Poems, books, blooms - top-&-tailed with Shakespeare

Culture in Quarantine! With the encroaching sense of quasi-normality I'd forgotten about the streamed theatre promised throughout the summer.  It's now nearly September, so these magnificent productions by RSC and the Globe will all disappear like the sprites in a Shakespeare play very soon, so check them out here. My pick this week was The Tempest from 2013, directed by Jeremy Herrin. It's the bard's last work, so the bawdy intrigues and innuendo that Queen Lizzy had enjoyed are replaced by the fantasy theme preferred by his new patron James I, and the breaking of the magic wand at the end, signalling Shakespeare's own creative finality, has been seen as the writer's formal resignation. Performances are all good, of course, and so are the renaissance costumes, and there's a big emphasis on magic and illusions.

The two non-humans indigenous to the island, Ariel and Caliban, are always a challenge: sometimes they're played as opposite aspects of the same mysterious energy but in this production Caliban scampers around like a little red rooster while Ariel wearing a long white coat and quiet dignity seems more minder than servant to the extravagant frenzies of his overlord. Programme notes suggest this is a story of 'forgiveness, generosity and enlightenment', but Roger Allam's hot-tempered brooding Prospero reinforces that it's more about revenge than redemption: even though the lords sail off with honours restored, the servants all suffer for their brief aspirations. But Shakespeare does compensate poor abandoned Caliban by giving him the most poignant speech in the play: 'Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises: sounds and sweet airs, that give delight ....when I waked, I cried to dream again.

Still with words:   Poets Prattlers and Pandemonialists, who must be among the most hardworking wordsmiths in the country, offered no less than three zoom performances on Sunday. 

In the 7pm slot Emma Purshouse introduced us to a selection of characters from the Black Country, where this entertaining posse are all based,  while Steve Pottinger interspersed his local-character pieces with poems from lockdown. Poignant, witty, and even hopeful, these affectionate glimpses all have a warm humanity - I especially liked The Glass Collector, which you can read here - among other powerful poems by Steve. 

Also zooming: Hunting Raven Books's manager and Frome's shimmering star of literary conviviality Tina Gaisford-Waller chaired another meeting of Proof Pudding Club, the monthly event for avid readers to enjoy discussing book previews over dessert, though camera clips showed more glasses than spoons on this occasion. An entertaining couple of hours, with main recommendation of the night going to Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers, commended as a contrast to sombre times too often reflected in book lists: "The Booker long list this year is the most depressing I've ever seen," as Tina put it. Here's Tina with her pick of the month: Dear Reader - a book about the comfort and joy of books by Cathy Rentzenbrink.

Hauser and Wirth's famous gardens are notoriously impressive in late summer - there's an interview with the garden's designer Piet Oudolf here - so a trip to Bruton seemed a great idea when the sunshine returned on Monday. It turned out that's the one day the gardens are closed, but the floral displays in the allotments on the other side of the path also provide sensational 'drifts of rich late-colour summer in climactic display' - and the town itself is full of quirky lanes and skylines - including the famous dovecote.  

Ending this post with the careful return of live theatre. Billed as outdoors on ECOS but transferred within the Merlin on Friday night due to blustering gales: Shakespeare Rattle and Roll from multi-talented musician & performer Martin Dimery in the guise of a lecture on the bard's lyrical stylism but actually a fantastically entertaining romp through the key musicians of our times. From evolving Macbeth's witches' trochaic tetrameter into rap, to creating Mick Jagger as Puck,  this is a vastly entertaining - and very informative - survey of our major music icons - including Elvis, Dylan, Sex Pistols, Sting, and obviously the Beatles -  in a fantastic tribute to not only the bard but every music trend this century and the last. This is the third time I've seen this show,  it's that good.

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Every end a new beginning

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ~ Cesar A Cruz, poet & activist

Final compilation of feedback for Media Monsters, which had its last night at Alma Tavern Theatre on Saturday, showed thought provoking was the most frequently-used phrase on the forms (which will all be archived on the website of our production company Stepping Out Theatre.) Gratifyingly, this was often paired with comments like 'very funny' and 'great one-liners'. Our audiences drove through monsoon rain and lagoon-like roads to pack the theatre, clap and cheer our cast, and tell us their evening was amazing, terrific, and very entertaining: the performances fantastic and powerful, the direction inspired and imaginative, and the writing first-rate, intelligent, insightful, and truly talented.  
And now, suddenly, it's over. I'm going to quote our director's fb status again:
 "What a great farewell to MEDIA MONSTERS. It's been the best ride, EVER!! And onwards..... Xxx"
Ian McEwen talking about the stage adaptation of The Cement Garden said he found it strange to see someone else's imagining of the world he created, "but you realise you're just watching one of the infinite number of possibilities." Which is also true even when the story was written expressly for staging, and I've been inexpressibly privileged to watch the unique imaginings of this terrific team.  Paddy, Livi, Vincent, Bob, Marc... missing you already.

Martin Dimery brought his one-man show Shakespeare Rattle & Roll to Coopers Hall as a Frome Festival fund-raiser, en route to his next performances at Leicester Square Theatre Lounge.  Martin is a hugely talented singer/musician and wicked parodist as well as knowledgeable about the bard, so you can learn about Shakespeare's life, plays, and use of iambic pentameter as well as enjoying his songs and sonnets as sung by a range of performers from Elvis and Bob Marley to George Formby and Ray Winstone. Some ~ like the Sex Pistols version of the witches chant from Macbeth ~ are hilarious, some poignant, and the John Lennon version of Feste's song Hey, ho, the wind and the rain is simply beautiful.

Final footnote: a glimpse of Frome Library on Saturday for National Libraries Day. High winds meant the market outside was cancelled, but there was hot coffee & cake in the foyer with songs & stories in the childrens' section all morning.  

Having ridden down Highway 1 on the back of a 1200 BMW I was keen to see Take Me With You at the Brewery when I read this "poignant, funny and heartbreaking story of three dreamers adrift" is located around the Pacific Coast highway. Writer Godfrey Hamilton creates a passionate, sometimes lyrical, evocation of the fragility of the American dream. Happiness is going home to a dog, declares the 'big old queen' after participating in a bizarre freeway canine rescue. It certainly isn't going home to a God for the disenchanted evangelist preacher who recalls with unhappy irony trying to drive the devil out of a gay man in his congregation. Actors Mark Pinkosh and Ross Bautsch deliver their stories in separate monologues, intensifying the aura of loneliness around these solitary lives. At 70 minutes it's slightly overlong but the bit about the dog is very funny.
I can't find an image on either Starving Artists Theatre Company or Tobacco Factory site that looks like the show so I've posted the bike I rode on instead. Nice memory!

Bath's Mission, originally a chapel and recently rescued from dilapidated decline by the enthusiasm and enterprise of Next Stage Theatre Company, hosts a medley of dramatic events including this week Shakespeare Rattle & Roll, devised & performed by musician/actor Martin Dimery. Martin's better known as the John in Sgt Pepper's Only Dart Board Band and as director of Frome Festival but he was in another incarnation a teacher, and this performance uses the conceit that the audience is a class in detention and required to study the musical influences of the plays and sonnets ~ an effective introduction to an hour that does indeed inform as well as entertaining. With references ranging from Spenserian iambic pentameter and Schubert to rap and vaudeville, Martin re-envisaged songs, speeches, and sonnets in musical styles including Elvis, Marley, Johnny Rotten, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and George Fornby ~ with a few famous speeches in the manner of Olivier and Frankie Howard... Witty parody combined with fascinating insights into the bard's life & work from a performer impressive in his own right, and the audience stamped mosh pit style in approval.

Here's a 10-second challenge for all you writers ~ complete this sentence: "The world is ______, _____, and _______." That's Duncan (Monster) Macmillan's opener to an excellent playwriting workshop at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday aimed at encouraging and supporting entrants to the Bruntwood competition. In two-and-a-half hours Duncan fed us a smörgåsbord of structural information on narrative arcs, hero's journeys and disrupted rituals, lavishly garnished with fascinating quotes: "Tell a story and the themes will take care of themselves" ~ Anthony Neilson, and my favourite from Brian Friel, "Writing a play is like stalking an invisible animal."
  Rosie Finnegan and I took copious notes and then dashed off to the Alma Tavern where my short play Park & Ride has now gone into rehearsal. I'm thrilled that Alison Comley of Theatre West will be directing, and delighted too with my cast, a reunion from Consulting with Chekhov in 2010 ~ Dee Sadler and Dan Maxwell, already luminously lifting my script off the page.

Back home it's Apple Day, the kind of event Frome loves to celebrate with live music & dance ~ circle dance, in fact ~ stalls of home-made bags and tubs of bubbles, cups of tea and plates of cakes. And apples, rows of them, with wonderful names like Golden Spire, Cornish Aromatic, Barnack Orange, and Wolf River.
Great names too ~ Gyrate, Gesture, Gymnastic ~ in Marian Bruce's contemporary art gallery The Parlour, where Alex Relph is exhibiting some amazing pieces of steel sculpture.
And finally... did you do the sentence? Your instinctive response is actually about your own writing. I chose The world is precarious, dangerous, and irresistible... point proven!