Fantasy, form, fables, futures - and fun

With June just a breath away, here in the southwest Open Air Theatre season has already begun: Frome hosted the endlessly inventive Illyria company on Sunday as their touring version of Peter Pan arrived on the ECOS amphitheatre in the afternoon to delight a mixed age audience.  The company boasts that this is the first production to include real flying, and while strictly speaking an offstage rig isn't actually quite the same thing as 'real', this complex apparatus contrived several brilliant stage effects - especially Peter's flamboyant fight scene, and the under-water life of the mermaid (with bubbles...) 

Director Oliver Grey, the founder & godfather of Illyria, points out in his programme notes that the entire story of Peter Pan is rooted in psychology of its author - as JM Barry himself observed, later in life. And as much of the book's action is problematic for live representation, his directorial decision has been to focus on, and explore, the author's idea that 'everything in this story is a game played by children...' and their nursery is always present on this set.  'After all, what is an adventure if not a trip into the imagination?'

This show is so much an ensemble production it's difficult to highlight individuals, but Nicholas Lee (Wendy's brother John, & Tootles) and Elizabeth Robin (Mrs Darling, Tinker Bell & Slightly) especially have great stage presence and dramatic energy.  The croc, and Tinkebell, deserve special mention too. Basically, the whole show is a delight. 

Music focus of the week, leading neatly into art spot, goes to simpsonharrisonbenjamin, at the opening of Hauser & Wirth's exhibition on Friday evening. Sharing Form - an impressive collection of works by Henry Moore that could not have opened on a more lovely evening, with blue-sky-sunshine to enhance all the amazing artefacts in the fabulous gardens, while indoors the rooms were full of thought-provoking 'investigative' pieces. You really need to visit if you can: it's superbly curated and this comment from the exhibition guide effectively says it all: "a rich and often surprising visual biography of Moore's relentless interrogation of form and our shared comprehension of it."

Bit of a wild card now: a historical trip to the wilds of Wales, to explore a Roman settlement in Caerleon - well, the amphitheatre and the toilets anyway, though there was probably more going on in 1st Century AD - and, even more excitingly, the discovery in the unpretentious little church of St Cadocs in Llancarfan that beneath centuries of limewash the walls are covered with amazing medieval paintings, not only extraordinary as examples of 15th Century art but also as a record of the moral and emotional thinking of that era. Expert recovery has revealed the seven cardinal sins, the 'dance of death' and, the most strongly narrative story and at the present time best restored, the wondrousness of St George, dragon-slayer and warrior saint.  Incredible, in so many ways, to witness this tribute to the legends that were vivid in the lives of this community more than 500 years ago.

Back in south-west England, Novel Nights meeting at Burdell's Yard in Bath on Wednesday provided a fascinating evening as the theme was 'climate change' and the session featured not only Maggie Gee talking about her new novel on that theme, but also readings from three upcoming novelists - two of whom were Frome writers Nicky Lloyd and Alison Clink - pictured - plus Bath writer Richard Kemp.

 and this week's final note is a booky one too: the poetry collection with the impossible name (What'sItLikeFor You+DanceForThoseWho'dRatherNot) (with pictures by Mel Day) will be launching itself on the world, ready or not, on June 6th at Three Swans, upstairs. Grab a drink & come on up. 

Striking art, funky music, & other entertainments...

Regular followers of this blog may recall that one of my much-lamented covid losses was the Ida Applebroog exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Bruton. This box has now been ticked, and exploring this extraordinary work on Thursday afternoon gave, probably, a better viewing experience than the party on opening night could have allowed. Both galleries are filled with Ida's bizarre 'scavenging' art style, involving repeated themes of pain, gender politics, and family relationships. There's a lot of violence and violation, expressed in story-telling that varies from comic-book jokiness to savagery: it's extraordinary to realise that this boundary-breaking woman was born in 1927 and has been producing challenging artwork for half a century. 

The current exhibition is curated really well, and visitors can take home a 'goodybag' set of reproductions of some of Ida's key works - a really generous touch, especially as the show is free to enter (though you do have to pre-book and choose a time, to ensure no overcrowding.) Showing till May, lots of time to book see it, and the ever-lovely gardens too.

Back in Frome, where a new art gallery is always exciting: This one at 22 Christchurch Street West is called simply The Frome Gallery, and is a sibling of the Woolverton Gallery, displaying work from several of the same artists and also curated by artist Ray Jones. Here (above) is Ray with one of his trios of famous faces. Strong colours are important to him when selecting work to exhibit: he has some wonderful pieces from highly regarded local names like Amanda Bee, Moira Hazel, and David Wilkie - who created this painting She Sold Me Magic - and several others.

Still with visual art: the National Gallery in London has released more its excellent - free - short online talks about the treasures in its collection. Among various options, there's a fascinating surmise of Bart Cornelius, curator of Dutch & Flemish paintings, about the  real story of Rembrandt's painting of 'A Woman Bathing in a Stream.'

Moving on to music now - and yes, it's wonderful Rosco Shakes again at Bar Lotte - the full team this time: (L-R) Josh, Dom, Ned,Tim, and Steve all on fabulous form. These lads either rehearse every waking moment or they're intuitive geniuses - there never seems any doubt who's doing what when - and their sound is instantly exhilarating, so there's dancing in the bar from the start.

 

Also accompanied by energetic audience action, the annual Frome Punk Festival at the Cheese & Grain offered an evening of popular local live bands.  Here's the ever-wonderful Raggedy Men, recreating the incendiary sounds of the late-70s with a few added riffs - lighting in the hall, as evidenced here, was more for mood than clear illumination, but that didn't matter to the avid audience and dancers.

Theatre now, as New Old Friends deliver Crimes, Camera, Action, their spoof tale of a hard-boiled private-dick negotiating murder and blonde bombshells in golden-era-Hollywood.  Most of the entertainment is provided by the ever-more-elaborate negotiation of props and costumes in ever-more-unlikely crime scenarios, and while some of it incomprehensible, a lot of it is very funny indeed.  Great to see a full house at The Merlin, & a young audience clearly enjoying the show. Here's a sneaky shot of one device they used to boost the (apparent) number of performers, in one of the most hilarious moments. 

Frome's Proof Pudding Book Club, the brainchild of Hunting Raven Bookshop's inspirational doyenne Tina Gaysford-Waller, met on Sunday to review & discuss new imprints - and eat cake - at River House. It's a great format: small group discussions, plus a final feedback to share the most interesting titles. And we keep our proof copy! My lucky random choice this month was Who Are We Now? by Jason Cowley, a non-grabby title for a profoundly felt & well-argued analysis of post-Brexit Britain - how it happened, and what next.... 

Ending this edition with a view from the sunnier start of the week: the field beyond the beautiful church of Mells. This lovely little village tracks its fascinating history from Mesolithic days (c. 6000 BC) and that quaint circle of trees, according to a local historian, is the remains of a round barrow, one of only a few of these Neolithic burial places still surviving. 

 

The week when freedom arrived and nobody noticed

Starting, unusually, with a weather report: over 30°C all week until the dramatic storm in the early hours of Saturday morning. As I was born in a German air-raid over London, this seemed a very appropriate start for my birthday, although sadly other celebrations were either rained-off or plagued-off.  But the long hot days were perfect for walking along the river path, and the glorious evenings lovely for a sunset trip to Marston Park.

Friday's trip was a jaunt to Hauser & Wirth, where Green councillor and environmental activist Theo Simon was giving a short talk in the cloisters to chime with the impressive exhibition of works by Spanish pacifist & artist Eduardo Chillida. Theo's personal eco-activism started in '92, inspired by Swampy and the Twyford Down M3 protest: his tales of past action were entertaining but he reminded us that the situation now requires urgent mass direct action.  Theo's also the  songwriter/singer leader of Seize the Day and brought his djembe so his talk was top n tailed with a song. And then to the galleries and the magnificent garden! 

Returning again to the topic of my birthday, celebrations while small were perfectly spaced:  a trip to the cocktail bar with Eleanor Talbot, whose weekly online programme Variations on a Theme is always smorgasbord of tasty talk & tracks, and a garden get-together with two close friends. Sadly my family's visit had to be cancelled - a scenario that many in similar situations will recognise. 

An upbeat note to end this week: Frome's popular new Mayor Andy Wrintmore, featured weekly in the Frome Times, was interviewed by Kerrang under the banner “They kicked party politics out of town”: Spending the day with the punk rock mayor of Frome.

It's a good read, and a particular pleasure for Andy who for years avidly followed Kerrang - "The world's greatest metal / punk / hardcore / rock music publication." Andy's Giant Pod has a new edition too, and his latest Mayoral column in Frome Times (p.25) reflects powerfully on the serious loss to the town centre of the Co-op - and of course Andy is interviewed as a musician in Frome Unzipped - from Prehistory to Post-Punk (pages 186-188) which has it's own page here, with regular updates.

The week we remembered ordinary life

The 'glorious twelfth' of April has brought many openings, one of which is Hauser & Wirth in Bruton, where there are two art exhibitions and, of course, the famous Oudolf Field garden, designed to complement the gallery by looking like 'a giant artists palette'. A trip here is always a pleasure but at the moment it's not at its most dramatic & felt a bit like visiting a friend who's laid out the paint cards and wallpaper swatch to show how nice the flat will look later. The pond is lovely though, as is walking up the hill to the dovecote above the town.

Performance poetry zoomed in again on Thursday from the Rainbow Fish Speakeasy run by Take Art, the excellent events organisation for Somerset rural areas. Superbly compered by Liv Torc, this has developed a wide audience with contributors providing poems from their sofas, kitchens, and other areas of comfort, sometimes with delightful interruptions from children and cats. Guest of the night was Kat Lyons, who introduced me to the poignant word solastalgia: "a feeling of despair when one's home environment changes" and a neat 'group poem' from audience comments was woven by Jaime. Liv's vivid & moving poem on how her hair sacrificed its life for hers was for me the highlight of an excellent event - you can read it on her FB page here.

From poetry to prose: Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod this week features Eleanor Talbot, another brilliant exponent of audio sessions, definitely not one to miss. "I have no problems with borders," Eleanor explains when Andy asks about her eclectic choices in music in her weekly show Variations on a Theme, where Kazakhstani hip hop is likely to be heard alongside Noah & the Whale, or Elvis.  Eleanor talks with refreshing frankness and genuinely upbeat vitality about 'touchy' topics like mortality and libido and her lifelong chronic kidney disease.  

The last year has tested the ingenuity of all performance groups and a range of ways have emerged to present productions online and, even more challengingly, to rehearse them. Stepping Out Theatre Company in Bristol maintained their programme of activities via whatsapp and zoom, compiling a presentation with a topical theme: Putin's Mist, on-line for two nights, imagined an hour in the life of the community of a tower block as a mysterious toxic mist confines them to their homes in an intriguing metaphorical processing of reality.  Credit to all the team for this provocative and disturbing look at the effects of disinformation when 'nothing is what it seems.'

And now we can look ahead with confidence that  Frome Festival will definitely go ahead in July - it's already been featured in the Guardian Top 10 summer festivals. "Quirky cobbled alleyways" always seem to head the bill in London-based publications but it's great news anyway, and festival director Martin Dimery expects the line-up to be online by the end of the month. The ECOS amphitheatre will be a major venue for performance, including on Tuesday (6 July) the return of the Frome Poetry Cafe with Liv Torc as guest as well as our popular Open Mic - check it out on the Merlin page here, but note there's no advance booking - it's turn-up-on-the-night in the traditional spoken word way of the 1960s beat poets and here in Frome since the first festival twenty years ago. 

Concluding this bulletin on another upbeat note: the longed-for return to socialising with near-normality has seen a new bar opens up in the French antiques shop in Frome, serving widely spaced tables in a car park that looks as good as the Alhambra gardens to our friendship-starved eyes. Here's me with thespian friends Rosie and Tracey, and a toast to everyone able to enjoy meeting friends and family again - hopefully that's all of you. Cheers!

Drama, poetry, conflict, and sedges

Creatives have been hard hit by this second lockdown, especially theatres. Here in the south-west, Theatre Royal Bath had no sooner re-emerged on the strength of handouts from the Culture Recovery Fund than their 'Welcome Back' season was paralysed again, but Bristol Old Vic enterprisingly added a live-streamlining aspect to their new productions. Hedda, created via the 'permeable membrane' (their term) of their Theatre School.  Chekhov's dramatic principle asserts that if a gun is shown in the first act then it must be fired before the end of the play and Hedda has two, which, combined with her self-destructive boredom, ensures no surprise in the finale here, even if you're not familiar with Ibsen's play. 

The filming angles were great, with plenty of full-stage views rather than soap-opera-style  close-ups, although for some technical reason there were also plenty of blurred moments while my system played catchup. Lucy Kirkwood's adaptation transfers the story to contemporary Notting Hill so some changes are essential (though possibly not Hedda eating the lost book) and the trainee actors did justice to the vying, lying, academics - Hedda's husband George and Michael Drake as handsome ex-lover Toby were particularly strong, and so too was Emma Hadley-Leonard as the woman who fascinated and enthralled everyone except herself.

A Friday night of verbal immersion now as four remarkable poets launched their new collections on Zoom: Frome's Claire Crowther and Bath's Carrie Etter were joined by Alan Baker and Vik Shirley in an extremely well-organised hour of fascinating readings. Alan, an editor & translator as well as poet, was launching his new pamphlet A Journal of Enlightened Panic, Vik's debut collection is entitled The Continued Closure of the Blue Door - samples of her work here - Claire's latest collection Solar Cruise has already been picked as Poetry Book Society recommendation. Claire is married to the renowned solar physicist Keith Barnham & these poems, all written on their sea trip to America, focus on meditations around his work - there's a sampler here and  some have been reprinted in the Fortnightly Review. 

Carrie's new collection is The Shooting Gallery published by Verve, extraordinary and sombre prose poems juxtaposing reflections on the WWII drawings by Czech artist Toyen with school shootings since the Columbine massacre in 1999.  These are also featured in the Fortnightly Review, but it was particularly powerful to see some of the drawings that inspired these pieces as Carrie read them with moving calm.

Frome Writers Collective's Writers on Radio session this week was on 'the art of revolting, and writing about it,' and opened with an interview with David Lassman discussing why Frome is famous for its riots - mostly legitimate protests, incidentally, as the food riots were inspired by the inflated price of bread, the 3-day riot at 1832 election was in response to blatant corruption, and the wool-workers attacks on new machinery were protests at the loss of essential income for the spinners. David doesn't emphasise rationals but he's really interesting on the facts. (Here's David in a clip from the Wessex Camera Club's coverage of our 'Rogues and rebels' walk in the last Frome Festival.) Among other intriguing features, Sian Williams recalled the 1980s Greenham Women's protest, and Suzy Howlett considered the etymology of 'riot' - the language of the unheard, as Martin Luther King so perceptively said. Good to hear Kaiser Chiefs' riot prediction again too.

Maybe because we all feel under partial house arrest, dissent seems to be in the air: Eleanor Talbot interviewed me this week about the thread of dissent that runs through my book Frome Unzipped, from Prehistory to Post-punk for her weekly show Variations on a Theme. Unlike David, who is reliably lucid,  my recall of dates is impeded by dyscalculia, unhelpful when discussing history... luckily Eleanor is a brilliant interviewer & editor. I'm on Episode 58, at 24mins-35.10, 46mins for 12 minutes, and again for 9 minutes at 1.09 - but you should listen to Eleanor's brilliant music choices too, like the sensational History Song from The Good the Bad & the Queen and (at 1.33) an amazing rap battle between Trump & Biden created from actual speeches by ERB (Nice Pete & Epic Lloyd). All seamlessly fused by Eleanor, here seen at the WHY gallery opening last year - another from-the-festival-album image.

Still with social conflict of a kind, the Workhouse Burial Ground walk mentioned in previous posting, one of Frome writer John Payne's projects, had a plug in The Guardian this week. This would have been one of the Frome Festival events, and John's pamphlet of poems The Few and the Many includes two tributes in remembrance.  And with live music on hold, we continue to  rely on Sky Arts, youtube, and downloading: this is Destination Unknown, by Pete Gage with Ruzz Evans on guitars and Mike Hoddinott on drums, from Pete's new downloadable album, with great advice in the title track: if you don't do it now then you never will. 

Ending this week's foray with an image from the extraordinary Oudolf Field at Bruton's Hauser & Wirth, where inspired planting has created a landscape for all seasons: the opulent colours of spring and summer morphing to a different glamour by late autumn, with starbursts of moon-pale grasses, russet stems of seed pods, and a few late, mulberry-dark, flowers.

Poems, books, blooms - top-&-tailed with Shakespeare

Culture in Quarantine! With the encroaching sense of quasi-normality I'd forgotten about the streamed theatre promised throughout the summer.  It's now nearly September, so these magnificent productions by RSC and the Globe will all disappear like the sprites in a Shakespeare play very soon, so check them out here. My pick this week was The Tempest from 2013, directed by Jeremy Herrin. It's the bard's last work, so the bawdy intrigues and innuendo that Queen Lizzy had enjoyed are replaced by the fantasy theme preferred by his new patron James I, and the breaking of the magic wand at the end, signalling Shakespeare's own creative finality, has been seen as the writer's formal resignation. Performances are all good, of course, and so are the renaissance costumes, and there's a big emphasis on magic and illusions.

The two non-humans indigenous to the island, Ariel and Caliban, are always a challenge: sometimes they're played as opposite aspects of the same mysterious energy but in this production Caliban scampers around like a little red rooster while Ariel wearing a long white coat and quiet dignity seems more minder than servant to the extravagant frenzies of his overlord. Programme notes suggest this is a story of 'forgiveness, generosity and enlightenment', but Roger Allam's hot-tempered brooding Prospero reinforces that it's more about revenge than redemption: even though the lords sail off with honours restored, the servants all suffer for their brief aspirations. But Shakespeare does compensate poor abandoned Caliban by giving him the most poignant speech in the play: 'Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises: sounds and sweet airs, that give delight ....when I waked, I cried to dream again.

Still with words:   Poets Prattlers and Pandemonialists, who must be among the most hardworking wordsmiths in the country, offered no less than three zoom performances on Sunday. 

In the 7pm slot Emma Purshouse introduced us to a selection of characters from the Black Country, where this entertaining posse are all based,  while Steve Pottinger interspersed his local-character pieces with poems from lockdown. Poignant, witty, and even hopeful, these affectionate glimpses all have a warm humanity - I especially liked The Glass Collector, which you can read here - among other powerful poems by Steve. 

Also zooming: Hunting Raven Books's manager and Frome's shimmering star of literary conviviality Tina Gaisford-Waller chaired another meeting of Proof Pudding Club, the monthly event for avid readers to enjoy discussing book previews over dessert, though camera clips showed more glasses than spoons on this occasion. An entertaining couple of hours, with main recommendation of the night going to Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, commended as a contrast to sombre times too often reflected in book lists: "The Booker long list this year is the most depressing I've ever seen," as Tina put it. Here's Tina with her pick of the month: Dear Reader - a book about the comfort and joy of books by Cathy Rentzenbrink.

Hauser and Wirth's famous gardens are notoriously impressive in late summer - there's an interview with the garden's designer Piet Oudolf here - so a trip to Bruton seemed a great idea when the sunshine returned on Monday. It turned out that's the one day the gardens are closed, but the floral displays in the allotments on the other side of the path also provide sensational 'drifts of rich late-colour summer in climactic display' - and the town itself is full of quirky lanes and skylines - including the famous dovecote.  

Ending this post with the careful return of live theatre. Billed as outdoors on ECOS but transferred within the Merlin on Friday night due to blustering gales: Shakespeare Rattle and Roll from multi-talented musician & performer Martin Dimery in the guise of a lecture on the bard's lyrical stylism but actually a fantastically entertaining romp through the key musicians of our times. From evolving Macbeth's witches' trochaic tetrameter into rap, to creating Mick Jagger as Puck,  this is a vastly entertaining - and very informative - survey of our major music icons - including Elvis, Dylan, Sex Pistols, Sting, and obviously the Beatles -  in a fantastic tribute to not only the bard but every music trend this century and the last. This is the third time I've seen this show,  it's that good.

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Romance, carnage, stillness & sounds

If you adored Amélie and love chocolate, you will be completely besotted by Wise Children and Plush Theatricals' Romantics Anonymous, the delightful musical love story of a shy chocolate creator and her gauche chocolatier boss, now playing to enraptured audiences at Bristol Old Vic. It's an Emma Rice production so there's copious electric lighting to designate scene changes throughout this sweet story, wittily narrated by a brilliant ensemble cast featuring Carly Bawden and Marc Antolin. Highly recommended if you can get a ticket before February1st - there was a full house standing ovation when I saw it, so you may have to kill. Image: Steve Tanner

Marital discord and middle-class mores have always been considered fair targets for drama, and Yasmina Reza goes for the jugular in The God of Carnage, a play about the savage antagonisms simmering below the civilised veneer of two married couples who meet to discuss a playground fight between their respective sons. If that doesn't sound much like a comedy, it's because it isn't really one, although we are invited to laugh at the bourgeois-style assaults: Christopher Hampton, who translated the script from French for this production at Theatre Royal Bath, reports that the playwright fears humour will make her work too entertaining to be taken seriously. Yet there is humour, of a very bitter kind, in this tale of escalating friction as both mismatched couples are confronted with their own unresolved differences as well as the antagonism of their opponents. It's very well acted, especially by the men, Nigel Lindsay and Alan Paisley Day, whose roles give them more light and shade to work with than do the women's (Elizabeth McGovern and Samantha Spiro, who's impressive at projectile vomiting). Lindsay Posner directed and the set, featuring a symbolic spear-ball above blank walls, was designed by Peter McKintosh. Image: Nobby Clark

Moving on to art: Hauser & Wirth do openings in style, on Thursday celebrating Don McCullin's superb exhibition in a party atmosphere with live music and fires in their lavish garden. The stillness of life comprises mainly Somerset scenes: the photographer himself, who lives locally, was at the gallery with friends. He was known at one time for  images conflict, and these stark landscapes seem to me to have a resonance of restless energy, even when unpeopled. His work is brilliant.

Keith James at this week's Grain Bar Roots Session brought a small team of guitars to supplement his solo performance, playing profound songs for deep winter days: existential reflection from Leonard Cohn, protest from Bob Dylan, poignancy from Joan Baez some of Lorca's dark poetic words and, more than ever a song for our times, Joni Mitchell's 1970 anthem for Woodstock: We are stardust - we are golden - and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden...

Frome's lavish habit of providing an embarrassment of riches most weekends sadly meant passing on the The MellowTones, a new band already with a hot reputation, to join in with the dancing at the Cornerhouse where Tempting Providence provided a lively selection of classic rock, including a fabulous mash-up of Wicked Game with White Wedding and a breath-taking version of Wagon Wheel that raised cheers. Here's the team: Paul Kirtley, David Goodman, and Colin Ashley, with Peter Barnes and Nicki Mascall- icing on the cake provided by popular bar managers Tom and Amy's classy jive!