Winter dramas, walks, and a rapid retrospective

Once again the high season for family theatre has been spiked by anxiety about indoor gatherings, for all but our political leaders anyway, so a production of Hansel & Gretel in Bristol couldn't be more timely.  'Stories you know in places you don't' is this company's tagline, and for most of us, Arnos Vale Cemetery is certainly an unusual venue to stage a fairytale. At night - we arrived when this woodland gravesite was already in darkness - this extensive garden cemetery is quite something: Inspired by Parisian cemeteries and aiming to emulate Greek architecture, this extraordinary park for the dead was opened at the start of Victoria's reign and is now filled with a gravestones, towering pillars, and massive monuments like a ghost city - the perfect place for one of Grimm's terrible tales of unhappy children and wicked witches...  

Insane Root's version, taking small groups at a time on an hour's tour of both the tale and the woodland, had a wonderful energy that was accessible but still lyrical and fantastic: the journey through dark paths led separately by both children (we were in Hansel's group, he was brilliant) was the unforgettable highlight of a magical show. We were asked not to take photos, so these are downloaded, they don't convey the magic. Book by January 1st, it's like nothing else you'll see this year.

With online productions the only other theatrical option in times of plague, those clever Sharp Teeth people came up with another solve-it-at-home murder mystery: Sherlock Holmes III - Murder at the Games. It's a fully audience-participation created drama, with the script created by our detecting interrogations as inspired by plot prompts and steered by six artistically presented 'case files' which some of the audience in my 'discussion room' had clearly studied shrewdly. Personally I was just in awe of their slick expertise in people skills as well as dramatic intrigue. The final reveal is satisfyingly in line with classic whodunnit plotting & immorality, and the eight performers are all delightfully kitsch.  Joinable until 8 January - great fun.

So the big 3 days have trundled by, and I hope they were good for you: here's my favourite picture from today - sunny Roddenbury Hill on a family Boxing Day walk.

This beech-covered hillside is extraordinary in that it dramatically shows the contours of its history as an Iron-age fort, with several of the protective banks clearly in residual evidence. It's also just a beautiful place to roam in all seasons.

So as this is my official End Of Year post, even though we're not yet at the official start of 2022, here's some wind-up moments and personal awards. With Zoom-widened audiences, it's been a great year for performance of both drama and poetry, with impressive online initiatives early in the year as well as great live shows later on. My top pick of the former is Wardrobe's The Great Gatsby, for the latter,  in a hot contest it's Wuthering Heights, bursting onto Bristol Old Vic's stage in November. 

 Also in terms of live performance, massive credit to Martin Dimery and the team for a triumphant return of Frome Festival with a programme brimming with glittering highlights - especially the music sessions organised by Dave Smith, and the performances on the Merlin's ECOS amphitheatre: The Tempest from Folksy Theatre was my favourite, after - of course - the Poetry Cafe, an amazing finale to my 21 years of promoting spoken word in Frome, though this won't cause the finale of that genre. The HOT Poets  initiative has recently produced some impressive ecological poems, and the return of live bands to local venues brought special joy: Bar Lotte deserves a special mention for fabulous Wednesday night jazz sessions, but the Raggedy Men - post-punk punks - at The Sun in November stand out as unforgettable.

There have been several superb exhibitions of art, craft, and photography in Frome: September's display of responses to the pandemic curated by Active & In Touch was inspiring but my personal pick has to be David Moss at the Silk Mill, because this gave me the cover picture for my August publication of Deja Lu. with Hobnob Press. And credit goes also to writer Claire Reddaway who kept our spirits up with her Kilter Theatre collaboration of readings in Storyopathy, which encouraged me to compile this collection.   

This year was the first time for me in over 25 years with no trip abroad (these were mostly working trips, btw, leading writing courses) - but an away-weekend to Wales in May was a highlight - here's the impressive Dolgoch Falls, highlight of a camping trip to Tywyn. 

So after a quick flip through some of the highlights that illuminated my 2021 like that wonderful lantern parade in Frome, here's with a memory of that night: created by Frome people under guidance of Frome artists with support from Frome Town Council and our internationally-famous punk Mayor Andy...  I hope your own reflections on the year we're leaving have been - mostly - happy too.  

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. 

Bumper bundle week - words, words, words. And some icicles.

Murder at the Circus on zoom is the concept of Sharp Teeth with Bristol's Wardrobe Theatre: a ‘Sherlock Holmes’-style intrigue with interaction developed to the point where audience contribution becomes the major part of the show. We were divided into zoom gallery groups to solve the crime, interviewing the five 'suspects', so the dialogue of the performance became primarily our own sleuthing debate. Part murder-mystery spoof, part parlour game, constructed with extreme technical ingenuity and a clever team of actors, there was enough essential theatricality in the production to tick all the boxes of dramatic entertainment. Here's one of the audience screens at the end of the show, with our murderously deceitful but entertainingly delightful cast along the top row.

This week the focus is mostly on words. Alison Clink, founder of the Frome Festival Short Story contest, joined Frome FM's regular weekly Writers on Radio to give sound advice for competition entrants, now online here, and the Frome Writers Collective monthly meeting devoted Thursday evening to the topic of diaries. This was a very successful session, well-organised and cram full of fascinating material, from historian David Lassman's on Pepys as a somewhat unreliable witness to the Great Fire of London in 1666 ("I thought it far enough off, so I went back to sleep") to the 2020 lockdown diary of John Payne, whose latest title A West Country Homecoming has earned review praise as 'a fascinating mix of local and national history.' 

Among other intriguing insights we heard about Peter Clark's life in Damascus, Sian Williams during the 1980s Greenwatch, and Jonny Griffiths at an East End school; Michael Riggs shared the pages of his illustrated diary, Nikki Copleston revealed how hers triggers ideas for fiction and Ann Phillips' journal, begun in 1972, was beautifully laced with Yeats poetry.  My pitch was recommending blogging for writers of every genre: to encourage a regular writing habit, provide practice in editing (free from the constraints of word-count) and even lead to wider publication - my chronicle of the life & times of Frome led to a commission and Frome Unzipped was born!  As examples of personal style, try Sally Gander's The Unwritable - her current post on apophenia is fascinating - and Maria Popover's award-winning Brainpickings.  

And still in Frome, our superhero bookshop manager Tina Waller is on Nub News talking about Hunting Raven Books - she does have a face, actually, but seems to like my snap of her taken in passing during her prep for the pre-Christmas rush. 

Two poetry events on zoom this week: Frome's fabulous Liv Torc joined Wolverhampton wonder Steve Pottinger for their Literary Festival Fringe on Saturday, sharing her personal story of the last year as well as talking about the sensational success of her HAIFLU project. Liv is always not only sparklingly glamorous, but also superbly well-prepped, and her twin themes of distress and success were movingly conveyed in screen shots illustrating her talk. 

Liv's succinct summary of her experience of 'some big things' last year included bereavement and serious illness as well as banana poems and inventing the project that National Poetry Day described as 'a spectacular collective act of poetry, photography, music and film involving more than 8,000 crowd-sourced haiku, more than 500 'citizen artists', 13 films and a newly-minted artform uniquely adapted to the nation's creative needs during pandemic: it's been featured on BBC 4's Today programme, in The Times, and continues to inspire hundreds of people to write poems.' 

She is still working on the project: you can submit words or images on her facebook page here. Two of the weekly chronicles of submitted moments were shown: I picked this moment because the image is mine but it's the collation, not the individual frame, that makes this such a stunningly successful art form. 

A few hours later there was another poetic triumph to celebrate as  Caleb Parkin, current Bristol City Poet, held a launch party to celebrate the publication by Tall Lighthouse of his new collection Wasted Rainbow. It's some years since Caleb & I performed an impro collaboration-poem about lipstick in Bath, and I wish the film of the outcome had survived but, like lipstick, these things roll out of one's life. It was great to hear Caleb's sensitive, sometimes surreal, words - there's a lovely example here - and his reading was supported by invited open mic-ers and guest poets, all strong voices: I particularly enjoyed Keith Jarrett & ordered his collection from Burning Eye (which I hope includes the poem concluding we have learned to build bridges, we have learned to cross those bridges even as they burn, we have learned to love...)

With temperatures lingering round 0°(and a 'feels like' dipping as low as -11° according to my app) after the weeks of rain, this week's local landscape view shows Nunney's Donkey Lane (much of which came home on my boots). 

The sunshine flickerings on our subzero town bring stirrings of hopefulness. I didn't write another novel during this lockdown but words haven't entirely shrivelled like my amaryllis bud: a new short story was taken by an anthology, another earned a prize in the FWC winter competition (shared 3rd actually, but a certificate & book token to show for it 😊) and I've enjoyed few 'commended's, including a poem in the Corsham swan-theme contest and some of the mini-contests in the King Lear Awards (in which bulletins incidentally Frome's David Thompson is frequently named and quoted.) And, excitingly, I'm back in collaboration with my poet friend Hazel Stewart, reviving our Live & Lippy collaboration via zoom.. It's a long time since Howard Vause collected some of our performance pieces for a DVD but a few are still on his page: here's Weird, and our signature piece: What's It Like For You?  We don't know yet where this will take us but it's good to be working together again.

So now that I've illustrated Pascal's precept that brevity takes more time than verbosity (plus also my point above on the irrelevance of word-count to a blogger) I'll end, appropriately for the date, with a   Valentine project created by Frome's Summer Harwood to support Child Poverty Action. She's already raised over £700 for her hand-crafted valentine cards! So that's the visual art spot for this week.