Fringe-ing Frome's festival

While half of Frome disappears to Pilton to either work or perform, the rest of us are warming up for our town festival starting next week. As anyone in, or interested in, Frome will know there's so much creative stuff happening all the time that festival fringe activities aren't exactly oases in a cultural desert but this week the buzz is even more bombinatory than usual.  Or bombinatious, not sure which is the right adjective from this great verb. Where to begin?

Muffin Man 1 & 2 had two nights at The Cornerhouse, and my marvellous actors & co-writers, Ross Scott and Fleur Hanby-Holmes spent a full day in rehearsal with the relevant pastries before our opening on Thursday.  The show comprises a replay of my 'Bard of Frome' title-winning short from last year, followed by our devised sequel to the cliffhanging ending of this unlikely rom-com, The Morning After. The opener is a stand-up routine and there's a song between the two plays, both 'bonus tracks'  created by the characters to add depth to their roles. Lots of audience laughter and brilliant feedback forms, especially after the awesome Saturday night performance summed up Great entertainment - well told story - good fun! and even more succinctly Funny as f##k. (You can see them all here)
Midsummer Dusk is developing sensationally well and tickets for the extra Saturday performance selling briskly at the Festival box office. Sunday's evening rehearsal gave us a shivery sense of how atmospheric the Dissenters Cemetery will be...  our superb cast is already virtually word perfect.


And it's bang goes the neighbourhood affordability-wise, as once again Frome is in the national press:  our Share Shop is commended in Positive News, and we're now a 'Great Town' officially, as a winner in this category at the Urbanism Awards ceremony this month.

Moving briefly out of the cultural hub for two visits to Bath: on Tuesday to talk my poems, as they now say, at the Rose & Crown where lovely Speakeasy organizer Jo Butts entertained us with thoughts from Mark Thomas's People's Manifesto (Goats are to be released on to the floor of the House of Commons - no more than four) and local regular John Christopher Wood aired his views on Cheese (it is an urban myth / that Palestinians make cheeses of Nazareth)  so my chirpy appeal for provision of therapeutic gigolos in Homes for the Elderly fitted in nicely.

Also in Bath, Stepping Out have been performing The Square Wheel of Time at the Rondo. The 'big show' productions from this Bristol community theatre company are always zestful romps with dancing, song and magic tricks as well as wild comedy, bizarre characters, and a thought-provoking bite that lingers. Mark Breckon's script and an exuberant cast combine to tick all these boxes once again. Directed by Cheryl Douglas with lavish costumes and clever stage techniques to create filmic fights and atmospheric flashbacks, this show took and tweaked the company's usual play-within-a-play convention: among many highlights I'd have to pick out 'Tamas' dirty-dancing to Time of My Life (Black-Eyed Peas version of course), the urbane and unscrupulous Dr Charles Lavelle, and Cecilia the stolen daughter dancing secretly with the gipsies, but this was an ensemble piece and everyone deserves praise.  The plot, involving eco-warriors returning to the 19th Century to change history, is sublimely incredible but the intention, to prevent the dominance of chemical intervention in mental health treatment, raises a serious issue. Behind every character, laughable & lovable or outright pathetic, we begin to see a third dimension: the real person damaged by trauma, loss, emotional abuse, or even unresolved family history. More than mere diverting entertainment, these plays from Stepping Out invite audiences to take a realistic & critical look at the current 'medical model' of treatments. As the Square-Wheelers have learnt, chemical pills are not the only, or the best, way to return to health.

Life after Spain

It’s not easy taking over a course at short notice, and difficult too for participants who chose a specific facilitator, so big appreciation to the stoic souls who arrived at Cortijo Romero last week to seek their inner poet with me instead  ~ and did so with warmth & humour as well as honesty, integrity and sometimes a bite of raw sorrow. It was a delight to hear and a privilege to discuss these multi-textured, lucent, colourful pieces, whether free-flow or shaped into form, netted from experience or fly-fished from wild imagination. Cortijo Romero in June is exquisite and abundant: the gardens blossom-filled & tranquil, the cool dining room filled always with bowls bulging with local fruit ~ oranges, cherries, apricots, plums… On our day off I took the river walk to town, arriving after a long hot upward trail at a garden bar I remembered fondly. I stood at the gate, calling through “Are you open?"  "Not yet" said the barman courteously, "come in," and he gestured below shading orange trees and brought me a beer.  Spain, I love you.

Another consequence of my short-notice travel was anti-social flying hours, which meant I was at Malaga airport 12 hours early, which turned out to be a brilliant way to spend a final day in Spain: exploring old-town Malaga, revisiting the Picasso Museum, and remembering all over again why I love this perverse & puzzling painter. “You have to wake people up,” he said, “to force them to understand they're living in a very strange world that’s not what they think it is.” 

Picasso loved Malaga but he didn’t spend much time here: this collection, while beautifully curated & presented, doesn't reflect his best work. But there is one exquisite piece: a tiny, half-painted drawing of a young man watching his lover sleep. I can’t decide which is the most moving: the superb single-line drawing, sensuous fleshlike painting, the transcendental way both merge, or the inspiration of form, allegedly unfinished yet quintessentially perfect. I guess it’s all of these, and more.

Back home in Frome now and the week ahead is brimming over: Nevertheless Productions' Frome Festival production of Midsummer Dusk sold out completely on both nights and Rosie has enterprisingly organised an extra date on the final Saturday ~ get booking now if you were one of those missing out and clamouring! Rehearsals are in the cemetery, which in the summer solstice glow is more beautiful than ever. Principal gardener Gerald Shakespeare has trimmed branches and strimmed around the gravestones but there's still a sense of fecundity and wildness all around. The cast are so good they gave me goosebumps, I can't wait to see them in costume and fully off book...
In the meantime, Muffin Man (One & Two) is on at the Cornerhouse on Thursday and Saturday. This is a reprise of last year's 'Bard of Frome' comedy winner plus a sequel to the cliff-hanging ending, and with bonus tracks of song & comic standup from talented duo Ross Scott and Fleur Hanby Holmes.  A Festival Fringe event, we're calling it.

And on Wednesday I'm booked to do poems at Jo Butt's Speakeasy event in Bath, always a lot of fun and with a lively open mic so I'm hoping my theme of older women behaving badly will fit well... 

in which I manage not to mention the election

Not so much an embarrassment of riches as a frustration of lures this bank holiday weekend, with SAFE at the Merlin, an amazing dance performance based on the 1930 construction of the Empire State Building & sadly the final date in their acclaimed tour, Blah's Big Weekend in Bristol, and the Larkhall festival in Bath. Speakeasy for Lyricism in Larkhall won, as Rosie was a challenger for the home team: here she is causing mayhem and hysteria in the Rose & Crown back-room with Domestic Goddess, to quote the opposition team leader "a 6-word blow-out that will go down in history."

 Still with a spotlight still on poets, the Frome Writers Collective presented another eccentric chain to our regalia-collecting Mayor Peter, this one composed of verses, at an informal celebration at the Three Swans.

An unusual mayor once thought 

Formal chains could be fun, and he sought 

Various versions 

 To suit his excursions 

Could haiku work too? so we thought...

At a more serious event in Bath, Claire Crowther launched her intriguing new anthology On Narrowness, sharing the stage with Carrie Etter who read from her Ted-Hughes-shortlisted collection Imagined Sons. Great to be there with the Frome poetry posse and new friends too.

A new month, another Independent Market Sunday, with a poetry workshop for Words at the Black Swan led by Rosie Jackson. And street-stall strollers may have been surprised to find popular band Seize the Day on the buskers' stage. Theo Simon, songwriter & lead singer, is a candidate for Somerton and Frome: I won't name the party as all reference to the election was prohibited. Including opinions & issues. As Theo says, this is difficult as their songs are all political. He did try, with as much success as Basil Faulty not mentioning the war. But their set drew a massive crowd all either cheering or dancing or both by the end of their final number No Man's Slave.
Plenty more music & street entertainment and all the usual quirky paraphernalia & food sampling. Here's funky Honk Monster, and marvellous Simon's Jazz at the Cornerhouse to end the day.

Ending with a look ahead at pub drama, as Muffin Man returns to the Cornerhouse next month. The talented duo who took on the roles in my short play about a random meeting leading to unlikely liaison (which won me the glorious title Bard of Frome) were keen to bring a sequel to the world. Muffin Man 2, the Morning After is a similar bitter-sweet comedy, this time written collaboratively as a devised drama together with the actors, Fleur Hanby-Holmes and Ross Scott. It's hilarious. Expect dates very soon! Meanwhile, filming of Muffin Man (1) is going ahead in Bristol, here's a still from work in progress.