The language of love

St James Vault in Bath was crowded on Monday night for Poetry & a Pint where Philip Gross read from his latest collections ~ with some gems on the open mic too, notably from Rose Flint, David Johnson and Stephen Payne. Philip's main theme was family routes, rather than roots, and his father's never-talked-of journey from Estonia to England and the poignancy of his father's final days deserted by all five languages he'd once known. The poems are about silence and absence, using extreme precision of language in so visceral a way that listening becomes more kinesthetic than aural. Philip's introductions are profound too, evoking his childhood realisation that 'silence is a language of its own, always quivering with something else like anger... my father passed on a silence the exact size and shape of what he was not saying.'  The passion in his quest to find words for what is unspoken evokes and then transcends the relationship he describes, reaching out to that universal sense of the tremendous / silent language we may some day speak /or be?

Still in Bath, the Ustinov new season features three plays from the Spanish Golden Age ~ the era of 'comedia nueva', a radical new form which allowed tragic & comic elements, kings & commoners, and varied verse forms all in the same play.  A Lady of Little Sense was written 400 years ago by Lope de Vega using this formula, and this dazzling new translation by David Johnston joyfully combines farce and social satire in a fast-paced romantic comedy as beautifully lit and dressed as if Velazquez had painted every scene. Imagine a version of The Taming of the Shrew in which both sisters need taming by suitors whose eyes are fixed solely on the dowry, with the added twist that while one is sour the other is totally bonkers. It's almost beyond belief that the power of love can transform an autistic simpleton into a woman of passionate eloquence and dignity, but this is the happy transformation that occurs during the interval ~ not that Finea gets any appreciation from her louche but luscious lover Laurencio, who panics that the suitor who previously spurned her may now reclaim her. "I was safe in your simplicity" he scolds her, "I am destroyed. Why on earth did you learn to speak?" The outrageously non-feminist attitudes of all the men would be  shocking if they weren't so absurd and frankly funny. A clever set, pageantry, duelling, dance and song all enhanced this brilliant production directed by Laurence Boswell: some of the clowning was a tad OTT but the high energy and superb acting of the entire cast made this antique comedy of manners a delight ~ and special praise to Frances McNamee so gorgeous as love-cured Finea it was almost possible to believe Laurencio's noble protestation:
Love makes us greater than we are.
What love touches, love transforms; 
where it plants desire its roots split stone. 
If we love well, then we live well. 
And once Finea begins to love,
love will begin to transform Finea. 

Where were you when you first heard Bob Marley? I was living in Edgware in 1977 when Jamming came on the charts show, and I stared at the radio on the worktop transfixed. I think that’s the only reason I remember that kitchen at all.
Marley, the powerful & moving new film from director Kevin Macdonald, picks on personal connections like that and enriches their colour & volume. It’s on general release next week but came to the Little Theatre (visited often by Haile Selassie in his exile years) on Sunday for a special premiere showing. There’s more than I needed about Bob Marley's final sad weeks, but most of the movie comprises convincing, compassionate, and appreciative tributes to his 36 years of vibrant living. We had a kind of bonus track too, a post-show discussion between Kevin, a journalist who remembered Bob from the '70s, and Benjamin Zephaniah who spoke passionately about the poetry of the songs. And the legacy of Bob Marley? All three knew their answer to that one: Roots reggae with a serious message has gone around the world, a unifying element to warring underclass communities. You don’t have to be a Rastafarian to connect with Marley ~ when the Tunisian greengrocer killed himself and started the Arab Spring, STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS was the message on the wall next day. As producer Lee "Scratch" Perry said in the movie, people like his music because "he has a story to tell and him tell it in a way you have to believe it ~ him tell it pity-full.”

You know the way when you decide to move you suddenly see For Sale/Rent signs everywhere? It’s an acausal connecting principle, Jung said, something to do with the space-time continuum and indestructible energy. And archetypes & the unconscious, naturally. It’s happening to me around my play Mascara, as the start of rehearsals approaches. The main theme in my play is the fine line between love & collusion, and one key question is about early experiences. Received wisdom is that we need the smoothest possible slide from the slipstream of childhood into the turbulent waters of adult life, and certainly we’d all prefer that for our loved ones. But I keep seeing & hearing memories which cut across that assumption. One of the most moving sequences in Marley is when Bob, considered a half-breed in his black neighbourhood, goes to find his white father and is brusquely rejected. He goes home and writes Cornerstone
The stone the builder refused
will be the head cornerstone.
And in a book of essays by Adam Phillips lent to me by Emily there’s another example of extreme resilience: Paul Steinberg, writing about Auschwitz in Speak You Also, speculates as to whether his unhappy childhood prepared him for his survival, posing the question: can a ‘good’ childhood prepare one for life?
I’m not arguing that Goethe’s maxim ~ if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you strong ~ should justify any & every kind of cruelty, obviously. But it does seem that some setbacks will feed creative determination. Mark Rylance, in a wonderful interview (on on BBC3), recalled being "the kid who didn’t speak”, unable to form consonants even with intervention from a speech therapist. It was a passion for private improvisation that got him through ~ he likes to think, he says, that being Captain Kirk and Spock was how he found his voice.
And that’s another synchronicity of thought, too, because Mark Rylance is patron of Stepping Out Theatre Company, whose director Mark has gone on record to call “one of the most inspirational theatre artists I have encountered in the last ten years… (he) does not shy away from the possibility that theatre is a transformative and healing activity which brings joy into people’s lives… “ And where the synchronicity comes in again is that ~ excitingly and luckily for me ~ Stepping Out is producing Mascara.

Finally, in this long posting: Thanks to Richard Carder for an excellent Poetry & a Pint night last night, where Rose Flint and I were guest poets. I forgot to take a photo so here's a picture of St James Wine Vaults. A good venue for boho atmosphere.

A shadow from Remembrance Day inevitably lay across this month's Poetry and a Pint session in Bath (but not in my resolutely flippant guest spot, though I did wear a peace poppy.) Most impressive, for me, was Sue Boyle's beautiful cameo of a virgin great aunt bereaved by the Great War, and Jeremy Gibson's acid satire on George Bush: his manic aspirationalism and word botching too.

I wouldn’t generally enthuse about an hour spent in the company of a man whose idea of a good time was to wrench the head off a swan and drink its blood, but I’m making an exception for the current production of Normal at the Brewery. It’s sensational – in a good as well as a lurid way. Anthony Neilson based his play on the real-life story of Peter Kurten, a German serial killer executed just before WW2, and there’s a dreadful foretaste of Nazi atrocities in this electrifying production. As well as the grim realities of history and psychological harm, this is a gripping horror story where crazed toys come to life, props become murder tools, and no-one seems sane or ‘normal’ despite the courtroom verdict. The uneasy feeling of entrapment in a gothic fairground is enhanced by fantastic set & lighting (Frazer Riches), by virtuoso acting (Oliver Millingham, Michael Mitcham, and Kate Kordel), and by the truly inspired direction of Chris Loveless. Top of my theatrical unforgettable moments of 2009: the manic dance sequence between Peter and the young lawyer he relentlessly entraps in his gruesome world. There's an unsettling crosscurrent of normalcy too in the love lives of these damaged people, and perhaps what is most chilling about Millingham's psychopath is his hypnotic charm. A play that questions innocence and guilt, and resonates long after plangent music has ebbed from the stage.

"The first thing you must do as a writer is read" is Sarah Duncan's top tip at the inaugural meeting of Writing Events Bath in New Oriel Hall in Larkhill last Sunday. Organised by Alex Wilson and Jude Higgins, the event covered fiction both long and short, adult and children's, as well as drama, poetry, and self-publishing, in a fast-paced day with lots of breaks to mingle - and a really good lunch. What else could a writer want? Well, plenty of positive advice, answers to specific questions, and internet resource addresses. Happily all these were provided by the contributing practitioners: novelist Sarah, YA author Julia Green, poet Carrie Etter, short story specialist Alison Clink, publisher Miles Bailey - and (this blog is not noted for modesty) I did my best too.




"Poetry & a Pint" at the Wine Vaults takes me to Bath again on Monday. Robert Palmer is one of the featured poets, bringing his own quirky performance style to existential words both droll and sombre: all his battling life he's wanted to trust someone - to give up - to believe...


Bristol's Mayfest has been bursting out all over, giving the new(ish)ly reopened Old Vic a great showcase for its makeover face of accessibility and vibrant modern writing, like Kellerman, a touring production from Imitating the Dog. All drama is a journey; this one is five journeys in different time spheres, two of them in a mental institution. It boasts - appropriate use of verb here - "a magnificent two-storey set which incorporates a revolving stage, flying harnesses, moving masks and stunning back and front projections". It was all, as claimed, extraordinary and exciting, but what I enjoyed most was the dark conundrum-laden script.
'Where does it all go, everything that’s ever happened to us?’
‘We’re left with what we remember.’
But Harry remembers pasts he never inhabited, and people he never knew. "Perverse, erotic, poetic and grotesque, Kellerman is a meditation on desire, loss and the structures that bind us to the lives we believe to be real."

Finally - a couple of plugs: May madness at the Poetry Cafe TONIGHT - the posters have become collector's items, thankyou Suzy! - and Luke Wright is at the Merlin on Friday with his new show A POET'S WORK IS NEVER DONE... rarely begun, in my case. "Gifted social observer and wordsmith" Luke is sandwiching Frome into his national tour betwixt York and Maidenhead, which gives some idea of the truth of the title. If you missed Luke's on C4's "Seven Ages of Love", here's a bite of the real thing.
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