Wild Goose Dreams, lantern lights and frost-fired music

Starting this week at Ustinov, Theatre Royal Bath's never-disappointing studio production space.

Guk Minsung is a 'wild goose father', a married South Korean who's sent his wife and children to America where he supports them while living alone.* Chuja Seo is a North Korean defector refugee, now making a new life alone while traumatised by the cultural differences she finds over the border.  Goosefather lives on his i-phone, she lives in her dreams: these unreal worlds fill the stage and provide the energy and the passion of Hansol Jung's drama Wild Goose Dreams as internet connections and emoticons shout and dance around him, while she is haunted by penguin soldiers with clipped wings and her interfering abandoned father.  These sequences, hilarious and tragic, are helped by a brilliant set designed by Jean Chan, and enhance a skeleton blind-date romance into an extraordinary story both provocative and informative.  Michael Boyd's direction and a strong cast ensure this drama resonates beyond the entertainment of media parody and even the gravitas of political data - go if you can, it's on till 21 December.
*Not-fun facts: 200,000 fathers are estimated to do this, to save their children from the gruelling South Korean 18-hour day schooling system. And recent studies show more than half of North Korean defectors suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders. There's still a lot of laughs though...

This is the time when towns & cities all over the UK as darkness falls begin to glitter with the strings of lights, and the traditional fir tree (six million of which will go to landfill in January) twinkles through the gloom of every town centre. Frome does this a bit too, modestly as befits its eco-awareness, but the town's real celebratory greeting to the festive season is the awesome lantern parade on Light the Night.

The atmosphere at this town-council sponsored event is indescribable as thousands watch and follow the hundreds of home-made lanterns swaying down the hill, following the parade led by Jamma de Samba's fabulous drummers. There were a smattering of religious-birth relevant songs around the time of the actual switch-on moment, taken by the mayor, following a lively set from our local Rock Choir of karaoke classics like I'm Still Standing... Yeah yeah yeah indeed.

Art exhibitions now, a plethora of them, as local craftsfolk seize the chance to present their work as possible gifts, with Saturday featuring Frome Festive Art Fair, a one day spectacular of printmaking, painting, ceramics, sculpture, illustration and jewellery shared across two splendid venues, Silk Mill and Rook Lane Chapel. Every artist had fabulous work to offer so here's two general views:

Next day, Silk Mill did a quick turnaround for the studio artists' collective own exhibition: the Silk Mill Collective's Christmas Fair, an even busier event selling classy jewellery, ceramics, designer-clothing, paintings, sculptures, and glassware all created by the 14 artists and designer-makers who work there.
This was held on market day, while in the meantime a Christmas exhibition by artists of the Black Swan Guild has also launched. Small and Mighty includes a fascinating mix of personal themes and studies, and is on at the Round Tower until December 24th.



Turning to music, there's quite a tangle to sort out as both Friday's Light the Night event and Sunday's Independent Market were thick with music, so I'll start with the relative calm of Saturday: Here's Rebel Heroes Bowie tribute band at the Cornerhouse - with apologies to Boot Hill All Stars for missing their gig that day for Shelter at 23 Bath Street.

A time-jump back to Friday night  when, after the lantern parade arrived at the town centre, there was more street theatre to enjoy as popular Frome Street Bandits band took advantage of a fine night to transfer from the Grain Bar stage to the courtyard where there was plenty of room for their massive duelling trombones.

Then a dash to the Artisan, rewarded by an evening session from top-of-leaderboard Bare to the Bones team as Paul Kirtley's assorted medley of creative jammers were joined by Hello Hopeville. Both bands gained big applause and charity donations from punters who even made space in the crowded pub to dance.

Sunday afternoon saw another charity gig at 23 Bath Street from the Back Wood Redeemers Alternative Nativity, 'an irreverent Sunday Afternoon Knees-Up' welcoming all sinners with comforting classics like Give Him a Good Death and I'll do the Wrong Thing &  I'll do the Right Thing Wrong (and Eddie's sinister Chocolate Jesus for which I can't find a soundcloud link.)

This tasty afternoon irreverence was followed by Back of the Bus at the Griffin: 'post punk pop with attitude' and ukeleles, with a particularly vicious take on Psycho-killer. I love their sinister version of Nice Day For a White Wedding too.

Sunday evening was much calmer, with a pleasant Jazz Jam at the Cornerouse. Among a varied group of performers, here's a rare picture of Simon Sax who organises this event with Nicki Mascall. And still on the theme of Frome's fantastic range of music this week, although sadly no image was possible in the stygian gloom of 23 Bath Street, credit too to the talents of The Brackish plus Rivers of England in a lively fund-raiser gig for Frome Labour party.

All of which kerfuffle brings us in sparkling style to the frosty final month of this year, with the Frome Independent Market now taking a break until March. Word on the street assured me that this festive-shopping market was fantastically busy and successful, but my personal participation was limited to Hunting Raven Books on Cheap Street, where I sat with Julian (Bugsy) Hight signing & selling books . So I'll close with a top-tip for booky presents: If you've already bought everyone Frome Unzipped, or just because Julian's latest addition to his tree saga is beautifully illustrated as well as massively informative, then Britain's Ancient Forest is a the way to go.

Sunny daze as festival season nears

Sunny days have tentatively arrived again, in time for festival season so it may seem ungracious to point out that the nights are already lengthening now we're past the magic solstice, celebrated with a massive music jam at the Artisan for Paul Kirtley's Bare to the Bones ongoing charity collection. This session enjoyed only the Bones regulars but two other Frome bands, The Decades and Hello Hopeville, plus washboard virtuoso Alexandra and mellifluous flutist Shehzad, resulting in something of a challenge for sound man Steve and four hours of varied medleys... great fun though not ideal for cameras - here's Paul leading a melange of regulars and visitors in All You Need Is Love...

Saturday continued the supply of music from great local bands, with an excellent 'Sofa Session' on Catherine Hill in the afternoon from Crossing the Rockies followed in the evening by sensational Rebel Heroes, local brilliant Bowie tribute band playing with passion and real authenticity... another great dancing night at the Cornerhouse.


Sunday focus was on the youngsters, with Frome Children's Festival offering a host of activities from graffiti, games, and performance skills to pump track action and a zip wire across the river - face-painting and street bands naturally obligatory - a very popular event and big credit to the dedicated organisers and talented contributors.

Children were on the menu in Bath too, with the Forest of Imagination in Sydney Gardens and Holburne Museum - 'a series of multi-sensory pop up events and installations along the theme of 'lifelong inspiration from nature'. I especially liked the egg of the Giant Ogulon, and the amazing clay creatures created by excited young participants.

Roots Session on Wednesday featured Harbottle & Jonas, a young husband and wife team who seem to have redefined folk music, writing and performance vibrant and exciting real-life tales with superb harmonies. Their current album is all about the sea, with a range of true tales like the shipwreck rescue by Grace Darling in 1838, the cocklers' tragedy on the Morecambe shore in 2004,  the lost village of Hallsands and, a favourite for me, the movingly imagined final night in 1912 of Scott in the Antarctic Was it You?  I like this picture, though it's not the best of either of this couple, because it has something of the powerful-seeming rapport between them throughout their set.

Over at the Cornerhouse, the Saturday night session was a Pink Floyd mini-spectacular from James Hollingsworth, who impressively recreates that iconic sound solo using loop technology with live percussion, voice, harmonica and guitar to build complex arrangements in real time.

 And on a balmy Sunday afternoon, what could be better than a stroll along the abundantly floral riverbank into Bath and fetch up at The Bell listening to Alamo Leel's sensational 'lunchtime session' blues featuring, as well as guest singer & saxophonist, Frome giants Pete Gage on keyboard and Paul Hartshorn on guitar.

Moving to theatre now, where on the still-warm Sunday night, ECOS amphitheatre was filled with sounds of thunder as Illyria Open Air Theatre company evoked sea-storms and the fantastical world of The Tempest. What you get from Oliver Gray, who directs these small-cast re-envisionings of Shakespeare's plays, is a script largely-uncut and conscientiously edited,  masses of costume changes with a proliferation of increasingly bizarre hats, and at least one episode of audience-invasion for picnic-basket raiding. With a cast of only five some liberties are inevitable, and this production went further and redefined the exiled duke & sorcerer Prospero as not Miranda's father but her mother, Prospera, who has the seething self-certainty and strong address-style of an ex-headmistress, & thus comes across as pretty scary. As the programme points out, this alters the relationship to a single-mother issue, though on a remote island with potato-peeling the focus of their shared mum/daughter time and only a dancing sprite and a chained monster for company, there’s not much option to explore the sociological impact of this shift. However as always, it's all very well done, with a strong cast and action pitched perfectly for outdoor enjoyment. Shakespeare laced this dark script with pantomime humour in the drunken butler scenes, and the cast made much of these, also added their own touches of mirth from the start as buckets of water drenched the shipwrecked sailors. Ferdinand and Miranda’s whirlwind Love Island romance is charming, Ariel’s final flight is a triumph to flare in the mind forever, and - in short - once again the intrepid Illyrians (despite unexpected realism in one of the fights: big respect to David Sayers for maintaining role as the blood visibly dripped down his face) have definitely pulled it off.

Meanwhile, preparations for Frome Festival intensify and Frome Writers Collective has already set the glitter-ball rolling with their Writers in Residence event - thirteen scribes in cafes and shops around the town, all equipped on Saturday morning with a surprise topic on which to create a story in four hours...  here's long-hander Tim Bates nicely settled in The Settle with scones and favourite pen, and on the other side of town Suzy Howlett teching it up at Black Swan. The resulting scripts have been collected for prize allocation and there will be a night of shared readings in September.

So now with less than a week to go, tickets are flying from Cheese & Grain Box Office and Where the Fault Lies, our Nevertheless Pub Theatre production on Wednesday, sold out completely and after hasty discussions with the Cornerhouse and the Frome Actors Network team, there will be second performance later in the evening - so seats for the 9.30 showing are now on sale - and early grabbing is recommended. Oh, and Frome Festival Poetry Cafe has achieved the highest echelons of esteem - we are in the LIST RECOMMENDS! If you're anywhere in or near Frome on Monday 8th July, I hope to see you at the Garden Cafe...

Masses of music as autumn winds whirl...

Starting with music, superlatively good in Frome last week - and there were jazz session and Celtic sessions too...   The Cornerhouse had standing room only on Friday for a sensational blues session from Pete Gage Band, then on Saturday that venue transformed into a Bowey-inspired party night as Rebel Heroes gave a storming performance with atmospheric visual effects.

A walk down the road on sunny Sunday for Nunney Acoustic Cafe, where as well as great local artists we were treated to Swindon's fabulous folk band Splat the Rat and Danny McMahon from Bristol, currently topping the iTunes Country Chart.

When a musical duo takes the name Leonardo's bicycle you don't really know what to expect because it never existed. True, a bicycle sketch purportedly by the C15th Florentine artist inventor was allegedly found in Milan in 1974, but examination revealed that the paper had been folded & glued to hide a selection of penises not thought to be in the hand of the master, though whether that was due to poor craftsmanship or poor likeness hasn't been clarified. The new theory is that the bicycle was forged in the 1960s - (“It’s the sort of thing a bored monk might do,” says Nicholas Clayton, editor of The Boneshaker, the magazine of the British Veteran-Cycle Club) which brings me nicely to the Three Swans on Thursday, where the best of 1960s & '70s music was played live all evening by two amazing musicians who travel under the enigmatic banner of that non-existent vehicle.

Da Vinci musings bring us nicely into art, and the opening of a new show at the HUBnub of work by Susanna Lisle ;- paintings inspired by local landscape and Islamic tradition of geometric patterning, combining both elements in paintings big enough to look striking even in the massive proportions of the gallery in the old Whittox Lane Chapel.

Over now to Theatre Royal Bath, where Ruth Jones, famous for her role as louche, laconic Nessie on TV’s comedy series Gavin and Stacey, is the featured star in The Nightingales, a drama about a song group with aspirations of small-screen stardom. They seem a jolly, ordinary, bunch but nobody is quite what they first seem, and cracks in their cohesion are inevitable when wild-card Maggie persuades them to compete for Britain's Got Talent. William Gaminara's play is tightly interlaced with televisual references as the plot unrolls with several sections of narration direct to audience and bursts of song. The set, a village hall, is awesomely realistic (designer Jonathan Fensom) and this is a slick production which, as Miss Jean Brodie might say, will appeal to those who like that sort of thing.  My favourite character was Sarah Earnshaw's sassy Connie, spitting fury at Maggie's aspirations to be the next Susan Boyle. Now touring in London. Image: Geraint Lewis

So in the week when arguments about poppies replace arguments on fireworks, I'll leave you with an image of my local walk, and the good news that Nevertheless is returning:
Scratchings is our newly-formed combination with Frome Actors Network, with a production of four shorts already planned for the 2019 Festival... here's Becki, Lou and Mark somewhat shocked after our first read-through...

Mostly music and madness

Starting off with madness, and the Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland, the latest production by internationally renowned Ridiculusmus. It's an endlessly provocative, in the thinking sense, story and we get two takes on it, one on each side of a divide in time, or reality (or both) made literal by a semi-opaque wall. Half the audience sees each narrative, but disturbingly hears fragments of the other. Then we swap over, for the rest of the story, which like life has by now slightly changed, with some new bits and some bits lost and not in the order we (half)remembered it. In other words it's like life, disturbingly so. The psychiatrist, who has troubles of his own, is struggling to find answers in the works of RD Laing and there's an ongoing theme of the use & dangers of meds - 'They don't want to medicate meaning-making,' he explains to the fragile, angry, author who thinks he wrote Nabokov's books and may well be writing the play we are watching... It's an amazing, brilliant, unforgettable piece of theatre and I won't say, Go See, because it's sold out at Tobacco Factory in Bristol - and I only got to see it through an amazing gesture by Ridiculusmus when Stepping Out mental health theatre group failed to get tickets and wrote to tell them, and their response was to put on an extra show especially for the Stepping Out group, transporting their entire set to St Werburghs Community Centre on Saturday. As an associate of Stepping Out I was invited too, and after having our minds blown to Lapland and back by this amazing show, we all went off for lunch with the cast in Cafe Napolita.
   
Saturday evening, you may know if you were in Bath on this warm clear night was Party in the City with masses of bands in the parks, gardens, pubs, cafes, halls, so I hopped off the train and met up with some Frome friends for a saunter round the streets.
There were some good bands indoors but on a sultry night like this, the outside venues lured: Queens Square for wonderful atmosphere and great bands like Jupiter Owls and Agent Philby and the Funtans, and the Parade Gardens - free for this event - for The Blues Others with a magical crescent moon above the floodlit abbey... a glorious way to end an extraordinary day.
Back to Frome, and the week began with a very pleasant Frome Poetry Cafe. It's always a delight to hear the diversity of readings from the floor, and our guest Matt Duggan treated us to the first UK reading from his new collection A Season in Another World. Matt is only just back from a US tour with readings in New York and Boston, so Frome probably did seem like another world... Next Poetry Cafe will be in the Festival, which we're already gearing up for, with brochures out now and booking beginning!

Over in the Round Tower this week there's an unusual exhibition by Si Griffiths, 'pop surrealist' paintings: vivid contemporary iconography probing cultural icons from all walks of life - political, religious, cultural, evoking references to movies, music, comic books, even theatre, in a striking display on the old mill walls. Adventures in Reality? is on till 26th May - do take a look and have a chat with this fascinating explorer-artist.

A bit more music, Frome-style, to finish: Roots Session at the Grain Bar had the fabulous Fos Brothers from Belfast, plus drums and bass, bringing banter and traditional songs presented in a mostly-non-traditional way. And the weekend offered just to too much to see it all,  even if you ran from the Vine Tree to the Cornerhouse as I did, pausing only to admire the Boyle Cross in the marketplace foaming again. Sorry I missed The ShakeSpearOs following (2 of) the ever-vibrant Raggedy Men, but glad to have caught most of Rebel Heroes - a nice irony in ending one session with No More Heroes and the other with Heroes... just for one day...

History decides winners... you may not always agree

A visit to the Wardrobe Theatre is always a delight: proper pub theatre in the heart of Bristol, only a short walk from the station via the new Avon footbridge, and more importantly every show I've seen there has been fantastic. How to Win Against History didn't break that record. Based on the true story of Henry Paget, 5th Marquis of Anglesey, this musical is fascinatingly entertaining not only because the three performers have masses of talent & charm but because Seiriol Davies's witty, absurd, script is based on intense research: this is a character study of weirdness uncontrolled by the usual social limits of access to funding. Henry's status allowed him extraordinary excesses. To quote the annotated script that I couldn't resist buying: 'Born to inherit the empire, instead he burned brightly, briefly, and transvestitely through his family's vast wealth, charging round Europe dressed as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine or sometimes a butterfly, in a car with rose-scented exhaust fumes...'  Henry died in 1905 aged only thirty, and his family erased every trace they could of his existence. The Evening Express headed their obituary 'A Wasted Life', and wrote reproachfully of the man who became bankrupt on £100,000 a year and 'bought diamonds as an ordinary man buys cigarettes'.  Social familiarity with psychiatric definitions was limited at that time, but envy of wealth wasn't. These days, when abuse of personal power is increasingly under scrutiny, the colourful exploits and foibles of this gentle, generous, man seem almost innocent. How to Win Against History is a co-production with Tobacco Factory Theatres. Image: Mihaela Bodiovic

A quick blast of music now: Rebel Heroes at the Cornerhouse, best Bowie tribute band I've yet heard...  and The Raggedy Men on  the busking stage dazzling a large crowd with their 70s retro-punk at the Independent Market last Sunday.
Stallholders and strollers enjoyed a wintry sun for this ~ I  popped into the Magpie market hall too, to check in with Frome Writers Collective and to take a look at Matt Straker's art in the Grain Bar.   And now the glitter-arti opening at Black Swan Arts is over, there's an opportunity for a quiet look at the exhibition of winners from an Open Arts contest that attracted over 900 entries. Viewer responses to the winning choices have been mixed: some find the pieces inscrutable and the artists' notes obfuscating, but then as Picasso said art should not aim to please. It all made for an interesting writing workshop on Monday, impressively led by Louise Green who suggested subterfuge as an overall theme: the artists' meanings concealed, as poets also often do. There's a link to our writerly responses here, and as contrast to the elusiveness of those ~ mainly pale-toned ~ exhibits, here's Matt's vigorous portrait of Dave Grohl. Exhibition on till end November.

Frome Writers Collective social evening at the Three Swans this month featured readings from the nine 'writers in residence' in shops and cafes during the festival. To suit the festival theme, the writers' trigger was a Jane Austen line: passionate Darcy's plea to Lizzie "Surely, you must know it was all for you." Responses ranged from humorous to murderous, poignant to absurd. Writer Tim Bates was chosen as this year's winner ~ fittingly perhaps, as it was his original idea for a one-day "sweatshop" that we pinched off Bruton Festival of Arts and brought to Frome...

I'm not familiar with Günter Grass's picaresque tale of the Nazi regime through the eyes of a perpetual child, but 'the team that brought you Dead Dog in a Suitcase' was enough to entice me to Bristol Old Vic to see The Tin Drum. As always with Kneehigh, the on-stage musicality is fantastic, visuals amazing with great use of shadows and symbols,  and a terrific ensemble performance team but this time though there's the usual verve, the story-telling feels weak. The first act is mostly personal back-story and only after the interval does a real sense of allegory develop. But Oskar as a puppet (created by Lyndie Wright) is superb, with an expression both wise and naive: despite his drum he's not an initiator and his observation seems more like the incomprehension of the little man than the deaf-dumb-blind secret power of a Tommy; neither the Messiah nor a very naughty boy, perhaps only a delusion of innocence. And there's memorable moments: one is when nice kind Alfred arrives home sporting a red armband, innocently excited by the new group forming to empower the lives of folk like them… and another is the trail of tiny refugees across bodies on the stage as the cast sing sadly. The end will either comfort or disappoint you.
Artistic Director Mike Shepherd's company is legendary, and for this production he has Ali Roberts (Tobacco Factory's loss) as Executive Producer as well as Carl Dead-Dog Grose as writer, and Charles Hazlewood composing and ~ well, it's Kneehigh, 'one of our liveliest national treasures' as The Times has sententiously observed, so book before the company heads on off on tour.  On till November 18th. Images Steve Tanner

Back to the present now, and the regular retelling of WWI history. Siegfried Sassoon is buried near Frome in Mells churchyard, and his grave always has flowers on November 11th. Sassoon like Wilfred Owen was unequivocal in his opposition to the conflict:
"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."

Meanwhile in town the Cheese & Grain was enjoying a day of electric dreams, showing off a range of vehicles including the Mark 1 Tesla Roadster, Renault Zoe, & various bikes. Frome Car Club has gone electric so the Zoe is available to hire, but the Tesla is more photogenic. David Bowie's movie Labyrinth was shown in the afternoon, powered by Electric Pedals.

A frivolous footnote to conclude this melange of past & future: when you lick your first-class stamp to send those belated reciprocal festive greetings, give a thought to the cheery santa steering through a sky Van Gogh would have appreciated: this image, picked from over 9,000 entries, is by a young Frome artist: well done Ted Lewis-Clark! May all your moons be golden.