Time-slips in Bath and a blast of music in Frome

Bath city, noted for elegance and style, has an alternative history that began in mud with Bladud and his pigs in 863BC and continued in muck and dubious morality, and Natural Theatre Company has been exposing scurrilous tales from the long and frequently outrageous history of that not-always-fine city in their sell-out show at the Rondo. Dirty Bath is hilarious. Three delightful women performers with a vast array of costumes and wigs take audience participation to its limits, scouring the steeply raked auditorium to identify lovers, gang members, murderers and more, responding to the resultant unscripted contributions with inventive vigour,  coaxing startled audience members on stage to enact exchanges of unlikely historical exactitude and in one instance to model male genitalia in plasticine..
it's all bonkers, and very funny. We met lovely Eliza Linley, painted by Gainsborough, eloping with Sheridan, inspiring duals among her lovers. We met Chaucer's raunchy Wyfe of Bath,  Hugonot refugee Sally Lunn, the murdered Nymph of Avon Street (enacted by puppets), a bedhopping fake castrato, the absurd duelling suitors of courtesan Fanny Murray, and many more outrageous characters before notorious gangleader Carroty Kate hands out peaky blinders caps and newspaper boulders for a mass street fight finale to the show. Massive appreciation to Alison Campbell, Amy Vickers, and Florence Espeut-Nickless for their titillating tales, to Andy Burdon who directed, and to whoever created the gloriously glamorous costumes.

Roots Sessions at the Grain Bar this week featured a Frome-grown band: Back of the Bus, four feisty women singer-players with backing from three strong musicians, featuring mainly '80s covers - the great ones, like Hazel O'Connor's apocalyptic 'Eighth Day'.

And another fantastic night of music from The Raggedy Men, also a local band with massive talent and a big following, who rocked the Cornerhouse on Saturday with their iconic re-styled punk - with all the best angry classics, from Brixton's guns to burning Babylon and beyond - with awesome riffs and fantastic drumming.

This week's review-round-up of local events is thinner than usual, what with one thing & another - well, mainly one thing - so to bump up the medley here's a reading recommendation: This emerged originally through the Proof Pudding Club started by Tina Gaisford-Waller, enterprising manager of Frome's Hunting Raven book shop. The Future We Choose - Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres & Tom Rivett-Carnac may sound like it will be another gut-wrenching summary of the appalling state of the planet and initially it is, but it goes on to make a convincing case for hope. We actually have, in prototype or possibility, all the means to improve the global situation and survive - in fact to improve our species into a more caring one, with a sense of stewardship of the earth. It's really well explained and well argued, and brings a blast of hope to our blighted world.  Next week's top tip: The Plague, by Camus...

What's on in festive Bath? More than Christmas stalls!

Ever wished you could fly? Chris Hadfield says it's really easy: "you push off with your toes and up you go, it's so much fun." But you have to be living 220 miles above the 'oppression' of earth's gravity.  Chris is a spaceman, and a singer, photographer, raconteur and performer too as I discovered at his talk at the Forum on Thursday along with about 500 spellbound astro-fans. As Commander of the tight-bonded team living on the International Space Station for stints of six months at a time, he's been around the world 16 times every 24 hours, and finds 'it unifies the whole planet as one continuous connected place.'  Chris covered every aspect of his personal story from first inspiration through launch and return procedures and his constant feeling of 'being overwhelmed with the wondrousness of the world', which is pretty well how I felt about his entire talk. I never realised that living in weightlessness requires regular exercise to prevent your now-redundant spine from disintegrating ~ and music is essential too, for psychological health, which is how Chris ended up playing Bowie in space in a video that went viral last year.  Oh, and you can't see the Great Wall of China from space, that's a myth. But you can see the M25.

As we filed out still overawed, faint sunlight was sparkling on the tinselled chalets of the pop-up market but paper stars and reindeer mitts didn't seem so alluringly photogenic after watching lightning streaks above Indonesia like a huge fluorescent marker drawn across the surface of the globe. 

Shakespeare loved mistaken identity but how seriously can you take the notion of male and female twins so identical they baffle both their best friends and their lovers? Not very seriously in the current production of Twelfth Night at Bath's Rondo Theatre, in which diminutive Viola ~ delightfully played by Marie Hamilton ~  is mistaken for the robust figure of Michael Keene’s Sebastian on the basis of a similar false moustache and jolly jumper.  In a brave move director Ian McGlynn shared all the roles between six lively actors, extending the play’s theme of deception and duplicity in this festive female-dominated version of Shakespeare’s popular comedy.  Justin Palmer, shape-shifting from obsessively passionate Orsino to pompously absurd Malvolio, is particularly impressive. Showing till Saturday 20th.

Drama from Salisbury to Bath, via Uganda (and Frome)

Salisbury's version of Boston Tea Party coffee house is an amazing Grade-1 listed building dating back to the early 1300s and it was here in an upstairs room that Crossed Wires gave its premier performance for the Salisbury Fringe last weekend. An audience of more than sixty crammed between the medieval pillars to watch our twin tales of difficult relationships eventually resolved, and donated generously on their way out (thanks, guys!) After a quick celebratory glass in the astro-turfed garden of the delightful Kings Head (15th Century) Rosie and I scooted on to Castle Street Social Club to listen to the script-in-hand readings from Juno Theatre: five 'short plays inspired by famous women' ~ listening rather than watching, as the actresses were largely invisible from the back seats. Outstanding in this quintet was Glad Tidings by Lesley Bates, an encounter between a feminist angel and reluctant recipient of the annunciation ("If He wants to talk surrogacy, it'll cost..." "He doesn't DO money!" "Well then I don't DO pregnancy.") ~ enjoyably entertaining but also making subtle points about women's roles and male expectations. I also liked Martine Shackerley-Bennet's short witty piece Heady Days, a kind of dark Alice-in-Wonderland beheaded-foe croquet game between Queens Elizabeth and Mary.

In 2002 Joe Douglas, aged 18, went to Uganda for his gap year and began a relationship that cost him £20,000, much angst and many growing pains, and resulted in a show called Educating Ronnie which won an Edinburgh Fringe First award and came to Merlin Frome on Wednesday. Joe tells his own story direct to audience in disarmingly frank style: he's 30 now but it's difficult to gauge to what extent he's acquired a full grasp of the wider perspective in this not-unfamiliar tale of an emotional response to economic gulf.  Ronnie's emails appealing for a chance to thrive, or simply survive, veer from heart-rending to manipulative, and Joe's story is at its most affective & theatrically effective when he loses confidence in himself as selfless sponsor and feels the pain of anyone in a collusive, emotionally abusive, relationship.  There's a happy ending of sorts ~ Joe is back on even keel with Ronnie ~ but it's up to you whether you leave the theatre feeling he was a hero or a mug, or both, or maybe just angry shame at the massive inequality that defined the friendship between these two young men in such inevitably unequal terms. Michael John McCarthy's excellent sound design enhanced this macrobert production.

The Memory of Water is such a stunning script it would be impossible not to enjoy a production of this tragi-comedy by Shelagh Stephenson about three sisters re-meeting for their mother's funeral. Acerbic and succinct, the dialogue veers from laugh-out-loud to pin-drop poignant, and Bath Drama relished the opportunity to bring this superb piece to the Rondo. As the sisters bicker about their reminiscences, their memories dissolve and erode their chosen adult personas: the high-flyer faces hidden pain, the romancer hits realism, and the practical one downs a bottle of whisky and lets fly her lethal resentments. Memory, its power and its unreliability, is the theme that beautifully and thought-provokingly links these women to each other and to us: Can you feel nostalgia for something that never existed? Mary asks, and wonders if it's true that water can retain a memory of substances long after there's no discernible trace of them ~ the theory of homeopathy, her elder sister Teresa's business, which is also affected irrevocably by the deluge of events in this tumultuous night.  Congratulations to the whole team, especially Mike (Nic Proud) and Mary, played superbly Alexia Jones at short notice.  On till Saturday 11th.  

Whales, cows, and polar bears

Whales can hear and respond to each other thousands of miles apart, singing so loudly the sound would shatter you. I didn't know that, and I didn't know there's only one whale in the world calling higher than all the others, at 52-hertz. Dumbstruck, the new show from young Bristol company Fine Chisel, takes this starting point for a story about a marine mammal biologist whose life is equally isolated. Robin McLoughlin is totally charismatic from the opening moments to the dramatic end as Ted the lonely whale-specialist who talks to the lonely-whale, addressing it affectionately as "52".  The life-story fragments he reveals vary from moving (George Williams brilliant as the troubled reverend who explains death to four-year old Ted) to raucous as pirate radio takes over the airwaves, and takes too his hopes of a companion on his marine studies. The live music is superb, especially when atmospherically enhancing the story ~ we stray overlong from the engrossing central story after the interval with a sixties on-air pastiche ~ and the energy of this talented team never flags. The production won an award at Edinburgh and audience cheers at Bristol's Brewery and comes to Frome's Merlin next week ~ if you enjoy innovative theatre and dynamic live music, don't miss it.

Brilliant Bristol comedy duo Living Spit have been touring their new production around the pubs of Somerset: Rosie and I caught it at The Rose & Crown in Huish Episcopi, a friendly pub with no bar so you stand by the pumps to pick your tipple. The show is called One Man and his Cow, which sounds bucolic and childishly whimsical but actually has more in common with one of the Grimm's dark narratives, except it's so funny the audience's howls of mirth drowned out the England match in the adjoining room. Stu McLoughlin and Howard Coggins are impressive musicians too, so a medley of instruments accompanied their rapid-fire rhyming story of Trevor the farmer and his beloved cow Judy whose special talents are speech and hidden malevolence.  Trev is dying ~ that's the cheerful opener ~ and to choose which of his three children gets the farm he hits on a test that King Lear could have told him was doomed to dramatic failure. Howard is the obtuse farmer and Stu plays each of his children, sometimes simultaneously, plus the duplicitous cow. Rhyming become increasingly outrageous and there are more synonyms for bovine than I ever imagined as this increasingly hysterical history progresses to a satisfying end that Jeanette Winterson would appreciate. (She took vengeance on the rabbit that ate her parsley, if you didn't see the news item) The lads are moving eastwards now the Take Art rural tour is over, but will be back in Bristol at Tobacco Factory in the theatre bar in July - well worth going along.

Music and merriment too at Wallace Real's Ministry of Madness, the new community production from Stepping Out which opened at the Rondo in Bath and moves on to Bristol’s Brewery next week.  This company always delivers high-energy and hugely entertaining stories that include, along with the fun & frolics, thought-provoking comments on the perception and treatment of mental health service users. "We don't change the world here," scoffs the Mental Analysis Diagnostics supervisor, "we colour-code it." But this isn't polemic: there's an exciting adventure too, albeit somewhat baffling, as Lucy embarks with her quintuplet personality into an underground movement of meta-theatrical therapy, meeting among others the Ladyboys of Bedlam and the mechanicals from Midsummer Night's Dream until, true to Oscar Wilde's decree, the good end happily and the bad unhappily ~ with a final full-cast song and dance.  This is a real feel-good show, with some terrific individual performances, great musicality, and a sense of integrity and commitment from the whole company throughout. But I have to admit my high point was Danann McAleer dancing like a bovver-boy fighting in an alley while wearing white high heels... 

Festive stalkings and Bluebird magic

December is a month that melts, slowly at first then like an avalanche as the big Two-Five slides unstoppably towards you. In Frome the upside of this is a glitzy plethora of festivities and music: Ian Ballamy played at the Griffin on Friday, and Saturday was party night at Cheese&Grain as the fabulous Sgt Pepper's Only Dartboard Band rocked out an amazing Beatlemanic medley ranging from early chart hits to Abbey Road, and including Revolver in entirety.  Dancing compulsory.

Cheese&Grain swapped retro for fantasy on Sunday with a SteamPunk market selling everything from punk styles inspired by Victorian modes to... er, Victorian styles garnished with futuristic punk.  I specially liked the adventurers' hats, with goggles & map, ideal for discovering the source of the Amazon, offered by RP Outfitters, purveyors of Steampunk attire, accoutrements & artillery, including fripperies and exterminators for the most intrepid of explorers. A festival for fans is planned for summer 2014.

Meanwhile over in Bath, a magical version of The Bluebird by Butterfly Psyche is on at Rondo Theatre, delighting audiences and garnering as many stars in review as on stage. Maeterlinck may not seem an obvious choice for a festive production: the bluebird of this mythic quest represents attainable happiness, true, but the writer himself believed man to be powerless against the forces of fate.  He wanted his actors to be like marionettes, expressing not human emotions but external forces. Alison Farina, who directed as well as scripting this version, evokes Maeterlinck's 'static drama' theory in a musical introduction as dancers from Bath Dance College pirouette like musical box figurines and toy soldiers, but there's a strong change of mood as the story starts with young Tyltyl in a strop with his mother, his life, and especially his babysitter looney Mrs Lune, aka Fairy Berylune, who will send him on a journey into Other Worlds to find the Bluebird of Happiness and change his life. The dialogue is sharp, often moving but never sentimental, retaining contemporary edge as well as classic fairy-tale morals: "It's only when you release your sorrows that you can see the bluebird" Tyltyl learns, braving perils while Fairy Berylune watches Downton Abbey. An excellent cast of five brought every character vividly to life, with some fabulous set pieces ~ the Duke & Duchess of Luxury's crazy feast which wouldn't have been out of place in Tim Burton's Alice, and the Oak King's impressive tirade against man's assaults on the environment, among other marvellous scenes.
And there's magic for children from start to finish, with a great set and an onstage welcome at the 'magic market' where they can trade their christmas wishes for sugar snowflakes and fairy dust, and a bluebird finger puppet to take home.  Add in lighting effects, onstage music, and a very funny dog puppet who becomes real and even funnier, and this show should be unmissable festive viewing for everyone ~ sadly, it's only on till Saturday. So if you live near Bath, that's 4 more chances.

Art and Life

The Holburne Museum in Bath has been showing a special exhibition of works by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries which, though it could have been more honestly titled Some 17th Century Dutch Artists, was rich with social interest and included several fabulous paintings. Most stunning of these was Rembrandt's portrait of his mother, painted when he was only 23, of which the Indie review said simply This one is worth the price of admission alone. You could take a folding chair and just gaze at this picture all morning, just absorbing its humanity. 

This was a fascinating era for painters: the first generation of artists who painted for a market rather than for wealthy patrons and the Church, and subject matter was less about individual portraiture and more about society, with something of a moralistic tinge to many of the domestic scenes.  Several have narrative strands redolent of a dread of indolence and what it may lead to, while some of the landscapes show social changes with the emergence of the new bourgeoisie.  And after this enthralling immersion, there's a toy theatre of painterly characters and props to rearrange and make your very own Dutch interior... hoe zit dat!

Also in Bath, The Persistence of Memory, written by Alison Farina and directed by Nancy Medina, transferred to the Rondo after a highly successful run in Bristol. The play deals with contemporary issues ~ dementia and family breakup ~ in a classic context as Mneme, the muse of memory, arrives to oversee Dante DeLucca's decline and to use her goddess powers to console him and his daughter as his life fades away. With so moving a theme sensitively treated by the script, and such excellent lead actors, it's not surprising this piece garnered 5-star reviews: there's subtle humour from the start with Mneme's C-list-celeb self-introduction, but by the end I wasn't the only one damp-eyed as her terrible pact with Duncan Bonner's Dante is finally concluded. 

And now back to Frome, where our annual Carnival on Saturday filled the streets with pirates, music and circus skills and processions for children throughout the day, and in the evening roads throughout the town closed for an eclectic parade of Carnival Competition entries which range from elaborate floats with illuminations that would shame Sirius, to blokes with a penchant for girly underwear, including plenty of whirling twirling majorettes of all ages and sizes. It's excellent street theatre, and the best place to be a groundling is at Cornerhouse corner, where after the 2-hour road-show is over, the awesome Pete Gage Band plays fantastic blues rock that gets us all dancing.

This week's tenuous footnote: any scriptwriter wondering how to move an audience to tears with exquisite non-expositional narrative should check out the final moments of Coronation Street on Friday, as Roy Cropper watches his beloved, terminally-ill, Hayley (the first transexual soap heroine) gaily singing When Will I See You Again? with Fizz and Sean at his birthday karaoke.... which just shows, you should never disparage 'Continuing Drama' series simply because they're popular: the best have strong characters, gripping storylines, and actors like David Neilson and Julie Hesmondhalgh to ensure superb pop-up theatre on a small screen near you now!

Come September

Come September, come the new season launches... I'm delighted my new short play Muffin Man is on in Theatre West autumn season at Alma Tavern Theatre October 8th-12th as curtain raiser to 100 Miles North of Timbuktu by talented Bristol writer Tom Phillips. And delighted too that Alison Farina of Butterfly Psyche will be directing!
I discovered this last night at Bath's tasty little Rondo Theatre where director Ian McGlynn had the best launch idea yet: a party, with entertainment from the Music is Life team whose new show Pencoweth has its première at the end of the month, and a taster from Living Spit's marvellous show The Six Wives of Henry VIII which you can, and should, see in full in October.
Rondo has a policy of dovetailing professional touring shows with community theatre, and  encouraging new writing too. "We punch above our weight for a 150-seater," says Ian, "people come because they love the place, the welcome, and the view." I'm not quite sure about the view is, but it looks good tonight: here's Rosie Finnegan with Stu McLoughlin and Howard Coggins, attempting to net Living Spit for next summer's festival, me with Shane and Ian, and with Annette Chown, Alison Farina and Laura Jane Faultley.

Nevertheless Pub Theatre is looking forward to autumn, too: Rosie and I are bringing the Stepping Out production of Gogol's Diary of A Madman to The Cornerhouse next month, so put October 11th & 12th in your diary if you live anywhere near Frome and fancy quality professional theatre for less than the cost of a couple of drinks.  More on this later...
... in the meantime, Poetry Cafe night on Monday September 23rd at Frome's Garden Café should be amazing, with Rose Flint and Graham Hartill guests as well as open-mic.  Autumn Equinox feels like a time between times, summer behind us and Samhain approaching, a great time for poets to reflect on Life, Death and In Between...

In the meantime too, I'm off for a final week of sunshine ~ leading my writing course in lovely Cortijo Romero in Andalucia.