The cafe edition - short, but with an otter.

The  Barrel House Ballroom in Totnes has been home to the Word Cafe created & run by Julie Mullen since 2019, and on Thursday Julie introduced a 30-minute film of poetry and music from local poets and performers which hopefully will stay on YouTube because it's delightful. Beautifully filmed in a variety of enticing local locations (cinematography by Chris Plant) this features poetry and music by local creatives, including Matt Harvey, with an acrostic about Totnes to compensate for his recent move to Dartington, and Brian Patten, still ruggedly scouse. Brian Patten was one of my poetry heroes - the title my published collection Crumbs from a Spinning World is derived from one of his poems - and his book launches unmissable, a fact I confided to him after his eighth, Storm Damage, and received the sighed reply 'Yes, we're all getting old.'  That was back in 1995. Here he is now, and here too is Susie David reciting her poem The Sea Calls.

Back in Frome, Black Swan Arts is preparing to reopen its gallery and the cafe reopened on Friday as the River House Cafe relocated - lock, stock, and staff - from its popular but cramped location on the bridge to the spacier premises - with courtyard seating too - of the Black Swan building. It's another upward step for this 17th Century alehouse, nearly demolished in 1974 until rescued & reopened in 1986 as an arts centre. Here's me looking very happy to join the queue on the official opening day. Thanks Emma Warren for the snap! 

Also in Frome: Our last couple of weeks' sunshine has coaxed the swirling mudscape beside the river bank to regain its role as a path, thus widening the range of rambles available in town and beyond. Frome's online Wildlife Watch group, a treasure trove of birds, butterflies, and recently beavers,  been getting excited about otters, and I was lucky enough to spot this sleek-headed little guy in the exquisite garden of Marston Mill on the Mells River after a writing group meeting. 

Drama has been coming at us from all sorts of places since our theatres, initially muted apart from pleas for donations, have regrouped and come back with online options and now National Theatre has premiered their Romeo and Juliet on the telly - Sky Arts on Sunday night. Directed by Simon Godwin and commendably contracted to 90 minutes, this pandemic production of Shakespeare's violent love story becomes a timeless tale of families and passions. Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley are the lovers, but it's Tamsin Greig as Juliet's powerful mother who stands out in a production that changes relationships and scythes speeches but creates the constraints of family dynamics and social controls in a fantastic, and memorable, way. Look out for repeats.

This blog, or rather this blogger, is determined to chicane through our present Troubles, as the Irish so eloquently delineate stuff too big to name, without discussing either of them, nor the western religious calendar,  so this spring holiday bulletin will conclude with a 'poem for today' as chosen by Poem for the Day (1) ed. Wendy Cope which is by Maya Angelou: Still I Rise was written 1978 and is shockingly still relevant, read it and weep. More cheerful is the other choice for today, from Poem for the Day (2) ed. Andrew Motion, which is Adrian Mitchell's ditty to Celia: 

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on

They later married & lived happily ever after, which shows there's more than one way to look at Easter.  

    

Non-contact Shakespeare, virtual sleuthing, and various walks

As the English Puritans discovered in 1642, you can close playhouses by law but you can't keep theatre down. We've seen the emergence of zoomed & streamed performances and now there's a filmed version of Romeo and Juliet available on a laptop near you. It's set in a the near future in a depleted world with all its traditional rivalries plus unused theatres intact - a kind of Mad Max II where the disaffiliated youngsters lounge about in red plush velvet auditoriums. Shakespeare's play is about passion and intimacy, giving producer Nick Evans a major problem in these pandemic times: the chosen solution is computer-generated imagery with cast members all filmed individually against green screens. Considering this is an early foray into a new form, it seems churlish to complain that the result lacks dramatic impact, but it does. The overall story-telling is laborious, with too much intrusive music and speeches slow and heavy as if lingering for translation. My main problem was my usual gripe about filmed productions being too selective - i.e. not showing the whole scene the way the playwright envisaged but going instead for a close-up of whoever is speaking.  This inevitable consequence of separate filming is a major problem since the plot hinges on intense sexual encounters and a deadly dual, plus a community in rowdy discord with two rival gangs running wild in the streets. This contextural tension was a major casualty in this production, and the Prince's solemn hope that these deaths would inspire societal control was barely audible under the finale music. Technical problems aside, this is well acted in the circumstances but insensitively directed and with unimpressive scenery & costumes (who wears a bra for their night of passion?)  Juliet (Emily Redpath) is lovely, but Romeo (Sam Tutty) while charming has a disconcerting resemblance to Joe Lycett.  Anyway I don’t want to put you off, have a go if you fancy it, for the fx at least - it's on till the end of the month.  

And now for something completely different: another zoomed dramatic gem from that clever young Sharp Teeth team with Bristol Old Vic this week as Murder on Ice challenged its audience to find the killer on a stricken Antarctic expedition where the leader has been found mysteriously murdered. 

Technically, this spoof show is superb in terms of organisation & timing, and the five-strong team of young actors are all quirkily brilliant. The concept is demanding for anyone who prefers the anonymity of a silent darkened auditorium since, apart from the characters' passionate protestations of innocence (& hints of others' culpability), much of the dialogue of the drama is up to the viewers to create via their impromptu interrogations until the big reveal at the end...  It's great fun, with all the essential essence of theatre. Hopefully this unexpected bonus of performance-in-lockdown will continue in some way after the buildings have reopened, maybe moderating the sacrosanctity of silence in the auditorium since the more interactive days of Shakespeare, when interjections from the pit provoked much of the wit. (I've posted this 2013 article before but it's still relevant.)

With the continuing rain, my walking has tended to be confined to the lanes around Frome: this field is surrounded by posters pleading for a halt to the massive commercial project that will convert it from an idyllic view to massive housing estate, probably annually battling with the consequences of building on a floodplain - you can read more about the project & the protest here.  Inappropriate invasions of our fragile ecological environment are still shadowing Frome's life:  Easthill Field has now been officially designated a priority habitat requiring conservation action, and Frome Town Council are supporting their application for this land to be designated an asset of community value. Plans to build here are now halted but to ensure its future safety there's a petition to Mendip District Council you can sign here. And Save River Frome Pathway has successfully delayed a controversial planning application and temporarily at least saved this important final stretch into the town. Huge respect to all the committed Fromies who dedicate so much time and energy to protecting the town from loss of its treasures and inappropriate development.   

Here's a picture of local river walk threatened only by its own popularity and the rain: Vallis Vale. My Sunday afternoon walk took nearly three hours, and cleaning my boots took nearly as long, but the luminous green landscape of sculpted moss made it all worthwhile.

Regular readers will have noticed there's very little reference to televised shows in this chronicle, since presumably you all have your own favourite channels & programmes, but I can't let  It's a Sin leave our screens without note - if you're not sure why Russell T Davies' series about the 'gay plague' of the 1980's is an important contribution to a mostly-secret aspect of our own lifetimes, this article is a reminder.  

And on the subject of demonising,  a salutary tale from Northern Ireland: Human rights activist Mark Ashton, who died in 1987 of Aids, is scheduled for a memorial in his hometown of Portrush but the project has met Unionist Party protests that Mark - a catholic - was an IRA supporter. Considering he went to London to cofound a movement to support striking Welsh miners (featured in the film Pride) this seems a dubious claim but it suggests that the Brexit border issue has breathed life into old hostilities once again. See The Price of Bread, my novel set in Belfast in the 70s, for how it happened last time, and what followed last time. 

theatre, art, music words - the 'Back in Business' one!

When theatre goes real-time live again, these free treats from London's costliest theatres will be much missed- do grab them while they're around. The Globe's offering this week was Romeo and Juliet, weighing in at just shy of three hours but superbly performed - Rebekah Murrell as Juliet and Petra Letang as her nurse especially brilliant - and thrilling viewing (unless you're one of the students whose laments that an English lesson is only supposed to be hour long littered the comments online).
Dominic Dromgoole's direction brings out the unruliness of the rival gangs and the youthfulness of the lovers, both initially naive in their notions of romance until sobered into the harsh reality of transgressing clan rivalries.  The sword fights are thrilling but have been filmed rather too close to follow the vital dynamic leading up to Romeo's fatal thrust, but overall there's good coverage of audience excitement.

Thursday night's National Theatre offering of 'Danny Boyle's monster hit Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein' was as unforgettably amazing as you'd expect from the first two names. Unforgettable especially for the long opening section of electric birth through the creature's long lonely struggle to articulate movement and sound, watching the thing grow into a humanoid and then a lover of poetry and a philosopher under the tutelage of the blind old man: this was full of charm as well as poignancy. When this connection is abruptly broken by the seeing world and the quest for vengeance begins the trajectory is set steadily for melodrama. Mary Shelley's tale of the motherless creature, completed while living in Bath, is a psychological drama as much as a monster story, and the parallels with her own life in terms of loss and disregarded needs are plangent. This brilliant interpretation of a timeless tragedy is on all week, well worth viewing.

 Bath Festival went virtual too, with a varied menu of free options including Grayson Perry's Art Club, in which he invites viewers to submit their own work, with the chance of  inclusion in his next real-time exhibition "when this is all over." His theme this week is portraits: here's one that artist Nathan Wyburn made of him, using soy sauce and noodles. Grayson was also much taken with the latest trend on facebook, even more popular than the 'ten-albums-that-define-me' one: Recreate artworks with things you find at home now has over 50,00 members and there are some fantastic efforts out there - if you haven't started following yet, you're missing a treat. And in the Golden Oldies corner. Channel 4 is releasing to the world 'Bingeable Box Sets' of comedy classics - every series of Seinfeld, and Father Ted to name but two.

As always there's masses of music online - if you don't have enough of your own favourites tune into Visual Radio Arts where Phil Moakes and Maggie Gregory continue to add new shows: here's No Fixed Abode who played last week.

Sofa continues to stream international acts for free viewing, and individuals musicians are increasingly posting on facebook: Martin Dimery, ex Sergeant Pepper's Only Dartboard Band, has made several of his Beatles songs publicly viewable. Here comes the Sun is one of my favourites.  Frome's jazz-fusion giant John Law offers a preview of his new album CONFIGURATION here prior to its release, and looking wider, Radiohead has posted their archived tour concerts.

Words now, and a fascinating talk from Andrew Ziminski's from his workshop organised on Zoom by Pippa Goldfinger, describing his work as a stonemason, with a focus on the landscape of Wessex. His slide presentation included discoveries from neolithic sites including Avebury, Fyfield Down, West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill Stonehenge and was supplemented by workshop demonstrations of skills like creating sarsen polishing stones and repairing the carvings in the temple of Sulis Minerva. Buy the book, if you haven't got it already!

From fabulous fact to intriguing fiction, with Bath's Story Friday, the popular community platform initiated by mega-skilled Clare Reddaway, went online last week and continues its Friday evening sessions on the theme of 'Dark Clouds, Silver Linings' read by a team from Kilter Theatre. This week's set included a story from Chiara Vascotto, whose sensuous, visceral, personal style I remember from last year in Skyros. You can listen to her story, read Amy Vickers, here, along with five other intriguing short tales - one by Clare herself.
Liv Tork, indefatigably innovative and creative, continues to collect submissions of 'haiflu' (haiku in time of plague) to create weekly compilations: here's week 6 online, sombre but plangently sincere. Meanwhile Frome Poetry Cafe  is open for any original poems, especially with some tangental connection to 'revenge or redemption (which happened appropriately to be our theme for April) as the page becomes virtual 'open mic' for lockdown times.

And as April moves into May in Frome, where we're lucky enough to have lanes and footpaths close enough to walk miles in any direction, I'll end this week's roundup with images of blossom - the wonderful Judas tree in Victoria park, and a small burst of the hawthorn blossom brimming on every hedge.

Street riots and secret passion

The first play in Bristol Tobacco Factory’s SATTF season is always a high-expectation event. Their in-the-round staging is brilliant for Shakespeare, and this new production of Romeo and Juliet, unusual in the 16 year history of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, is directed by someone other than prime mover and founder Andrew Hilton. Polina Kalinina’s version is not so much a romance of star-struck lovers as a tale of social and generational struggle: the violent anarchy of Lyndsay Anderson’ If is her reference, and the story is set set in the post-world-war turbulence of the 1960s (terrific design by Emma Bailey, whose costumes bring glamour as well as era identification to this dark story).  Action revolves on a vast playground roundabout, a metaphor for the gamesmanship of dominant groups as well as ready source of metal rods for weapons in the street fights that are context and communication for the sparring tribes.
As always, the actors are all excellent, with a stand-out performance from Oliver Hoare as a charismatic Mercutio, whose shiveringly-well staged death sets in motion the inevitable tragedy. Some traditional elements have gone ~ no balcony musings for this bed-bouncing young Juliet, and with no role for a Nurse, this character becomes more of a sit-com whacky neighbour ~ but the transposition from Renaissance Verona to a more West Side Story cityscape successfully highlights those timeless central themes of love and freedom.  image Toby Farrow.

Paradoxically, the first production of Romeo & Juliet I saw was actually in this era, as a stage-struck teen, in the 2-shilling ‘standing seats’ of London's Old Vic. Franco Zefferelli directed, and what I most remember ~ apart from Judi Dench’s terrifying tantrum when her nurse tried to stop her eloping ~ was a sense that all these people shared history together, a long-term intimacy of kinship or enmity. That was the one element lacking for me in SATTF's otherwise thrilling production. 

Final weekend of Frome's festival gave me a chance to catch up on some of the fantastic art, music, and community events... like the Silk Mill exhibition of quirky paintings, full of intriguing private narrative, by Kay Lewis-Bell who took as her starting point four lines from Wordsworth's prelude:
How oft, among those overflowing streets
Have I gone forward with the crowd and said
Unto myself, "The face of every one
That passes by me is a mystery."
A very different mood at the exhibition entitled simply "LOOK" - contemporary art by Samuel Lee, Mutalib Man, and Alex Relf in promoted by Marian Bruce, the installation artist who I collaborated with some years ago on a Fallen Angels project - the scarlet angel, I found, still sits somewhat dejectedly in Marian's garden, succumbing now to woodworm.
Then on, via the Bastion Gardens where Jill Miller was singing her own jazzy songs, to the Moving Home community project at the Key Centre, where I got a chance to join the all-age instant artists carving chalk pebbles to send down the river Frome in flotilla at sunset.
A crowd gathered around the bridge to cheer the launch, our intrepid Mayor with gold chain and life jacket in the lead punt, with help from the canoe club to whoosh our crafts along the sluggish river. "Even by Frome standards this is a somewhat bizarre event" murmured John Payne as Maitre Chives the cabaret captain gave running commentary and the crowd sang impromptu harmonies of Row Your Boat.
My boat with its carving reclaimed, time for jazz from Salutemus in Divas courtyard garden till darkness fell.


Event 178, Nunney Rocks, was a must-go for music fans: a 9-hour fest-within-a-fest, featuring all the best in local musicians including Frogbelly (pictured) and Richard Kennedy.
As well as beer and refreshments there were art tents and story circles to keep the children happy, and the sun shone gracefully throughout.

I'd like to have stayed for Bugs and the Collaborators and Three Corners, but Jill and I were walking the three miles there and back to the fields of Castle Quarry in Nunney, and we had to get back for the theatre.

Miracle Theatre always delivers, and I hope the company feels the same about Frome's ECOS amphitheatre, where on Sunday night over 300 people nestled beneath the circle of stones under a frail moon in fabulous summer warmth to enjoy the tragedy of Romeo & Juliet performed by six versatile and talented actors in a mix of Shakespearean text and 20th century vernacular.

Like most outdoor theatre companies, Miracle usually goes for laughs, and the opening act played up every possible comic element in a show that began like a house-party Charades romp set early last century. After the death of Tybalt it seemed this concept wouldn't be able to hold the necessary depth, but the second act was brilliant: the bullying simmering in the Capulet household erupted as a potent energy to push wild-child Juliet into recklessness, and she and Romeo both found powerful emotional connection with the core of the tragedy - great acting from Catherine Lake and Wesley Griffith as hauntingly sensuous lovers in both life and death.
Some bits didn't work: the usually excellent Ben Dyson as a Widow Twankeyesque Nurse for one, Lady Capulet with her dress stuffed down trousers as a mockney Mercutio for several more. And the slightly Bertie-Wooster feel to the inserted language didn't always gel (Juliet's mum: "I would the fool were married to her grave" - Juliet's dad: "Steady on!") Overall, however, a powerful interpretation that made timeless passions seem as contemporary as this year's sensational headlines, entertained all ages, and was so gripping I didn't even notice that due to illness two key roles were played by stand-in with lines sometimes in hand. It was all so good it didn't really matter.

And finally: My writer friend Christine Coleman, who became a proxy 'local' for the Desert Island Reads, give a visitor's view in her blog - and there are regular review updates on the pages of the Festival website.