keith Harrison-Broninski's trio was joined by John Martin on sax adding a mellow 'multiphonic' sound which gave a different mood of their set (though, sadly, from a photographer's viewpoint no further illumination.)

Somerset Arts Weeks ended on Sunday so I made a last-minute dash to Shave Farm to see the amazing collective work of 8 artists, using a range of media including film, printing, pottery, and painting, all working in barns with wonderful views across the fields towards Bruton.
Here's Frome artist Annemarie Blake painting in one of them, Terri Hogan with her Cornish seashore sketchbooks in another, and a portrait of her daughter by Kay Lewis-Bell.

And here too is the more concentrated hub of artistry in the village hall of Batcombe and Beyond that I stumbled upon en route due to Google satnav malfunction. As well as paintings and drawings, there were some intriguing envelopes by illustrator Peter Sheldon, decorated satirically as inspired by their stamps.

Sunday was Come Together day at Frome Library, a free-to-all event hosted by Fair Frome in a party-like atmosphere with music, balloons, and lots of cake, to show the range of facilities and supports available in Frome to anyone looking for companionship, activities, or any kind of support.

The Frome Street Bandits and the Frukes, as pictured here, provided the live music and among other presentations Home In Frome was there to encourage people to share & record their memories of changing times for an archive of stories that would otherwise be lost.

Finally in this slightly out-of-order week, a quick movie recommendation, because of its writerly connection and because you may think Goodbye Christopher Robin will probably be sentimentalised and sugar-frosted. It isn't. The back-lit woodland shots are gorgeous, but the child is usually anxiously trailing his shell-shocked father, who's blocked from writing by PTSD and slowly finding solace in those famous imaginings which become a product that turns his distressed son into public property and ruins their relationship.  It's a dark tale, in short, and the film ends with a reminder that AA Milne really wanted to write an anti-war book. He finally did: Peace with Honour ~ "It is because I want everybody to think that war is poison, and not an over-strong, extremely unpleasant medicine, that I am writing this book" ~ was published in 1934. Well, he tried...

Of launches, sanctions, and masculinity

It's been a great week for book launches. In Frome, over a hundred people arrived at Merlin theatre hungry to hear poet and author Rosie Jackson reading from her newly published memoir The Glass Mother, with quite a few also hungry for the exquisite platters of tapas (thanks Jo Harrington) in the night-clubby ambience onstage. As 'Spoken Word coordinator' for the theatre I'd been involved in this event for a while, and as Rosie had shared her developing story at our writing group, I knew this was going to be a memorable evening, and it certainly was.
Rosie suggested at the start of her reading that memoir is a form more akin to poetry than to history, and her extracts all showed that quality of lyrical precision, as well as unflinching integrity to the poignant theme at the heart of her story.
Also there to celebrate their completed books were seven of her writing group, Des Harris, Dennis Costler, Maggie Pierce, Gillie Richardson, Steve Small, Tim Cutting, and Karine Butchart, who all read a short extract from their own memoirs. A fabulous evening and an unforgettable night ~ huge appreciation to the writers and thanks to the theatre crew for their superb support. As a happy footnote, Rosie's publisher Robin Jones reports after-show sales surpassing all his previous Unthank Books launches.

Now to Bath, where Carrie Etter, originally from Normal, Illinois now lives. Carrie and Frome's Claire Crowther are both powerful & compelling poets who are currently launching new chapbooks with Shearsman, and as they're also friends this was clearly a brilliant opportunity for a shared launch at Toppings, with a soiree at Circo afterwards. The diversity in subject and form in these two books made for fascinating readings: Carrie explores climate change in words scattered across the pages of Scar, vividly evoking the blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts & heatwaves that Illinois is suffering, while in Bare George Claire reports with esoteric precision on the history of coinage from her observations at the Royal Mint. Both extraordinary books that yield more meaning with every re-reading.

Claire's 'bare George' is the dragon-slayer, symbol of mastery and male dominance which segues usefully into my next report: Grayson Perry opened his Typical Man in a Dress tour in Bristol, entertaining a full house at Colston Hall with his thoughts on masculinity. As you'd expect, these were colourful and comical as well as thought-provoking, and after the interval some thoughts thus provoked were tweeted onto the back-screen. (I liked 'masculinity is having to fetch the interval drinks because the wife can't be arsed to get out of her seat.') Masculinity, according to Grayson Perry's six-point man-ifesto is: not innate but learned, it's power & dominance, it's performance, it's redundant, it's sexy, and it's a treatable mental health condition. Backdrop projections accompany the banter ~ a picture of Bear Grylls crouching in undergrowth, for example, to illustrate his point that skills a man needs have changed and nowadays it's more likely to be how to find a decent school in your area. His conclusion is that macho men are now skeuomorphs, a wonderful word derived from architecture meaning 'an object that used to be functional and is now merely decorative'.  Like those awesome tapestries, insightful detail creates an overall picture of our society, and his appraisal is compassionate as well as clever.

Also in Bristol: Watershed was showing I, Daniel Blake all week and I went to an afternoon screening. Director Ken Loach deserves every accolade for this searing case-study story of the iniquities of 'austerity' which professionals and users confirm as entirely accurate although Work & Pensions Secretary Damian Green, who hadn't seen the film, disagreed. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and has six nominations in the British Independent Film Awards, including best film and best director. Hang on there Ken, we need you.

On a lively firework night, bonfires were burning too in Silk Mill's yard as a Cider Festival raging within ~ not my personal tipple, but great to hear Al O'Kane and Andy Hill playing there, especially Al's wonderful Winter Blues: it's that time of year again... what will winter bring for us all. Indeed.
And there's always excellent live music at the monthly Frome Independent market, on the busking stage and in pubs and streets as well ~ here's The Wochynskis punking it up with London's Calling in Cheap Street.

And finally: here's the impossibly beautiful view at Stourhead on Monday at the start of a week that began with mild days and gorgeous autumn tones, and ended with a deep litter of fallen leaves as November winds bite..

Small vanities, big starman in the sky

He grew up in south-east England and went on to become world famous for his creative genius, and love of drama & self-adorning. The week we learned David Bowie had sung his last earth-song was also when Grayson Perry's incredible tapestry sequence The Vanity of Small Differences arrived in Bath's Victoria Art Gallery. Five huge pieces of satiric representation of social aspiration & the English class system tell the apocryphal tale of Tim Rakeman's Hogarthian progress of upward mobility to his (literally) car-crash final fall, each so full of fine detail you need at least ten minutes staring to take it all in. The Breughel reproduction & dried flowers in Tim's first home, the muddy organic veg wrapped in Guardian newspaper when he's a successful software designer... as well as cultural clues each scene is laden with meta-painterly references, from adapted titles like The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal (when Tim sells up to Branson) to symbolic detail like a smashed smartphone position centrally in the final scene to represent Holbein's 'memento mori' skull. (No, I didn't know, it's in the notes.)
The collection is succinctly curated, and most of the commentary is woven into the tapestries ("a normal family, a divorcee or two, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence...the usual thing"). Perhaps the most amazing aspect of these dazzling stories, given that Grayson Perry's art is always amazing, is the making of them: designed on photoshop and woven in Flanders on computer-controlled looms ~ at dazzling speed, the artist reports. And they're funny. "I can't resist having a joke," he says, "I think it's part of reflecting human life."  This treasure trove will be in Bath till April 10th, don't miss it.

Another excellent Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday with the brilliant Al O'Kane band. Al writes all his own songs, I especially love his anthemic Animals... Stand up if you dare, stand up if you care... It's time to question what humans are really for.

And on Saturday there was a feast of fabulous music at Rook Lane in the Show for Fred. Fred Burge who died last year was a stalwart of the Frome Festival team and this show was to celebrate her life and her love of live performances.  Rosie & I felt very privileged to join the line-up as Nevertheless Fringe Theatre, sharing a dramatic cameo from our last festival production.  The talent in Frome is almost unbelievable: we were treated to songs from Christ Church Singers led by Ann Burgess who won Radio 3's recent carol contest, the lively ukulele band Frukes, my personal favourites Bonne Nouvelle and Three Corners, with Frome Festival patron Morag McLaren providing the stunning, very witty, operatic finale. And definitely not least, Martin Dimery as festival director & show organiser gave us a twirl of his various melodic hats including as John Lennon from Sgt Pepper's Only Dartboard Band, as Buddy Holly singing an Elizabethan ditty from his popular one-man show Shakespeare Rattle and Roll, and ending his set with Starman waiting in the sky... if we sparkle he may land tonight..

Finally this week, another celebration of a leaving of life... extraordinary, adored, and much mourned, David Robert Jones said of his mercurial persona "The trousers may change but the actual words and subjects I've always chosen to write with are things to do with isolation, abandonment, fear and anxiety - all of the high points of one's life.''  On Friday night Frome joined the galaxy of wakes and remembrances across the UK and the world with a David Bowie Appreciation Party at the Three Swans, with requests taken & played all night by a tireless & dedicated DJ ~ Pat Feeney you are indeed a starman ~ and we sparkled & sang along.

As blackberries ripen and August ends...

It's that heavy end of summer now, fields stripped down to cornrow ridges and the verges decorated with silver thistledown & bright red hips. Autumnal, in short, but a pleasant aftertaste of  the summer festival this week: readings from the Writers in Residence event revealed the impressive inventiveness mustered on sight by the phrase 'It was a chance meeting that changed everything". Impromptu tales penned in shops and cafes, romantic, historical, poignant, quirky and very funny, were all shared at the Bell in Buckland Dinham on Thursday night in a delightfully laid-back event hosted by Sue Watts for Frome Writers Collective. Here's Nikki Lloyd reading her winning story, about the relationship between two women revealed with beautiful delicacy and an unexpected ending.

And what can I say about the Tri-Art Summer School production of West Side Story at Merlin Theatre except that it was a spectacular triumph, thoroughly deserving the standing-ovation applause of each full-house audience: a vibrant ensemble show that dazzled from the opening chords of  the overture to the moving final moment, with funky dance routines, superb voices, fabulous costumes, great filmic visuals, and a stark set that cleverly utilised mirror effects to increase impact.  The boys' gang set pieces were terrific but even more impressive were the girls: I like to be in America and I feel pretty were absolute highlights, as was the poignant duet between Maria (Tabitha Cox) and Anita (Marie-Claire Wood) after the street killings. Strong support from Ryan Hughes as Riff and Aynsley Minty, Nick White and Steve Scammell as the grownups, but the night belonged to the youngsters. There was a ban on cameras but I do hope someone managed to video the lads' unforgettable Officer Krupke routine with Ben Hardy-Phillips as Action leapfrogging his gang across the stage and 'Baby John' Dillon Berry's incredible trilling social-worker pastiche ~ posted on Youtube it would get about a zillion views.  Creative Team Leader Claudia Berry must be very happy ~ and brochures are out now so you don't miss out on the next big Merlin production, Little Mermaid.  

There's art stirring in wild places too, with the Step in Stone project in the disused rock quarries of East Mendip.  Six different venues throughout the summer till 18th October are featuring site-specific artworks in various media, and on Sunday the Westdown/Asham Quarry featured a call-and-response trumpet duet by Frome composer Helen Ottaway, together with birdsong and shadow sounds from long-gone industrial processes.
The art trail is intriguing but the whole place is enchanting now, reclaimed by trees and buddlia bushes and reedy marsh pools where dragonflies flit, reminding me of the temples of Cambodia reclaimed into jungle by determined Ficus Strangulosa trees.  The trail route is a walkers' right of way now, definitely a place to return and explore, when I'm home again in a few weeks.

I'm off to California now, to walk the coast and write and spend time with good friends. As always, there's much over here I'll miss ~ Merlin's 40th birthday celebrations for one, and all the excellent live music around in pubs & bars ~ here's Chic Mystique at the Artisan this afternoon.
Also happening while I'm away is the Festival of Puppetry in Bristol which looks awesome, various stage shows, and the Great British Bakeoff (only joking) but I did at least get to see the extraordinary and brilliant Grayson Perry self-portrait in Bath's adventurous little Victoria Gallery. It's a map of his life, half-chronicle half-citadel and totally engrossing.