Dark fantasy, savage satire, & restorative fiction

When Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray  in 1890, his editor quickly decided there were “a number of things which an innocent woman would make an  exception to,” and set about purging the novel of any inference of homosexuality.  There was a lot to do, but even with the throbbing veins of passion stripped, the novel was still decried as vulgar, unclean, poisonous, and discreditable, and it wasn’t until 2011 that an uncensored version was eventually published, by Harvard University Press. Wilde's moralistic fairytale has a timeless fascination and has been repeatedly adapted for stage and screen, currently in a  star-studded co-production which acknowledges the sexual passions saturating the story but steers them vividly into contemporary life.  

Dorian (Fionn Whitehead) is a student in lockdown at a university where Harry Wotton (Alfred Enoch) is a trendy 'expert', Basil (Russell Tovey) is a software developer and the beautiful Sibyl Vane (Emma McDonald), innocent fourth figure in this tragedy, remains as Wilde envisaged an aspiring actress. They're all excellent in their roles, and so of course are Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry, slightly underused as Lady Narborough and an interviewer in a version that begins at the end of this dark saga, interrogating the story of Dorian's downfall with techniques from contemporary entertainment as well as stage theatre. The perpetual beauty granted to Dorian exists only online, where his images most matters to him, which is why he dumps Sibyl after her onstage freeze in this retelling of Wilde's fantasy.

The digital sequences of cyber assaults aren’t just gizmos, they evoke the social wildfire of vicious glee that Oscar Wilde’s trial and conviction had aroused in the 19th century. For Lady Narborough and her social acolytes in this contemporary version, homosexuality obviously isn't an issue, but in an era when status exists largely online, fear of humiliation is tightly integrated with social media presence.

Written by Henry Filloux-Bennet and directed by Tamara Harvey, with a raft of co-producers and partner venues including Bristol Old Vic, this unusual and gripping production is available until the end of March, tickets £12 here, recommended especially to everyone with an interest in the future of theatre in a digital era. 

Donmar Warehouse, like many theatrical organisations, is using initiative and internet to maintain a presence for its supporters - over 1000, many in USA,  joined the audience  for Assembly on Youtube on Saturday night.  The 'assembly' has been gathered to imagine the future, and like many of us fails to grasp the range and dangers of the concept.  There's a kind-of childlike simplicity about the storyline, demonstrating how humans can't conceive complete apocalypse so that when the animals' needs and elements's tendencies are involved too the problem of survival becomes acute... maybe this is one for the family to watch together and discuss, though it could be trimmed in duration. This live digital performance is written by Nina Segal, directed by Joseph Hancock, and realised by the Almeida Young Company & the Donmar Local Company.

Mark Thomas, that maverick campaigning comedian who is anti-establishment in an active disruptive way, went on Youtube on Tuesday evening (only) with some 'Vintage Cuts' from his Comedy Product, summarised in his promo as "Stand up, stunts, stories and general transgressive behaviour." Mark, with intermittent comments from his producer, Geoff Atkinson, reminisces on some of his most outrageous escapades as filmed and also as narrated to club audiences over the years - and gives updates on outcomes to some of his social protests. Running for nearly 3 hours and with much topical material requiring explanatory context, this was quite a marathon but Mark has never been deterred by difficulty and the clips he chose, including club performances as well as the stunts, kept the show fascinating throughout.

From setting up a PR stall at an Arms Fair and teaching attending fascist tyrants relaxation techniques (and filming their consequent confessions of use of torture) to chasing up lax regulations around nuclear fuel transportation, Mark has a zany plan to confound any ruthless or incompetent authority. His causes are all issues worth challenging, and they make for good entertainment as Mark doesn't do subtle.

He takes a hot-air balloon trip to Menwith Hill to reveal a spy base and a troop of dancing girls - The Showgirls of Truth - to the House of Commons to discuss matters with their MPs, and he taught the Essex Fire Service how to use a referendum to prevent further cuts in their service. It's a pity Mark couldn't have blown in with cutting-edge paperwork and feisty women to prevent last week's rushed-through legislation banning public protest in the UK, as we take another step to line our country up beside the rest of the fascist states.

At least in Frome, the long history of protest against unfair legislation in England is still alive: enjoy this remaking of Money For Nothing by Martin Dimery (Green Party county councillor) with musical arrangement from David Hynds, video by Patrick Dunn. The adaptation (- with a PPE) is bitingly on point and the visuals superb - the final image, of an exhausted medical worker, is genius. 

Still with words: a soothing blast, if oxymoronic imagery is allowable, of narration from Bath's Kilter Theatre which in collaboration with A Word in Your Ear is offering Storyopathy, a unusual contribution to lockdown entertainment conceived by Clare Reddaway. "Doctor" Olli leads a session antipathetical to the usual stress of zoom and, although his character's persona is entertainingly parodic, really did create an ethos of  the age-old magic of story-telling with Message in a Bottle by Derek Williams on Thursday.  As one who usually reviews projects from an audience perspective only, it's great report that my story The Invisible Granny is on offer next week: bookable here.

Meanwhile in Frome... nature-watch groups are alert not only to enjoy the buds and birds but also to counter insensitive human invasions. Friends of Easthill Field are campaigning to retain this ancient undisturbed parkland, and on Friday a zoom group discussion featured a film of tree expert Julian Hight explaining to Terésa Hadland why Easthill is particularly valuable. As this open landscape was established around 1830, its elderly trees have reached their most valuable stage, housing over 2000 species of insects and 300 species of lichens as well as providing home to barn owls and other protected birds. A fascinating and informative session.

Music, now: "Somerset's best kept secret" according to Phil Moakes interviewing the duo on Visual Radio Arts last week, Faron and Merle perform as Currer Bell.  Brontë fans will note that this was the pseudonym chosen by Charlotte to overcome Victorian prejudice, writing "I am at a loss to conceive why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man"  This impressive alt-folk duo consider themselves '21st century Victorian philosopher witches' were homeschooled and "often felt like modern Brontës, living on a windy hill and spending our days in the company of books and made-up characters." Like the Bookshop Band, also nurtured in the south-west, their lyrics are often inspired by literature. The Wind in the Willows (36m 40s in) is their take on "the book you're never too grown up for." See what you think... and thanks to Phil Moakes and Maggie Gregory for maintaining VRA, Frome's unique free visual-sound live sessions, an opportunity for bands to self-promote and for music fans to enjoy some of the best sounds around. Meanwhile in the real world there's sad news from the Grain bar that won't be a Roots sessions restart - thanks to Domenic DeCicco for all the good times there - but the Cornerhouse has promised live bands at the July Frome Festival - event submissions are now all in, and the line-up will be published soon...

Drama, poetry and other words as summer returns

Drama first: The National Theatre continues its stream season of major dramas with Terence Rattigan's classic The Deep Blue Sea, an emotional saga of misplaced passion in post-war England. Here's Helen McCrory, frustrated, neurotic, and exquisitely lovely even when suicidal - which is most of the play. She has left her husband (Peter Sullivan, frankly too attractive for this role) for a semi-alcoholic ex-test pilot with whom she remains bafflingly besotted despite the fact he's inattentive, boorish and a bit overweight. There's a mysterious struck-off doctor who floats in like tumbleweed and a couple of parody middle-class lodgers.  Rattigan is still highly rated as was this production, so perhaps lockdown's made me tetchy about live production having a need to be either entertaining, amusing, or relevant.

Love You and Hate Covid by Jonny and the Baptists is live-streamed from various arts centres: I watched it from Wiltshire's Pound Arts Centre in Corsham which turned out not the best choice as camera fail meant the whole show was filmed from a single distant viewpoint so it looked like you were peeking in from the foyer. I first saw this duo three years ago in their savage satiric drama Eat the Poor, which I raved about, and although their hearts are still in the right place ("You're either against capitalism or you're for the end of the world" says Jonny) they seem to have settled for a more unstructured, less seethingly indignant, format of basically just songs.

Another focus on our system's inequality, more focussed, incisive and funny, from Mark Thomas on Thursday evening: Serious Organised Criminal follows his 2007 live show by an update since this serious -funnyman started his campaign against the 2004 law to stop any kind of presence, however small or bland the message, without prior permission by the police -an Act of Parliament passed specifically to prevent Brian Haw from standing quietly outside the Houses of Parliament where he had for three years held a one-man anti-war protest. Mark, like many others outraged that any kind of public opinion had at a stroke become a criminal act - 'so kendal-mint-cake eating ramblers are now on the same footing as Al-Qaeda' - decided to challenge this nonsensical injustice.
The filmed show tells the full story, involving absurd existential complaints each of which, after a raft of paperwork, was permitted to be displayed in public gaze, with the real protest aimed at the control of legitimate freedom. The movement swelled, Mark became good friends with the officer in charge and gained an international following. After a quick break, Mark in real time discussed events since, including his McDemos scheme to continue this patient non-violent policy of ridiculing the illegitimate control of free speech. 'It's a challenge to this legislation that makes US accountable to THEM - in a democracy, this should be the other way round,' Mark concludes, and despite the nuisance he causes, many in the police force agree.  Not just a funny man from South London, a serious game-changer in a game that seriously needs changing.

We're still all madly missing live music but Sofar Sounds offers an international selection of concerts and Cooper Hall in Frome is posting links to a series of their past performers - this link is to Hattie Briggs. 

Frome's living legend Liv Torc continues a beacon of relevance, as her Haiflu project hit BBC4's Today programme - ff to 1.42 to hear Liv explain the concept, summed up in her own haiku: And nothing makes sense - but in telling the story- we learn who we are.
Frome Festival Poetry Cafe has endeavoured to keep a presence by images of previous Festival Laureate winners on our Facebook page. And Luke Wright is still sharing his poems on Twitter - Sunday night's session is number 102 - for those who enjoy being invisible observers at online sessions. He's very good.

And for me, the lockdown launch of The Price of Bread continues to be major event. The second boxful is now more than half dispatched to new owners, with some gratifyingly appreciative reviews already received - here's me doing a socially-distanced bookswap with Liz Hutchinson, whose historical novel Dissenters, set in Frome, is also published by Hobnob. My novel is set in Belfast, and as the 12th July - big date in Ulster's calendar - approaches, it's sad to see this story of the 'Troubles' fifty years ago is still so relevant, with banned bonfires already blazing in Belfast.

Finally apologies to anyone trying to follow this blog on their phone - I realise it may look a mess. My system does now offer an alternative format which is promised to look less muddled on mobiles but it is inflexibly maddening for originating so I've joined the number of disgruntled users who've asked to return to the old way... sorry.  I'll end with an image from a walk just over the border from Frome - here's hoping you're all enjoy the returning summer sunshine.

Dissenting voices, minor and major

Mark Thomas couldn't get the measure of the Merlin Theatre audience for 100 Acts of Minor Dissent, he said. He only gave us 7/10 but that's apparently close to top score ~ quite right too for a full house and a scrum for his dissenting merchandise. Perhaps he found us a bit earnest, applauding practical political outcomes more vigorously than disgusting definitions for the word Farage. We might not have relished the images of subverting porn as feminist art, but we were wholeheartedly with Mark's avowed motivation: "I love our community, and I hate what capitalism is doing to it".
Most of the acts of dissent are very funny and all have a purpose, which is to claim or reclaim common rights. Mark knows the law ~ with his team of radical lawyers, he should ~ and applied under the Freedom of Information Act to see what data the police have on him. Which is a very long list of his presences at public protests, some with endearing comments ("He seemed happy") and some tersely disparaging. "General rabble-rouser and alleged comedian" is one Mark is considering using as a review quote.  He gave himself 6/10 for the show but after 2 hours of full-on, informative, inspiring, thought-provoking, comedy, most of us would have upped that to at least 9.

Speaking of provocative theatre, Frome Standard out today has a double-page spread on Media Monsters including full interview with Rosie and me on the writing and production process for each of our plays. Big thanks to Your Time editor Dan Biggane for supporting us in our most personal shared theatre project yet ~ and if you've left it too late to book for the Frome preview at Cornerhouse, there are still seats at Alma Tavern Theatre where they've also laid on a pre-theatre meal deal, with prosecco...

"This was the year of the car-crash." says Alison Clink. She's giving the lowdown on entries to the Festival Short Story Contest, which she organises annually, to the writers crowded into the Library children's section on Sunday Morning. Old Peoples' Homes are an overly-used theme too, and this year's obligatory anthropomorphic viewpoint was that of a motorway. Intriguing... and a very successful event too, with helpful winning tips from both senior judges. Maria McCann in her excellent short talk spoke of the importance of language, and avoiding both the'forced epiphany' at the end and the 'fossilised title' at the start. Crime writer Peter Lovesey needs to feel in safe hands, which is something that happens when the story is compelling enough for him to forget about style altogether. After useful & encouraging information from the experts, three of the winning stories were read aloud so we could all reflect on Maria's reminder that "ultimately it's all down to personal choice" and then go & enjoy a salad buffet in Divas.

Then on, via Green Fair in the Cheese&Grain, passing fabulous strains of Elgar in rehearsal at St John's, to Jazz in the Park - Victoria park, where there's enough sunshine for picnics and children racing round the bandstand as us oldies hummed along to Night and Day....

Mark Thomas brought his new one-man show Bravo Figaro to Merlin en route to Edinburgh. I'd seen, and raved about, Mark's previous show Extreme Rambling, about his walk along the Palestine border which he dubbed '723 kilometers of national self-delusion', so I wasn't sure what to expect from this 'work in progress' about his relationship with his opera-loving father. It was simply brilliant. With all the passion, insight, and stand-up-comedy skills of his more overtly political piece, Mark told an amazingly personal story "not of redemption or forgiveness - the story of a gift." The vastly enlarged photograph of his father, looking uncannily like Mark in a joke-shop beard, gazes across the auditorium as Mark describes this family despot ~ "there was no greater bigot" ~ who sang Figarofigarofigaro across the rooftops of South London although 'he can't sing and he doesn't know the language or the words." The complex feelings of a left-wing activist whose father combines addiction to opera with extreme and violent intolerance are in themselves a fascinating story which touches profoundly on the difficult nature of family itself, but the heart of this piece is an extraordinary reunion. When his father was debilitated with palsy and dementia, Mark had the chance to stage a concert in his home to try, finally, to connect with him. We hear the actual words as Mark's father speaks, laconic but lucid, about this event. And that's really all we need. "My dad and I are never going to 'make it up', we're never going to heal the wounds. I wanted to say goodbye."

Mark Thomas reckons he looks like he's just bagged a rambler in his promo image for Extreme Rambling - Walking the Wall, his one-man show about walking the Palestine border wall: a ramble, as he points out, requiring more than a bobble hat and boots - like an inside contact at UN. For over two hours Mark paces the stage in front of a map of the West Bank, recounting through facts and dramatic sketches the story of this epic journey with energy and passion that never flags. It's an amazing performance - a wildly funny show about shocking realities, deeply felt and inspirationally well-crafted.
Mark calls his trip a mixture of devilment, curiosity and rambling, though he's been warned to claim officially he's writing about birds and wild flowers. It's a journey full of learning. Like, although the border is 315 kilometers, the wall is more than twice as long, deviating wildly in order to include the illegal Israeli settlements. Like, the cruel absurdities of this route include a football pitch split in half, villagers separated from their shops, and children walking to school through a tunnel they share with sewerage when it rains.
There's much to grieve and rage over in his tale but it never becomes a lecture or a rant, as Mark peoples the stage with other characters too: his supporters, opposers, and random companions. We meet juggling Israeli anarchists who quote Monty Python, Palestinians queuing through the night at the border crossing, conscript soldiers, an orthodox Jew estate agent, the dapper Consulate General and the colonel who designed the wall - 'a man who doesn’t let the facts impinge on his life.' We recognise the voices of his hippy cameraman, his exasperated fuck-up sorter Nava, and Mark's inner Hugh Grant.
And the wall's final obscenity is to end at Beityatir, incomplete despite '723 kilometers of national self-delusion'. Mark's journey ends as it began, with an Israeli soldier shouting out a challenge. This time, fired by fury that 'this land so obsessed with identity robs everyone of his own', he yells back a summary of his experiences, concluding with lung-breaking belligerence ‘and I’m writing about birds and wild flowers.’ Brilliant entertainment with lasting impact.

Big contrast at the finale of the Bath Literature festival: Griff Rhys Jones discoursing on his trips to mountains and rivers, which turned out to be mainly a smugly superficial ramble through the peaks and streams of his ego. Thank Groupon for Royal Fizz champagne cocktails at The Lounge.

Saturday was World Book Night, with bedtime stories for children and free books for all at Frome Library. Over a dozen Fromies applied successfully to be donors, which means a total of more than 600 books supplied by the scheme. The big handout was followed by Books Please! - a chance for bibliophiles to share their most-loved reads. My own special favourite was Robyn still in her Where The Wild Things Are costume reading Kubla Khan.



And finally: Only 4 days now till Four in a Bed opens Upstairs at the Lamb. Rosie and I took Alison in to admire the framed poster in the downstairs bar...