And after the flamboyant & entertaining metatheatricalism of 6 Characters, another play challenging audience expectations: Tim Crouch's Author at the Royal Court. Only four characters here, though, unless you count the audience: we all became, reluctantly or not, participants in this tale of a tale recounted from among our midst. "Society is defined by its edges, not its centre" says Tim, playing a playwright called Tim Crouch who has written and produced a play that required the cast to research gross and brutal acts. The two 'cast' members confirm this, and their testimony shows the damaging consequences. For the author, degradation was even more extreme; in his impassive, endearing, voice Tim graphically describes participating in shocking obscenity. The actors were chillingly good, and the questions at the heart of the piece are powerful. But I wouldn't sit through it again.

Back home, the autumnal mood is celebratory: Apple Day ends with fireworks for Jenson Button's Formula1 win in Brazil. And four Frome writers collect certificates and prizes from the Mere Literary Festival Poetry Competition - local section, true, but over 120 entries nonetheless. Indranee took first, I was third, and Janet and Phyllis scooped merit awards.
Louis de Bernieres was senior judge.

And finally... Enraptured as I am with lovely Johnny Lee Miller, Emma's sprightly Knightley in the BBC serialisation, I didn't realise he was Trainspotting's heroic Sick Boy... Go, girl...mega mega lust for life rules.

This is the only image
I could find on the Bristol Old Vic website for the utterly amazing new touring production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, sort-of by Pirandello, and maybe it's fitting that it's nothing to do with any of the onstage stories dovetailing thematically and interweaving emotionally: it's a section of audience looking variably enraptured and bemused.

So here's a picture of Luigi Pirandello, who didn't write this version, and the principal actor, who is better known as Wycliffe on the telly, all of which confusion seems totally appropriate for a performance that challenges both authorship & ownership, and our notions of entertainment & integrity. "The medium is the message", Marshall McLuhan pronounced back in 1964, long before intrusive docu-dramas were shaping lives and sensibilities; nowadays we're so used to the debates, both ethical and aesthetic, that this provocative interpretation of Six Characters by Headlong is simply electrifying. Is this the story of a film producer dedicated to finding the 'truth' beyond the tear-jerk euthanasia story of the death of a boy, or is it the less noble, more torrid, story of six non-existing characters who claim " we are more than real, we are immutable." Both stories climax with the death of a boy, but the abuses and tragedy of the drama involve beautiful and extraordinary theatrical qualities, creating another strand of paradox in this densely layered and marvellous production. It's still touring, reaching Cardiff in November - go if you can.
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