Emma & Einstein, plus words and art, and both in windows.

Jane Austen films, while popular with fans of heaving bodices and grand vistas, are often disdained by serious Janites as reducing these wonderful social sagas to Mills & Boon romances. Frome's Westway is now showing the new version of Emma directed by Autumn de Wilde, and it's delightful. Purists might complain that our heroine and her ultimate partner (Johnny Flynn) find their feelings earlier than the author intended, and that he is younger, fierier, & better looking than Jane Austen's Knightly, but these changes - like others such as contracting the Jane/Frank romance in favour of a stronger role for Harriet (Mia Goth) - all worked well to create an entertaining movie which looked luscious throughout. I loved Bill Nighy as Emma’s father, Miranda Hart as the irritating neighbour, Amber Anderson as Jane Fairfax, and obviously the costumes and cinematography. It’s true there was none of the political and economic critique of that era which Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility achieved, but the troops of servants, from housemaids to stablemen, constantly jumping to anticipate their masters’ needs, established a strong sense of the infantile dependancy of this ostensibly ‘ruling class’. Here's Emma with her hypochondriac father, and Mr Knightly looking sultry. (Still showing this week.)

Moving on to art now, and on a town-size scale - right across the town in fact, as Window Wanderland 2020 began its weekend visit to the houses, shops, cafes and pubs of Frome: here's the team responsible, at the Black Swan launch with Emma Warren, and just one of the literally hundreds of beautifully illuminated displays - in shops, schools, pubs, cafes, and - most impressively - private dwellings where hours of careful creative toil must have gone into designing and crafting each creation. Fictional & fantasy characters from books and movies featured often, with lots of animals and birds, some with messages. There were scores of  'favourites' for me but this one (probably on Somerset Road but the miles of walking have blurred!) sums up the moving nature of the event - shared passions, charmingly presented. Congratulations Lisa for importing this brilliant event into Frome and Jo for creating the map so we could find them. There's a short video here, made by BBC Somerset, if you missed it all!

Art on a small scale continues, always: Boann Lambert's touching work inspired by her grandmother's shoes is at the WHY Gallery, with Abigail Reed's wild life images. Abigail works mainly in monochrome too and is known for massive bears and other animals, but also creates moths - this one, she says, is largely imagined, but it looks very lepidopteran.

Pip Utton, Frome's favourite one-man showman, took his latest persona Albert Einstein to Edinburgh last summer where it was favourably reviewed as an interesting and genial evocation of that great, though not always good, scientific genius. The geniality was welcome after the addition to Saturday's billed performance at the Merlin of a run-through of Papal behaviour as preparatory work for Pip's next show. Popes proved a a tough warm-up act, though Einstein was well-received. Looking like a scatty Professor Branestawn with white fright-wig, Pip's ability to interact compelling with a full-house audience is impressive: he shifts effortlessly from roguish humour to rueful confidences, and his simplifications of those famous mathematical equations are as impressive as his twinkling eyed charm and underlying sincerity. Imagination is more important than knowledge, he insists throughout: 'If you stop being curious, you start to die.' 

More words now, from local historian David Lassman, who launched his latest investigation into the fascinating past of our town, Frome At War 1939-45 with a short talk at Hunting Raven on Friday night. Frome lost only two residents and a tiny bit of Nunney Road to bombers -and that was accidental - so the main practical impact was the arrival of child evacuees, many of whom still retain a fond connection with the town. Another social consequence came from housing American troops as one of the government-designated 'alternative' towns: this meant black GIs could not socialise on the same night as their white colleagues, to avoid fights, though sadly it didn't prevent five racial murders in the town. All this and more, including conscientious objectors & a secret visit by Eisenhower, is revealed in David's book...

This was the last week for submissions to the Frome Festival brochure, involving me in a flurry of finalising details for the Poetry Cafe,  Nevertheless pub theatre night, and a book-based history walk with David Lassman.  Other submissions are in the pot too, including a response to BBC Radio Wiltshire's quest for 'Ten Tiny Plays' set in Wiltshire. A session on writing drama for radio at Warminster Library led by playwright Jamila Gavin was provided free to support writers submitting to this, and it was a privilege to join the Warminster Writers Group for this excellent workshop. We were all too busy writing for a photo, so let's move on now to music.

Reg Meuross, troubadour par excellence, returned to the Grain Bar Roots Session on Wednesday with songs of his travels both real and imagined. Reg is a superb raconteur and while his lyrics are droll and his tunes are charming too, the banter is undeniably a big part of our audience delight. A hugely enjoyable evening - maybe a live recording would be the way to go for sales...


Fabulous Pete Gage with his mega-talented guitar/bass/drum trio band at The Cornerhouse on Friday were, as  always, a total delight.  Among other scorching classics, they do the best version of St James Infirmary Blues you'll ever hear, with stunning solos from Paul Hartshorn, Richie Blake and Eddie John.  Extra seating enabled closer audience but didn't stop the dancing!

. This Sunday as first of the month had brought, along with birdsong and a sudden abundance of wild flowers along our verges, the Independent Market which fills the streets of Frome with stalls of tantalising goods.  Blue skies and sunshine ensured a great atmosphere, and great acts on the busking stage enhanced the benign mood.  They Don't Scare Easy Tribe, a variable line-up led by Paul Kirtley, were followed by duo MountainSpeaksFire: haunting cello from Helen Robertson combined with subtly passionate voice of Vin Callan make this duo unforgettable.

And another regular favourite of mine, Frome's awesome Back Wood Redeemers put on a brilliant show at the Three Horseshoes in Bradford on Avon on Sunday. It was even worth missing the rest of this first sunny afternoon of spring for these guys who, to quote no less a music critic than Charles Nevin, not only "bring forth to you songs of dark country, twisted blues and religious fervour" but "just as importantly, they’re also top fun." He's not wrong.

Poetry, punk, plans, and purple fish

An away-day from the stormy south-west this week, to the Unicorn beside Tower Bridge to see Tim Crouch performing his solo piece I, Cinna, inspired by the story of Julius Caesar. Tim has re-envisaged several of Shakespeare’s minor characters previously - I saw I, Malvolio back in 2011 but that was practically stand-up comedy compared to the psychological insight and complexity of  this exploration of the thoughts and relevance of Cinna the poet, murdered by the mob back in 44BC.
Helvius Cinna was a real person, and his death was real too, mistaken for the assassin Lucius Cornelius Cinna while on his way to Caesar's funeral. He was late already and in Tim Crouch's monologue this is due to his private reservations about Caesar's rise to a too-absolute power. 'The people want a king, like in the old days,' he laments, as contemporary riot images flash violently on the backdrop.
What would you die for? is one key question he wants us to reflect on, and written answers are required- we have notebooks and pencils provided and Tim Crouch waits like an invigilator after each challenge. (I don’t know about others in the audience but for me this was bliss - I always write in a notebook during productions, though I haven't yet perfected the art of doing so legibly while still watching the action on stage.) His instructions begin as a control, but when our controller loses his power we become the scribes and poets and historians. A complex piece that could be endlessly analysed, and another tribute to the power of real drama. Shakespeare's character Cinna the poet had no voice in the play except to protest his political uninvolvement - the plangent warning in Tim Crouch's resurrection of the silent poet is that if we lose our words as sentient witnesses, then tyranny will win. Poems in response sent in by the audience are all here - including mine.

Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday gave us a double helping of singer-songwriter excellence - Tamsin Quin and Lazy Daze. Tamsin is delightful solo, offering a selection of 'happy songs about regrets', also teamed up with Phil Cooper and Jamie R Hawkins as Lost Trades, and Glastonbury trio Lazy Daze are well known on the south west scene: I especially love their (sadly once again topical) song about floods in Somerset: The Waters Rise.

Another party night on Saturday as the Cornerhouse said goodbye in style to massively popular bar managers Tom and Amy with marvellous (and also massively popular) Purple Fish, one of the most exciting cover bands around. Much dancing ensued!

And the week ends with a double-helping of punk at 23 Bath Street, with Wiltshire's thumping ear-plug-defeating One Chord Wonders and the sensational Gimme Gimme Gimmes from Edinburgh who would walk five hundred miles and then five hundred more to perform anything remotely connected with Scotland. They look like a Butlins bar band from the 1950s (I know, I worked there)
and they sound brilliant. 

Concluding this post with a quick look ahead to the Frome Festival in July - the 20th birthday one - as we're now all submitting our events to the brochure: brilliant Liv Torc will be main guest at the Poetry Café (Monday 6 July) and Nevertheless Pub Theatre returns to the Cornerhouse on Thursday 8th with 'I'm Talking to You' - six dramatic monologues by local writers. Here's me and Rosie Finnegan threshing out the near-impossible task of picking from the submissions. We look happy, despite the dilemma, because there were so many excellent entries...  more data lata!

Realism and lyricism and rain

Writer Will Eno has called all his characters 'Jones' which might seems to suggest they’re ordinary folks, just like you & me - but who else in the world could be like these couples - needy, evasive, self-contradictory, incoherent then exquisitely lucid? Well, perhaps all of us in our different ways. The Realistic Joneses, at Theatre Royal Bath's Ustinov Studio takes under two hours to remind us that everyone has secret sorrows and joys and if this sounds like a long play about nothing, you should know that it’s a superb script, beautifully written and acted - an absolute delight of a production, laugh-aloud one moment, poignant the next.  Bob Jones (Corey Johnson) is recuperating though it’s unclear from what (he won't say, except that his syndrome's name sounded like a jazz quartet) with support from his wife Jennifer (Sharon Small): their neighbours, John Jones (Jack Laskey) and Pony (Clare Foster), have problems too, though the owner/holder relationship here is less clear.  There is no incisive moment of conflict and no carnage, only the story of something unknowable, and it seems over too soon when it ends. Great direction by Simon Evans intensifies the sense of quest for connection of both couples, and designer Peter McKintosh has created an evocative set, with glass doors enhancing and sometimes mirroring the precarious vulnerability of all the characters, neutral removal boxes as seating, an astral void above and emptiness beyond. Written in 2012, timeless in a modern world and will probably remain my 'best drama' for 2020 right to the end of the year: it's simply superb on till 7th March, see it if you can. Images: Simon Annand.

A delightful Frome Poetry Cafe too, with Deborah Harvey and Dominic Fisher, two of the Bristol-based IsamBard poets, guesting at our spring session. 'Green Shoots & New Beginnings' was our theme, selected hopefully although in current global conditions it might have seemed sardonic. However we had a really lovely evening: as well as some even more recent work, Deborah read from her new collection The Shadow Factory and Dominic shared from Ladies and Gentlemen of the Dead. Both poets have the ability to distill the extraordinary from the commonplace, combining visceral imagery with tender memory, with form stripped down to its essence. Fourteen 'Open Mic' poets shared impressive and entertaining words too - some moving, some funny, and all much enjoyed. Here's Jo Butts, current Frome Festival Poet Laureate, reading her witty history of Saint Valentine. 


Words with music now, starting with Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday.   Jon Amor denies that he has the longest fingers in the world but it's hard to believe him: they must certainly be among the fastest strumming ones. He leads the Jon Amor Blues Group as well as performing solo with his mainly-original songs - the scorching 'Stitch in her party dress' was my ear-worm all week. A brilliant session: great rock-bluesy music and sharp lyrics.

Paul Kirtley, indefatigable organiser of local music gigs, excelled himself this week with not only a late night charity event but an afternoon acoustic session next day. The White Hart at Corsley was the venue for Saturday evening and as storm Dennis kicked off outside, the small friendly group in the bar proffered song requests and shots and turned this event into something of a party.

Next day's session in The Three Swans,  by contrast, was completely full, with most of the audience also performing. Lovely informal atmosphere and great range of styles and instruments, plus performers of every age, all crammed into the baroque-style decor of the upper room there. These three images may give some idea of the range of performers: Paul's house band (not all, just as many as fitted in to one frame) playing rock classics - probably Wagon Wheel, the Callums, (Sarah, Vin, and Annie) with Dakota by Stereophonics, and me doing some semi-scurrilous wordage of my own. (thanks David for the snap) A rich event indeed.

The 'Showtime' edition, mostly

Let's start with a costume drama: Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of) is a refreshingly hilarious version of Jane Austen's most performed story presented by Bristol Old Vic with Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh as a Trom Theatre Company & Blood of the Young production: Six energetic young women take on 21 key roles with entertaining indifference to plausibility, Lizzie's father being played with surprising conviction by an armchair, and there are frequent expletives and bursts of cheesey pop songs, with several nods to other classic productions, as when Darcy arrives home and his baffled servant comments 'You're very dry, sir...'  What's particularly good about this high-spirited, wickedly funny, version - apart from the costumes and the general absurdity - is the clear focus on the economic situation which was Jane Austen's real motivation in creating a household where the iniquitous laws of male inheritance would devastate the lives of six women, unless one of them at least could snare a man - but not silly Lydia's way, causing her mum to lament ‘who would touch any of you with a shitty stick now?'
There are so many moments of sheer delight created by this multi-roling cast it seems unfair to have a favourite, but Meghan Tyler's vulgar, outspoken, lovely Lizzie would be mine - here she is with wicked Wickham (Felixe Forde) at a moment of temptation. Isobel McArthur, also Mr Darcy, was the writer and Paul Brotherston directed. On in Bristol till 27 September before touring until spring 2020.

It takes a really special talent to range from witty impro chairing of  TV's HIGNFY to the sinister hitman in Pinter's The Birthday Party last year at the Harold Pinter Theatre  but Stephen Mangan can, which is why I was really keen to see The Man In The White Suit on stage at Theatre Royal Bath this week. So keen that I actually bought a ticket - press seats are unavailable before its West End premiere at Wyndhams - and called it my birthday present to myself. So this is not a review, merely a personal appreciation, and as there are no production photos available apart from the promotional one which makes it look truly terrible, here's an image from What's On Stage of Stephen Mangan as Sidney Stratton with Kara Tointon as the skirt interest.

Set in the optimistic 50s. when skiffle dominated the teen scene and the quest for durable, rather than disposable, products was still an industrial aim, the storyline is simple: an amiable young inventor aims to create an everlasting fabric to make life easier for everyone, but neither the profiteering manufacturers nor the salary-conscious workers actually want it... out of this slender cloth a hugely entertaining drama is fabricated, with major credit to the energetic cast, especially to wonderfully endearing Stephen Mangan whose escapes and confrontations must surely have given him some bruises in rehearsals... With a plot-line half-way between Professor Branestawm and the Big Bang boys, it's all mainly slapstick and fish-fights (don't ask) but there's a slender thread of seriousness: the inventor's appeal 'More and more clothes is not the answer -some day it will all catch up with us!' raised audience applause, and there were jeers at greedy capitalist's threat 'For the good of the country, laws can be circumvented, even Parliament prorogued!' At least I think they were jeers, you never can tell with Bath.

After two such dazzling and inventive parodies perhaps New Old Friends was inevitably disadvantaged in terms of creating dramatic impact with their production Crimes on the Coast which premiered at the Merlin on Friday. The concept seemed promising: a Poirot pastiche held by one narrator, with three lively actors playing every other role aided by stand-in costumes when necessary, but the script was long-winded and the narrative voice lacked impact. There were some entertaining moments - the intrusion of puppets, and false legs to create a small boy - but the overall storyline is slow-moving and incoherent. It might work better in a studio setting, with more audience connection, rather than on a large stage.

Part-performance, part-music event, Vicki Burke gathered quite a party on Sunday to film the chorus - with dance - for her upcoming video project Magic Money Tree (Crowdfunder link here.) Vicki has recorded some of the musicians and Sunday's sunshine was a great opportunity to film the song: here's Howard Vause describing his concept as we gather around the oak tree in Rodden Meadow. - sounds like this will be another great video from this innovative director.

Moving now to music performance, and a highlight at Wednesday's Roots Session at the Grain Bar as The Raggedy Men held a full-house audience rapt - though not too rapt for dancing between the tables... There were several new numbers in this high-energy 75minute set but nobody tires of their fabulously-revisited classics like Teenage Kicks, Guns of Brixton, and (always my favourite) No More Heroes...

And by popular demand, Splat the Rat were at the Cornerhouse on Saturday with their rapid-fire take on folk classics like the Irish Rover - sadly without amazing 'box-banger' Sultan Vinegar, but with a strong drummer stand-in. Jazz on a Sunday night at the Cornerhouse is always a great way to end the week, especially after a sunny day: Grahm Dent's trio had as guest for this month's session guitarist Martin Kolarides for an evening of laid-back musicality - I especially enjoyed their version of Thelonious Monk's feisty number Well You Needn't.

A literary event to conclude this bulletin, with the Society of Authors lunch in Bath organised by Diana Cambridge: an excellent light meal at the Bath & County Club in Queens Parade followed by a well-pitched short talk by Nic Bottomly, aka Mister Bee from Mr B's Emporium, the bookshop with a difference.  Self-published books now outnumber conventionally-published ones, with active local promotion more important to authors than ever now amazon has pushed the trade into so precarious a state, but the good news is that this is the third consecutive year of growth for bookshops. Interestingly, the book trade was one of the first businesses to be hit by amazon, but the survivors of that blitz are successfully fighting back with 'extreme customer service and passionate bookselling' - Frome's Hunting Raven Books is another good example of this - and the trend to environmental awareness is helping stabilise high street trade too. A fascinating summary with an encouraging conclusion for writers of all genres.

Homecoming... rain, music, art, theatre and Carnival!

If you want your theatre visceral, challenging, and provocative, one way is to create a promenade performance of a Beauty and the Beast fairytale with undertones of racial hatred and overtones of sexual abuse and stage it in the tunnels under a railway station. Alternatively you could envisage a more contemporary existentialist fable about an actor pretending to be a hypnotist juggling illusion and reality and questioning the nature and role of theatre itself. Annabelle Macfadyen came with me to Bristol on Thursday, and we saw both...

The Stick House from Raucous is the gothic fantasy and the vaults below Bristol Templemeads make a fantastic venue for this story fusing film, music, and digital technology with live performance from a trio of actors: the girl, the woodcutter, and a hobbledehoy played brilliantly by Christopher Elson as a combo of Mad Tom and Gollum. The script seems slightly overweighted with narrative but lighting effects are brilliant, especially the burning stick house and the falling barriers at the ending - 15 minutes after which we were panting into Bristol Old Vic studio theatre for our second show that night: An Oak Tree, Tim Crouch's multi-award-winning two-hander in which he plays the hypnotist who accidentally killed a girl, and a.n.other actor ~ different every night ~ plays the grief-sodden father who comes to challenge him.  Finn Gill, who took this part on our night, like all the others over the ten years since the premiere, had not seen the script before the show and simply followed directions, some audible and some not. 
Experiencing these two extraordinary productions contiguously made comparisons as well as contrasts inevitable. Both work through emotional intensity rather than story-line, and both rely strongly on audience involvement. In The Stick House this was overt as we followed the action with name-cards round our necks, carrying wicca dolls, and with marks on our wrists to identify our vulnerability in this alien place where no-one, friend or beast, could be trusted. In Tim Crouch's piece the unease seems contained onstage by the hypnotist in emotional meltdown and his unrehearsed co-actor and there are no visual effects at all: his story contradicts the evidence of our eyes and minds but the illusion is as compelling and the provocative impact equally strong. An amazing night.

There are other compensations, as well as radical theatre, for arriving home in a rain-wave: as well as friends, family, and creative planning meetings (next production from Nevertheless is stirring into a nice little toxic cocktail) there's always arty events and music. A fabulous Grain Bar Roots Session on my first evening back featured Bonne Nouvelle playing molten & moody covers with a 'gritty underbelly', vocals from Coralie Hyde and John Ruddock on guitar. And while the local artists exhibition is still up in Black Swan Gallery, the Round Tower proved a great space for the 6 x 9 exhibition from Bridport which opened on Friday curated by Kit Glaisyer and Frome's indefatigable Paul Newman ~ how does he find time for his immaculate prize-winning drawings? 

We've had a fair in the Market Yard all week in anticipation of Saturday's big event: Frome Carnival procession takes over an hour to make its glittering way down to the centre of town with bands, majorettes, fantasy royalty, comedy acts, themed costumes, and dazzlingly decorated floats playing music loud enough to drown their generators. Frome Rotary Club, who steward & shake the collecting buckets, were on hand with long props to deal with overhanging branches, though the Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (my favourites) had a long wait when bunting threatened to sabotage their flight to Paris. 

To end on a less noisy note: Bath's annual Jane Austen Festival has been 'celebrating all things Austen' for ten days, and I went along on Sunday as Rosie was reading a chapter of Emma in the Library. Ladies in sprigged gowns & bonnets could be seen making their way between talks on 18th century issues like breakfast, phaetons, and 'Discomfort' (that one sounds intriguing), and workshops on Regency dance, archery, and harp, or an indepth look at the reticule. Outside Waitrose Cafe two homeless men sat on carpet strips and the man next to me started talking about Corbyn's housing pledges and hoping he 'gets in' next time. It took five days, but I feel I'm really home now.

Siblings, stories, and other stuff

A bit of a medley this week. First off, a trip to Wells with Alison Clink to talk about her memoir The Man Who Didn't Go To Newcastle which was discussed on Clare Balding's show on Radio 2 for the start of National Carers' Week. A warm review commented on the insights into an extraordinary situation and Clare applauded the "humour as well as  humanity"~ essential in my view for any difficult writing.

Another sibling story - and other Clare: Clare Reddaway who runs A Word In Your Ear, a lively bi-monthly event in Bath where actors present the best of submitted short stories, has branched out into recordings. I've been lucky enough to be picked for the live performance a couple of times & am delighted my caustic tale Sisterly Love was selected for this new venture. Beautifully read - thanks Caroline Garland. Another Frome writer & blogger is featured too, with a flash and a mystery from Sally Gander. Do check us out - and if you're a writer, consider submitting to monthly performances. There's a different theme each time.

Still for writers: The Royal Literary Fund has set up a writing project in Bristol with, as well as more specific support, a series of talks at the Watershed. Monday's event featured writing for stage and radio, with an excellent contribution from Tina Pepler which was both inspirational and full of practical tips.  Refreshingly modest as well as helpful, Tina didn't even mention her award for radio drama and extensive script writing for films and television where her credits include Downton Abbey.   Thanks Trevor Day for the heads-up, and the lift.

Another great Roots Session at the Grain Bar: international performer Mara Simpson ("soulful, sincere, warm, rich and intimate" ) supported by a local favourite. To quote the organisers,"Mara has been captivating audiences around the world with a set which is eclectic as her background. PLUS the chocolate vocals and golden larynx of soulboy, Steve Loudoun...Gee Baby ain't we good to you" Couldn't put it better.

The Silk Mill, showing again what a great venue it is for paintings, hosted a fantastic exhibition of vibrantly coloured paintings by David Moss. A real party atmosphere at the preview on Friday, but even without the bubbly this is a show not to be missed: on till June 20th.



Next posting will be from Spain. I'm going back to lovely Cortijo Romero for a week ~ I'd intended to take a break from foreign courses this year, but am stepping in to cover a writing course as the leader had to pull out. I'll miss two exciting productions,  a solstice party, and Frome in all its mid-June glory, but this beautiful retreat is always a place of healing, creativity, warmth & joy.
Humour and humanity, in fact.