A double dose of drama as summer bows out

Ironic, isn't it, that after the long gorgeous summer, now there's permission for socially-distanced performances outside, the rainy season begins. This week's survivors of relocation within the Merlin building were Folksy Theatre, an outdoor group who could probably lift your spirits in an air-raid shelter under bombardment, so their version of The Taming of the Shrew was deservedly much appreciated. Apart from the trees, this publicity shot gives a pretty good summary of their physical interpretation of Shakespeare's play, with Petruchio employing well-received lust as well as psychological warfare on his recalcitrant bride Katherine. There's very little editing of the bard's script, which puts something of a strain on the other members of the cast to create parents, wooers, servants, and visitors, so big credit to all three that they manage to steer a coherent path through the confusion. Even within the formal confines and the mask-juggling required to sip prosecco, this was brilliant entertainment - and huge credit to director Claudia Pepler and her stoic team for keeping our little theatre's head above water when bigger ones are foundering. 

Still with the theatrical theme but without the feel-good factor:  The Merchant of Venice isn't one of the the bard's jolly dramas, and this 2015 Royal Shakespeare company production,  one of their season of streamed free shows, made no concessions to the brutal storyline. Prejudice and racism intrude in every scene like the massive silver ball rolling back and forth across the stage throughout the action.  Director Polly Findlay adds an extra layer of deceit by relocating Bassanio’s passion for his bride Portia to his old friend Antonio instead, and the jeering of the antisemitic Christians is upgraded to thuggery by their routine spitting in Shylock's face on sight. 

It's hard to cheer when the tables are turned against him with such venom in the court room. Makram J Khoury is impressive as Shylock, pushed beyond the limit of sanity by the defection of his daughter and determined to have his long years of abuse revenged in court. One of the other highlights is Launcelot Gobbo, clown-servant with the wit of a modern standup comic,  here haranguing an audience member.  Available till September.

And now back to Frome, where Hunting Raven Books autumn sale last Saturday had so many great offers that manager Tina Gaisford-Waller moved the entire event to Silk Mill, and within three hours an overwhelming response from the bibliophiles of Frome had stripped the trestle tables  Top pic is by Tina at the start, showing the 10 max customers but not the long queue outside! Below is my view later that morning as doorman, with 42 Acres in the courtyard also doing a brisk trade, theirs being lipsmackingly-good organic produce.

Also on Saturday, a defiant snook at the wild winds in the afternoon came from Fair Play for Frome, a new group set up by Paul Kirtley to play folky-pop songs live with whichever instrumentalists are able to come along. This time it was mega-talented David Goodman, and soundman Steve in his other incarnation as cajon player... The number braving the King Lear style weather conditions amazingly reached double figures... we're hoping for a more temperate time in the pub garden at Rode next weekend.

Ending this post with an image of the changing view when walking those fields so recently waist-high with waving crops, and a link to the Siren Poet project led by the supernova talent of Liv Torc, who'd be the jewel in Frome's poetry crown if she, I, & Frome were royalist, and who has also this week posted a new poem after her recent hospitalisation: There's Something About Mary is available for public viewing - click the title for link - and I suspect that like her environmental poem The Human Emergency it will move many and travel far.  

Nights in and days out...

Once again this week's round-up opens with a gang of blokes in Elizabethan-style dressing-up-clothes, shouting and romping dramatically in the open-air: The Lord Chamberlain's Men have now released for free online viewing their 2019 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, an incredible 425 years after this theatre troupe was first created.  It's really good.  There's huge potential for buffoonery in this play, and the three squabbling story strands - lovers, fairies, and buffoon 'mechanicals' - are separate enough for seven men to create each strand without confusion. They are excellent in all of them,  and bring big energy and laugh-aloud-in-the-livingroom humour to the mishaps in the forest as well as the legendary story of Pyramus and Thisbe.   My screenshots here show the spat in in the forest when the young lords - who've been relishing the cat-fight - leap in to drag Hermia off her rival,  and a moment from the mechanicals' tragic play-within-a-play. The soldier Pyramus, aka Bottom the Weaver, also played lovely Hermia in one of the best multi-tasking switches I've ever seen. Recommended viewing.

Thursday was a busy night, with a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth followed by Ibsen's A Dolls House adapted by Tanika Gupta, with additional dialogue, into an Anglo-Indian drama for Lyric Hammersmith. Perhaps this evening schedule was a little ambitious, especially after the hottest day of the year so far, and a smattering of fast-forward was involved but, in my defence, many in Shakespeare's day never saw his plays in their entirety, and apparently Chinese theatres used to double as tea-houses where people ordered refreshments and carried on chatting during the shows. A darkened room with serried rows of silent spectators is a comparatively recent development in the history of theatre, and perhaps on-line at-home viewing will find new audiences for live - ie filmed in one live take - performances as the rules of how to watch are inevitably relaxed - there's a great article here about how 'stupid' silent reverence is killing theatre for the future. Anyway, here's the wonderful Christopher Ecclestone hallucinating the friend he murdered while watched by his wife Niamh Cusack in a strong 2018 production directed by RSC which manages to make the witches really scary by presenting them as creepy children.
And here for contrast is Elliot Cowan with Anjana in Ibsen's exploration of gender politics transposed to 1879 Calcutta in a set that looks neither Russian nor Indian, just a place for dour argument and mind-games. Dark, but well-reviewed by critics as an expose of the consequences of English colonialism, racism and sexism

One final theatre recommendation, as you probably have your own choices by now: A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday as presented by the Young Vic for National Theatre, a superb production that also highlights the problem with my hope that home streaming may revive live drama - the difficulty of recording a night of intense interaction. Brilliantly acted with atmospheric set and dynamic direction, but the negative aspect of filmed productions was overwhelming: endlessly altering angles, close-ups and lens-elected choice of observation all worked against the theatrical experience, controlling the interaction that makes theatre live, fragmenting the experience and wasting a clever set by isolating areas of attention.  That’s just my take, many will disagree - you have till May 28 to decide.

In Poetry Corner: Liv Torc -whose amazing Haiflu Project is collecting responses to the coronavirus in haiku from around the world - this week created a Zoom version of her Rainbow Fish Speak-Easy, with some splendid contributions from the floor as well as guests including a set with piano accompaniment from Francesca Beard. And Steve Pottinger, who like Liv has been a popular guest at Frome's Poetry Cafe, had an online launch on his facebook page for his new poetry collection with the delightful title thirty-one small acts of love and resistance -'celebration and defiance in politically turbulent times' he claims, which sounds right for now, though are there ever others?
In other 'word' news: when not walking from my house in every direction on a daily basis while this glorious weather persists, my lockdown focus has been to complete a novel about Belfast at the start of the 1970s 'troubles', a time when I lived there. The characters are imagined, but the events aren't, as there's no shortage of historical accounts of this era of simmering conflict to supplement my memory. Anyway it should be out next month, published by Hobnob Press, with a powerful cover image created by Paul (Mutartis) Boswell. Sneak preview here...

Ending this week's rather late posting - I blame the distraction of tracking Dom Cummings as he darts like a Hermes parcel van around the country humming 'doo da dee, lockdown's not for me' to the tune of the conga song - with a couple of photos from my permitted-exercise explorations along the river Frome.

Richard II is my favourite Shakespeare play, possibly my favourite play, so what better way to start 2008 than at the RSC's stunningly fabulous production in The Courtyard Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon... (that's a rhetorical question so no punctuational query required.) It's the first of the history cycle, 8 plays tracing struggles that smouldered on through Shakespeare's time, with themes still hot today: new imperatives versus the old ways, charisma versus status, and the limits of loyalty. So many moments of the staging reached inspiration - that swirling dust on dethroned Richard which became the brutal setting of the new king's bloody ascension, the gorgeous costumes blending in tableau yet each subtly distinctive...
Jonathan Slinger was sensational as the flawed monarch, finding outrageous comedic moments in his tantrums even at the most tragic moments while never losing a single breath of the poignancy. At the end of the three hours my eyes were raw from silent crying, it was that good.

And now it's Epiphany, and the new year is well and truly launched. 2008 is the year of the rat, a time of renewal and fresh starts. We've got another month to hatch them, as the Chinese reckon from February 8th, but no harm in getting a few resolutions ready. Here's a great one that landed on my mobile today:

This is a toast to all us beautiful ladies for 2008!
For the men who are fortunate enough to have us,
the losers who had us and lost us,
and the very lucky bastards who are yet to meet us!

I don't usually go for Up-the-wimmin rallying cries but this I did like. Happy new year one & all. May our writing inspire us and delight us throughout 2008, and maybe even enrich us too.
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"Let's meet up when we're back in the UK!"... that impulsive pledge under blue skies! Then winter arrives, it's a long drive in the dark to the venue agreed so light-heartedly last summer, and there's so much more you ought to be doing. Tempting, however fond the memories, to postpone the reunion. Lucky for us we had Jane, tenacious as a terrior, organising the gig, and fortunate too to be meeting in Esme's lovely home on the outskirts of Bath. A wonderful day sharing words, food, and laughter.

It's been a busy weekend for catchups: on Friday with my friend Diana, journalist and editor, who reminds me that all writing is travel writing. We supper on tiger prawns and Belgian chocolates looking out on the glittering night-lights of Bath and musing on our different journeys this year. Next day in Bristol I meet with poet and novelist Christine Coleman, and again the talk is of writing and life travels. "We have to make our own map for relationships" Chris says.

The week continues in this puszipajtas manner - puszipajtas in Hungarian meaning a person you know well enough to kiss in the street - with more writerly reconnections: Jane D'Aulby, who I first met on Skyros, talks about why she appreciates the firmness of her Creative Writing course: "It’s like when you’ve planted a seed, you need to tamp down the sides - but not stamp on the growing tip." Another soundbite, this one over supper with Roger Jinkinson who's researching for his next book: “Biography is just another form of novel. If someone tells you something, you don't have to write it down just because it's true, if it's not part of your story." Roger's Tales from a Greek Island is selling like popcorn at a saturday matinee - and quite right too, it's a great collection.

Literacy corner, 1840's style: "Learning's not for everyone" snarls surly Gregson in "Cranford" on the box (BBC's latest Sunday night costume drama) when his son shows a reckless interest in reading the newspaper used to wrap his new(ish) boots. He's going to have to get used to it, Gregson senior that is, as young Harry has been taken under the wing of Mr Carter, erstwhile the brusque unreconstructed yet somehow hunkily delectable Gene Hunt from Life on Mars and now a brusque forward-looking yet still hunkily delectable land agent. He's apparently trying to shed the Mars tag. Well Philip Glenister you shouldn't persist in looking hunkily delectable, that's all I can say.
The 1840s is also the decade the painter Millais began his astonishing career, entering the Royal Academy aged 11, their youngest-ever student. I've finally made my pilgrimage to that exhibition at the Tate. On a grey November day (I wrote in my notebook) this is a feast of opulent beauty, sensuousness you can smell, dresses you can hear rustle, jewels that glint in the light, fresh flowers that wilt a little as you watch, so close is mortality to this warm flesh...
as you see, I was transported. Millais was inspired by literature, especially poetry: he used quotations as titles and painted interpretations of works by Shakespeare and Keats. It's true some of his pot-boilers are a bit chocolate-boxy - in the case of Bubbles, a bit Pears-soap-adsy - but his women are strong and wilful, and his skill in showing of psychological relationships is quite extraordinary.

This week's Arts section continues with Steve Hennessy's new play The Demon Box, at the Alma Tavern - the third in his Lullabies of Broadway trilogy and the most difficult, for me, in terms of graphic material. Complete contrast tonight with the RSC production of The Comedy of Errors at the Theatre Royal Bath, a big colourful ensemble romp, part carnival, part Danse Macabre. Themes of confinement, identity, and madness mingle with farce; this too is - as Steve says of his - "a play about the nature of theatre itself". A clever production, and very funny.


And as Wednesday was William Blake's birthday, I'll end this long posting with some words of Raymond Friel from a publication called simply PS, which I found in the Poetry Library on South Bank:
"Yes, there is darkness, belligerance, and vulgarity. There always has been. This is why we need our poets, our visionaries, to speak as they always have done, of hope."
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