Yet more summer celebrations: drama, art & music

Remember Treasure Island? A coming-of-age story, about desert islands, buried gold, pirates, and a parrot? Exeter's physical comedy theatre Le Navet Bete are touring with their version, at Bristol Old Vic until the end of the month and strongly recommended.  All the elements are there, except the parrot is called Alexa and is just as inept as that cloud-based info-system, and a raft of extraneous characters are also integrated, including Captain Birdseye and an erotic mermaid who steals every scene - a difficult task as the four multi-tasking performers are all fantastic. 

Director John Nicholson has somehow retained a key element in the story - the innocent young hero seeking buried treasure - throughout this hilarious mayhem, even when plot progress at one point depends on the outcome of a game of 'Play Your Cards' right with the audience. Matt Freeman is outrageously memorable, but all the cast are brilliant, interacting with each other and with the audience to make the whole show a giant party. I've never heard an audience laugh so much - strongly recommended.

A different dramatic mood now from  Black Hound Productions, as Frome's fearsomely talented young theatre company has created An Edinburgh Fringe Double Bill previewed at Merlin Theatre on Wednesday.  Both plays use sensitive insight and humour to explore life experiences typical today.  In Seeds of Memories, a young man reminisces in the garden of his much-missed grandfather, finding a kind of magic as well as many memories; in Alright?, a disaffiliated teenage boy struggles to cope in a school-and-home void without support - again, with humour as well as insight. 

 The first play is a virtual monologue for Ollie J Edwards, supported throughout by Lesley Hayes who morphs between beloved Nan & less-adored Mum, and by Lisha Allen as a glamorous evocation of Nature. There's clever puppetry and evocative, neatly-choreographed, scene-shifts evoking natural magic as emotions swell and shift.

The second play is even more engaging, and did actually drag a couple of tears from me as teenage Noah, played by Thomas Price, flails between the tedium of school and home, with a disaffected school counsellor, an inept father, and a dotty grandmother as his only support. This too is extremely well staged as Noah's isolation is evoked by the total absence of any 'key connections': the school psychiatrist is conveyed by a small recess - "because mental health is an afterthought in eduction" while Gran is a voice from the overly-plush corner where 'like some sort of confused pickpocket,' she drops hip-flasks in Noah's pocket in lieu of any real contact. He's heading downwards until the night his dad snaps & rants at him, and Noah realises 'this is the most we've ever spoken', and achieves an awkward, but realistic, breakthrough.  Both plays are written and directed by artistic director Patrick Withey, who also designed the imaginative sets.  

Summertime in the Southwest is as thick with festivals as Edinburgh's Royal Mile is with performers. The Frome Festival of Photography was speedily overlapped by the multi-inclusive Frome Arts Festival, and now Black Swan Arts Open 2022 has filled every available wall and surface in the building with nearly 200 visual art works from over 1000 submitted from far & wide as well as locally - you can see them all in online shop. There's a big buzz around this exhibition, which has insisted on a ceiling price of £1000 from all artists, even the most established - some already showing online as sold.

Theres an exhibition also at the Good Heart Tibetan Memories Cafe, where Lockhart Murdoch  has filled the walls with photographs of Tibet from his archives. These are mainly historic press photographs from his vast collection at One A gallery and shop in Frome town centre, intriguing to visitors at the opening and thrilling to chef Namdi, who recognised the figure featured in one - his own lama and friend. (That's him in the background, behind Namdi's happy grin. ) Alison Murdoch, founder of the Good Heart, also spoke of future plans for this pay-it-forward cafe with a focus on community support

On a personal note: as well as all the above delights, it was my pleasure this week to be interviewed by the truly wonderful Eleanor Talbot about my latest novel Blow-Ins, for her weekly international online show Variations on a Theme (also broadcast on Frome FM next week, link to be posted later). Eleanor's insights are always incisive so our conversation was in-depth & quite challenging - it's great to be quizzed by an enthusiastic fan who also asks questions like "How do you manage balancing the funny with the darker themes?" Perhaps because art is, after all, like life...

This week's landscape is from the riverside at Freshford, at the end of a family walk on Sunday, with the recent intense heat now ebbing into a very pleasant languid warmth.

Although Upton Blues is a week behind us now, in another world below the Malvern Hills where a campervan-village among golden 'cat's ear' field flowers waves with colourful flags, it's been great reviewing my photos of that festival... if you don't have facebook, here's a screenshot of a few snaps...

And finally, another in my series of occasional alerts to fantastic online music you might not already be aware of: Peter Bence, officially the world's fastest piano-player. He's Hungarian, travelling Europe giving live concerts & on Youtube too: here's his version of Don't Stop Me Now - there's more fantastic Queen performances on his page here.  

A dab of history & lashings of Bank Holiday sunshine

First to Bristol, where South-West based physical theatre company Le Navet Bete has unleashed their current touring show The Three Musketeers in Bristol Old Vic, recreating rollicking tales of 17th Century intrigue in a re-envisaging of the daring deeds of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis - and of course d'Artagnan - with a cast of royalty, whores, conspirators, spies, monarchs, as well as the evil Cardinal Richelieu... it's all loosely grounded in Alexandre Dumas' fictional historical tales but with firmer affiliation to physical theatre capers and Young Ones style comedy.

Some of the best bits are sheer pantomime - as when action moves to England with a duck-shooting scene on the estate of the Duke of Buckingham, and the audience becomes energetically involved in providing a torrent of mortally wounded ducks... Programme notes don't differentiate between performers - Dan Bianchi, Nick Bunt, Al Dunn, and Matt Freeman - but the script is credited to director John Nicholson, and the actors too, so this truly is a team effort. The set was designed by Ti Green and is complex enough for high-energy antics though unfortunately with a focus on extreme right of the stage which means if you're seated in the Dress Circle 'on the site of the original 1766 Row box' you miss any glimpse some of the crucial scenes.  Still, only 15 quid for over two hours of absurd comedy, and touring till October, so worth catching if you can.

Back in Frome, as usual there's been much live music. Tuesday saw the inaugural meeting of a new Open Mic event at the Three Swans, a great sing-along event where Paul Kirtley & I did our occasional double-act comprising my satiric protest-poem Bungee Jumping Crumblies and his song in response, and several new voices joined Paul for this now-monthly venture. Thanks Steve for the pic.

An excellent Roots session on Wednesday featured Phil Cooper with his Slight Band, supported by Jamie H Hawkins, who joined Phil on stage for a couple of numbers, too.
Both these singer-songwriters write their own material: Jamie's song Walking Into Doors is an especially poignant and powerful example of his skill. Phil's performance is alsways gripping, and he has a great knack of getting the audience to sing-along - and even rattle-a-shaky-egg-along. The track Only a Song from Phil's CD Thoughts and Observations gives a good idea of his range and intimate personal style.

Pete Gage at the Cornerhouse on Friday launched a scorching hot Bank Holiday weekend in style with his legendary blues-rock band, and Paul Kirtley's Bones gang were back with their charity buckets on Monday with a new host: The Mill at Rode, an idyllic venue for a sunny afternoon, with an excellent barbecue too.  Paul's closing song, the Woodstock classic, summed up the mood of the whole event: We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden...

In fact everyone had such a good time that landlord John asked the band - and the barbecue - to do it all again on Bank Holiday Monday, so if you're reading this on posting date you can get along to the Rode and re-live the dream yourself.  And if not, have a great week anyway: simple pleasures are essential in troubled times. 

Flaming June: suddenly it's summer... again

Exeter-based comedy troupe Le Navet Bete returned to the Merlin with their new show Dick Tracy.

The square-jawed, hard-hitting, fast-shooting detective arrived in comic book form in the 1930s. In this version, clever Dick foils the baddies but has no intention of apprehending them as that would stop the crime wave ~ and Dick loves crime as much as his girlfriend loves Dick... As well as their trademark heroic parody, there's the ever-reliable flamboyant display of circus-skills including mime, songs, absurd masks & props, and general buffoonery. A talented performing quartet, supported by their inventive props man, contrive to create an extensive cast by supplementing  lightning role-changes with a mannequin and some cardboard cut-outs. You could almost see the plot-line of evil BigBoy Caprice's social manipulation as a metaphor for American society, but then again maybe it was all just an excuse for the DIY wrecking ball & throwing masses of sliced bread at the audience.  Hilarious, and full of unexpected moments of marvellous mayhem. Lovely to see the ECOS amphitheatres stones illuminated in the warm night too.

 And on the subject of theatre, a small self-trumpet here: it's always nice to know my review is appreciated by the company, especially when - as with the current production of School for Scandal - it's quoted alongside a soundbite from The Guardian as the show's online promo:
“Brilliant directing from Andrew Hilton is supported by terrific acting from all the cast…SATTF has become a must-see company for many theatre­-goers in the southwest and beyond”  - Plays International on Arcadia 

Celebrations till late on Saturday as The Artisan opened its doors with a great dance band - The Sparks -  giving Frome another music venue. Unlike the Wheatsheaves, now thriving but still 'Name TBC', the old Olive Tree has been transformed as well as renamed. Sunday's Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse with Vicki Burke was another goodie.. 
A new month means another Sunday Independent market filling the town with stalls, entertainment, crowds, and that feeling of universal benignity & bliss that sunshine brings. My visiting friends from Wiltshire were overawed with the range and splendour of the event and left after four hours of happy browsing with bags of artisan items, garden seeds, organic cheese and scotch eggs. The Words at the Black Swan group met too: you can see some of our previous art/writing collaborations in this archive gallery collected by Kim Woods.

Fascinating footnote this week of celebrating sunshine came from a trip to Wilton House, which I discovered has an extraordinary history and an art collection more superb than most city galleries, dripping with paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto, Raphael, Hogarth, Van Dyke, Frans Hals... a place where a Gibson neoclassical marble sculpture can be rediscovered abandoned in the grounds and a massive Murano glass chandelier found abandoned in the attic... it really is worth a visit, in other words.  Shakespeare apparently stayed there, but there's a more fascinating connection with the bard: Mary Sydney now recognised as the most important literary woman of her generation. She not only led the way for other women writers but may have written, or at least contributed to, some of the plays currently attributed to 'the Man From Stratford.'   
So to end a week of fabulous summeryness here's a quote from another determined & pioneering woman, Gertrude Jekyll: What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.

Extravaganza!

Le Navet Bête has been a must-see company for me since I saw their reinvention of the story of Napoleon in slapstick. I've since watched their ludicrous reinvention of the story of America's Wild West, and now their current Extravaganza, and always left the theatre aching with laughter and in absolute awe of their acrobatic skills and comic genius. This time they haven't bothered with a story, they simply fill the stage and spill into the auditorium with extraordinary antics ranging from surreal to brutal, incredibly physical to inexplicably hysterical. The conceit of the show is that we have come to watch a presentation by 'Hans' who is from an unpronounceable country and is aided by three uncontrollable performers. That's all we know, and all we need to know, as this Exeter-based company embarks on a sublime journey of mayhem. It's difficult to say what is most impressive: the sheer energy and exuberance of this charismatic team, the effortless timing that keeps threatened chaos at bay by milliseconds, or the extraordinary inventiveness of their physical feats. There's much meta-comedic play with gags like the swinging ladder, the custard pie and the banana, and that gasp-making classic: the slap-on-the-head ~ but these boys go beyond even Vivien in The Young Ones, Basil Faulty with Manuel, and Blackadder with Baldrick: to assault and revival by extreme puppetry... oh, you’d have to see it. And if you've missed it, don’t miss the next.

Extravaganzas are trending this weekend, with Frome Steampunk Extravaganza II bringing markets, exhibitions, bands, burlesque, and a Bohemian Ball to the town this weekend. Cheese & Grain on Saturday thronged with fabulously attired vampiric-looking vendors and visitors, corsets on women and moustaches on men and hats on everyone. I was one of the few Muggles, wandering round in jeans admiring the retro-galia ~ like Steampunk Engineering 'purveyors of finely crafted artefacts' from bits of old watches 'found and re-purposed.'

I'll end with a few glimpses from the super-market-spectacular we celebrate in Frome on the first Sunday of every month as the streets are closed to traffic for an explosion of independent stalls featuring arts & crafts, vintage clothes & curiosities, food & cider, with live music and lots of free tastings. Especially cheese. Here's the fantastic Swervy World street band and Anna Casserley showing how she creates her beautiful hand-carved spoons. I also recommend, after conscientious sampling, the award-winning halloumi from Homewood, White Lake goats cheese, and Wraxhall Vineyard's Pinot Noir rosé... as you see, an appropriately extravagant amount of research has gone into this week's post.