Oddsocks, famous for seizing the sails of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays & ripping them down the middle, have turned their mischievous minds to The Merry Wives of Windsor, which arrived at Bristol QEH on Saturday. In the persona of a 1950s television theatre company - with onstage studio screen monitoring the action – they perform a contemporary version complete with snatches of skiffle and interruptions from their sponsor, Mrs Quickly’s household remedies. Elli Mackenzie and Andrew McGillan shone in a quintet of jolly performers, delivering the ever-popular high-level of audience interaction, and some memorably funny moments: Mistress Page shuddering with orgasmic glee as the Bendix where Falstaff is hiding goes into full spin, the inept ‘product placements’, and a marvellous final woodland scene as the lascivious knight meets his come-uppance from romping night-sprites and Anne Page flees with her lover, fortuituously called Fenton – giving the best gag of the night as her father dashes off roaring ‘Fenton! Fenton! Fenton’ and Falstaff takes off his antlers to quip that many a dog runs after deer… (the youtube clip made national news in November – what a gift!)

But there were bits that didn’t quite work so well: slapstick comedy that should be slicker, silly walks in lieu of characterisation, gratuitous bunion-munching & a pointless radio horserace sequence padding out the second act, and - most importantly - Shakespeare’s words. The play within the parody seemed to become almost an incumbence, scenes scoured for chances of mockery and speeches milked for ridicule. Yet it is possible (as Oddsox showed with Hamlet a couple of years ago) to show pathos even in farce, enhancing hilarity while engaging more intensely with the story. More could have been made of the difficulties women faced in a society controlled by men, and my particular disappointment was Falstaff’s ludicrous Tweedledum outfit: I wished he'd been shown in fat-Elvis glory to introduce the poignancy of misplaced aspirations. Without these elements it’s a tale that’s tediously one-dimensional.
But the audience laughed and clearly love this endearing troupe, which is what matters.

Frome Scriptwriters, a new group for local writers developing work for stage or radio, launched this week at the Cornerhouse. This is another initiative from Rosie Finnegan, enterprising entrepreneur who brought Nevertheless Theatre Company to Frome, and once again I'm chuffed to be on board to support this venture. We started small, but aim to grow. It's a cliché but true: there's much talent in this town - and, unlike other places I've been, much goodwill & mutual support. Meetings will be monthly, democratic, free, and open to all.

Interesting developments for all who hanker for an effective library service: the anti-closure protest has won its case against Somerset Libraries on grounds of European diversity legislation. Opening hours in 23 libraries have been reinstated and 11 are no longer headed for closure, but councillors remain defensive about their plan to 'pass the least-used libraries into community hands.'
"The world is changing and we need to change with it," said Cllr John Woodman, Conservative, citing pressure from a 'zero book budget' - a claim corrected online to £200,000. Another comment suggests: "Somerset library service has been one of the worst managed in the whole of England for many years... Now the council has a chance to rethink the whole future of its libraries the first item on the agenda is to dramatically improve the quality of the management. What (John Woodman) has said is such rubbish it hardly is worth the ink used to print it."

Frome Library, under the tireless and imaginative stewardship of Wendy Miller-Williams, has a high profile for community book-related events and is always at the heart of the summer Arts Festival. The coldest day of the year so far - we're talking minus 7 degrees - saw a posse of local bibliophiles and writers converge in the library foyer for tea, biscuits, and book sharing to celebrate National Libraries Day. Travel writer John Payne signed copies of his new book on Bath, which opens with another wintry scene, from a walk we did last year: The city is there, somewhere beneath us. Thick snow beneath our feet and a swirly misty frozen rain falling gently from grey skies stained with yellow... How very apt, on a day that began subzero and has now shrouded the town with snow.

ABC Day brought eleven Authors of Books for Children for a series of events around the town, including a Library session of Teatime Treats: that popular ABC of activities, books, and cakes. Rachel Ward and Kate Maryon both have new novels out to complete their respective trilogies, and plans for more stories to keep their avid 9-13 year-old readers happy.

Edward Albee's one-act play The Zoo Story is the festival choice of Frome Drama Club, with performances in various venues including, appropriately for a story set on a bench in Central Park, Frome's Victoria Park. Written in the late fifties, this brilliant script, like the best of Raymond Carver's stories, both evokes its era and reaches beyond to existential humanity. Intriguingly, Albee later put a ban on all professional productions of this play and it's now available only to students and amateur companies. Actors Aynsley Minty and Dan Gaisford deserve full marks for engagingly illuminating the loneliness of the human heart.

Scene change to a rainy night in the garden auditorium of Blaise Castle: Oddsocks Productions version of Macbeth promises "something funny this way comes", grabbing gags and giggles from the audience at every available moment - a latecomer greeted by friends is cue for all five actors to dash over demanding a group hug; the obligatory unsilenced mobile and even the persistent downpour become opportunities to heckle the audience in scots accents. The actors dredge the bard's words for humour too, finding knockabout farce in the famous tragedy by fair means or foul. Devices like giving Duncan a lisp and Lady Macbeth arriving apparently via The Only Way Is Essex got the kids laughing but did little for the characters' emotional depth, leaving the show reliant on charisma and clowning through a long, wet, two hours. Luckily the players have plenty of both qualities: Oddsocks Macbeth - like their version of the witches' cauldron - is a trifle, but an honest trifle.

Back now to Frome Festival and the art trail - twentyone venues, more if you include the fringe, as Open Studios. All were differently fascinating, so I'll mention just three for their connection with words: Box Art by Robert Lee on the theme of Novel Images was intriguing - this one's called Tangos Telegrams and Tolstoy ,inspired by The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson. Then a wonderful collection of work in different media at Inside Out where our new local laureate David Davies has been writing alongside the artists ...we are getting smaller / somewhere drifting, somewhere / long, into ever-reaching forward. Beautiful.

Amazing work too at the studio of Ellen Tovey whose 'artist statement' concludes: Inspired by the innumerable elements of the self, my paintings become an exploration of and surrender to the unknown. What better summary of creativity, including writing, could there be?

Like Brian Friel, Harold Pinter was a master of unreliable narration. “The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend to remember,” he once said, and the characters in his short plays Landscape and Monologue in this sense inhabit Faith Healer terrain, though without the same empathy or lyrical elegance. In both these plays, though Landscape is notionally a duologue, there’s a sense of complete and bleak isolation, with speeches so enigmatic it seems superfluous to attempt interpretation in terms of what has actually happened. More significant is that the couple in the second play have no more connection than the unnamed man who talks to an empty chair in the first. The actors were all strong but what is most interesting is why these radio plays were revived at the Ustinov despite – or perhaps because of - the fact that theatre compels an attentive stillness which radio-listeners rarely attempt. Chris Goode's impressive direction brought theatricality to these static pieces, underlining their nonreality by featuring technical set changes, and using lighting to create shadows lurking at the sides of the stage like silent onlookers.

Oddsocks, the company that aims to make Shakespeare accessible, brought their current production Hamlet The Comedy! to Bristol’s QEH Theatre, promising a hologram of Paul Daniels as Hamlet’s father and zany family-friendly hilarity... And yet I went. I’m so glad I did, and I’d happily go to anything else this immensely talented troupe decides to tackle with similar absurd impropriety. Hugely entertaining with wonderful physical sequences, clever set and technical wizardry, yet five charismatic actors managed to convey the lyricism and emotional energy of Shakespeare's language despite the liberties they took with the script. Music by Jamiroquai's Rob Harris – including a rocking version of the famous soliloquy - was the icing on a scrumptious performance cake.

The ever-excellent SATTF team have begun their spring programme with Richard II, considered one of Shakespeare’s ‘histories’ but it could equally be seen as one of his finest tragedies. The fatal flaw of this Plantagenet tragic hero is a strangely innocent one: he believes in his Divine Right to rule, so the morality of his decisions is irrelevant as kings are above conscience. The conflict between Richard and Bullingbrooke goes beyond the justice of the disinherited cousin’s claims, with deep-seated certainties challenged by the volatile energy of opportunism. In this new order you can be who you choose, but what if you are vanquished and unthroned yet still believe you are king? In the current production at the Tobacco Factory, director Andrew Hilton highlights the poignancy of Richard’s struggle to find his identity in a rebellion he can scarcely comprehend, and John Heffernan plays the traumatised king with immense sensitivity and subtlety. In such a strong ensemble piece it’s hard to pick out any individual since all played their roles superbly, with menace, pathos, and humour all there and beautifully dressed.

..