meanwhile in a quiet corner of the world...

Much Ado About Nothing directed by Christopher Luscome in 2014 is another of the great Royal Shakespeare Company productions now streamed for home viewing, and it's another goodie.

With its 'inciting incident' of trickery and deceit this can be a difficult play to consider a comedy, but this version focuses on the suggestion of the title: it's all just 'much ado'- banter and teasing and titillation ('no-thing' in Elizabethan days was slang for a woman's vagina) until there's one trick too serious, and the insecure young lover, only a day back from battle, reacts by reverting to conflict stance - but only till the trickery is unwound by the buffooning guards on watch. These 'low-class' caricatures are often the weakest link in the bard's comedies, maybe because there's less enthusiasm for ridiculing the disadvantaged in society now, but also since Shakespeare didn't fully script these scenes, allowing his comedians like Will Kempe (who played Dogberry in the original production in 1598) to improvise on the theme, and no copies of any of the plays emerged until 1623 - seven years after the playwright's death. These extended parody scenes slightly weaken the suspense of the plot, but we know it will come right in the end, and the overall performance is a delight. Sets and scene changes are superb, from glamorous to grandiose, all offering ingenious opportunities for the eavesdropping that moves each plot along, first salacious, then serious, and ultimately revealing. Setting the entire story in 1918 works well for both the class divide and the heightened emotions after a war, and the cast are all excellent.

Live  on Zoom - an intimate performance with each member of the audience individually ticketed, a one-off performance, never repeated in quite the same way... that's what Fuel Theatre offers with their show Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, and the innovation definitely seemed worth a look. From 20 May to 26 June, Bristol's  Uninvited Guests are offering an hour of readings from love letters - your love letters. Hosts Richard and Jess are personable and charming people but that is literally the extent of the show: they read out emails from night's audience and play their chosen track, even if it's Que Sera, Sera, while smiling kindly into the camera. If you want to have a go, probably best to do what I omitted, and send your own letter & song request, then you can leave the once it's over as many clearly do: the 'watching' number dwindled before the end.

Story Friday in Bath posted another excellent batch of short stories on Friday, chosen by organiser Clare Reddaway and presented by the Kilter Theatre team.  Some tales took the current situation as their theme - Making a Mask poignantly and Flouting with an unexpected twist - and I also really liked Zorbing, a powerful image for a personality in crisis (by Chiara Vascotto, read by Alice Barclay) and Casting with WB Yeats (by David Mathews, read by Adam Fuller), lyrical and with a delightfully satisfying ending. An absorbing collection, well worth a click to hear these and browse the archives too.

A new collection of poetry, Two Girls and a Beehive, from Rosie Jackson with Graham Burchell, had a Zoom launch this week: sadly my laptop curtailed my connection with an overheated hum, but there's a Youtube taster here.  Both poets share a fascination with the life of Stanley Spencer with his wife Hilda and these poems aim to explore and illuminate their lives and art.

June is usually the month when Frome Festival preparations step up a gear, with the brochure out and rehearsals & promotions under way... so it feels reassuringly normal to see creativity around town being promoted - even though the Frome Art Trail is a virtual one this year.

All of the 51 artists represented have websites you can see direct from the link: an impressive display of diversity, skill and talent. Big appreciation to the team who compiled this, led by Kate Cochrane, whose landscape paintings include this view of White Sheet Down.

Ending this blog in a week when anti-racist riots and virus crises both move closer to our home town, with a quiet moment on the walk across the fields and through the woods to my weekly writing group session.

wind in the tall trees

sounding like a waterfall

crashing on sunshine

theatre, art, music words - the 'Back in Business' one!

When theatre goes real-time live again, these free treats from London's costliest theatres will be much missed- do grab them while they're around. The Globe's offering this week was Romeo and Juliet, weighing in at just shy of three hours but superbly performed - Rebekah Murrell as Juliet and Petra Letang as her nurse especially brilliant - and thrilling viewing (unless you're one of the students whose laments that an English lesson is only supposed to be hour long littered the comments online).
Dominic Dromgoole's direction brings out the unruliness of the rival gangs and the youthfulness of the lovers, both initially naive in their notions of romance until sobered into the harsh reality of transgressing clan rivalries.  The sword fights are thrilling but have been filmed rather too close to follow the vital dynamic leading up to Romeo's fatal thrust, but overall there's good coverage of audience excitement.

Thursday night's National Theatre offering of 'Danny Boyle's monster hit Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch as the creature and Jonny Lee Miller as Victor Frankenstein' was as unforgettably amazing as you'd expect from the first two names. Unforgettable especially for the long opening section of electric birth through the creature's long lonely struggle to articulate movement and sound, watching the thing grow into a humanoid and then a lover of poetry and a philosopher under the tutelage of the blind old man: this was full of charm as well as poignancy. When this connection is abruptly broken by the seeing world and the quest for vengeance begins the trajectory is set steadily for melodrama. Mary Shelley's tale of the motherless creature, completed while living in Bath, is a psychological drama as much as a monster story, and the parallels with her own life in terms of loss and disregarded needs are plangent. This brilliant interpretation of a timeless tragedy is on all week, well worth viewing.

 Bath Festival went virtual too, with a varied menu of free options including Grayson Perry's Art Club, in which he invites viewers to submit their own work, with the chance of  inclusion in his next real-time exhibition "when this is all over." His theme this week is portraits: here's one that artist Nathan Wyburn made of him, using soy sauce and noodles. Grayson was also much taken with the latest trend on facebook, even more popular than the 'ten-albums-that-define-me' one: Recreate artworks with things you find at home now has over 50,00 members and there are some fantastic efforts out there - if you haven't started following yet, you're missing a treat. And in the Golden Oldies corner. Channel 4 is releasing to the world 'Bingeable Box Sets' of comedy classics - every series of Seinfeld, and Father Ted to name but two.

As always there's masses of music online - if you don't have enough of your own favourites tune into Visual Radio Arts where Phil Moakes and Maggie Gregory continue to add new shows: here's No Fixed Abode who played last week.

Sofa continues to stream international acts for free viewing, and individuals musicians are increasingly posting on facebook: Martin Dimery, ex Sergeant Pepper's Only Dartboard Band, has made several of his Beatles songs publicly viewable. Here comes the Sun is one of my favourites.  Frome's jazz-fusion giant John Law offers a preview of his new album CONFIGURATION here prior to its release, and looking wider, Radiohead has posted their archived tour concerts.

Words now, and a fascinating talk from Andrew Ziminski's from his workshop organised on Zoom by Pippa Goldfinger, describing his work as a stonemason, with a focus on the landscape of Wessex. His slide presentation included discoveries from neolithic sites including Avebury, Fyfield Down, West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill Stonehenge and was supplemented by workshop demonstrations of skills like creating sarsen polishing stones and repairing the carvings in the temple of Sulis Minerva. Buy the book, if you haven't got it already!

From fabulous fact to intriguing fiction, with Bath's Story Friday, the popular community platform initiated by mega-skilled Clare Reddaway, went online last week and continues its Friday evening sessions on the theme of 'Dark Clouds, Silver Linings' read by a team from Kilter Theatre. This week's set included a story from Chiara Vascotto, whose sensuous, visceral, personal style I remember from last year in Skyros. You can listen to her story, read Amy Vickers, here, along with five other intriguing short tales - one by Clare herself.
Liv Tork, indefatigably innovative and creative, continues to collect submissions of 'haiflu' (haiku in time of plague) to create weekly compilations: here's week 6 online, sombre but plangently sincere. Meanwhile Frome Poetry Cafe  is open for any original poems, especially with some tangental connection to 'revenge or redemption (which happened appropriately to be our theme for April) as the page becomes virtual 'open mic' for lockdown times.

And as April moves into May in Frome, where we're lucky enough to have lanes and footpaths close enough to walk miles in any direction, I'll end this week's roundup with images of blossom - the wonderful Judas tree in Victoria park, and a small burst of the hawthorn blossom brimming on every hedge.

All the world's a screen... (with sunshine breaks)

And once again National Theatre Live has shown why lockdown may actually provide some of the highlights of 2020. Twelfth Night, that often tedious Shakespeare comedy about a girl and her brother looking identical enough to cause fights and fury, turns out to be not merely doable but timeless, funny, and moving. Imaginative casting helps: Sir Toby is an aging hippy, Sir Andrew a pretentious hipster and the Fool a faded flower child, with the other gender switch making Malvolio a lusty lesbian - Tamsen Greig in this role is unforgettable.  Soutra Gilmour's rotating stage brilliantly evokes every scenic shift, from manor to clubland, enhancing the essential theatricality of the story: scene changes in an ongoing drama of ascending and descending statuses, in a world where rank is all. Director Simon Goodwin, you can watch it online until April 30.

Spoken word now: and Clare Reddaway, Bath's talented writer & creative supporter of other writers, has taken her monthly live 'Story Friday' event online, combining with Kilter Theatre to ensure some great readings for their premier event on 26th on the theme Dark Clouds, Silver Linings. Seven ultra-short tales took the theme in wide-ranging ways, including two charming everyday stories of local folk:  Jonathan Evans The Pillars of the Earth read by Ollie Langdon, and My Dad the Superhero by Judith Adam, read by Eve. Clare will continue to select and post stories, so do follow A Word In Your Ear, and contribute if you feel inspired.

Last week online saw more music than may blossom in the hedgerows - you probably found plenty, but among those I've appreciated are  Flash Harry, and Al O'Kane who hosted a fundraiser on Friday for a Bristol NHS Charity. Frome's individual musicians are doing lock-in solo spots too, on their personal pages: guitarist-singer Steve Loudoun has made his public - here's a great Tom Waits track -

and Pete Gage has posted a moving guitar version of St James Infirmary Blues as well as some terrific keyboard-accompanied songs - these aren't public but I'm sure he won't mind me sharing the screenshot of I need your love so bad. -
Sofar Sounds gave us a free session from Jade Bird - donations optional - and overall there's been no shortage of music as a backdrop to this sensationally sunny week - including the intriguing Bookshop Band, who exclusively sing their own songs about book recommendations, an impressive specialism that originated in Mr B's in Bath and has brought them followers all over the UK and to America, including BBC radio.  Here they are with their regular Lockdown show - you can see them live on Fridays at 8.30.

Poetry, like mercy, drops everywhere like the gentle rain, - various online sites will pipe it to you daily -but  April 25th was a day of special dousing: this is the day of the Universe in Verse celebrates 'the splendour and mystery of the natural world', as featured in Brainpickings. Liv Torc is still collecting haiku for her Haiflu project - you could send her one of your own or post any longer poems on the Frome Poetry page if you're missing our meetings.

Ending with another image from a walk: out of over 20 miles of happy traipsing, this one is close to home - right in the centre of Frome: wild garlic, looks beautiful, smells sensuous, tastes great...

Sounds, words, art - all you need to start the month.

Listen - A summer of sound is the concept of composer Helen Ottaway, fusing sensual appreciation to include not only music but sounds found in nature, in speech, and in our lives generally - the 'strange and lovely' sounds of the world around us. Black Swan Arts has embraced the idea and from July 20th till 1st September there will be a range of sound-related events to experience. Last Thursday was the launch of a crowdfunder to raise funds to commission more aural events to 'feed the voracious appetite of Frome's creative community', with Helen's sample soundtrack, taken from the streets of Sri Lanka, installed in the corridor. Here's Mel Day from the programming committee with Helen.
This initiative also includes Poetry in Motion - local walks with readings of poems related to the terrain, organised by John Payne and Martin Bax - and thus ties in nicely with the Frome Writers Collective current focus on poetry. The FWC regular programme on Frome FM Writers on Radio (broadcast May 3rd, online link here) featured interviews with three local writers with an interest in writing poetry: I was one, along with Robert Hull and Rosie Jackson, whose collaborative collection with Graham Burchell on the art of Stanley Spencer and his wife Hilda, Two Girls and a Beehive, will be published next April by Two Rivers Press. Suzy Howlett, here with co-presenter Lisa Kenright, spoke of the benefits of learning poems by heart in childhood which triggered all our favourites: personally I can't walk over any bridge in London without declaiming Wordsworth, and will chunter chunks of Keats, Coleridge and Wilfred Owen mercilessly at the least provocation. The programme was immaculately hosted by Sara Scholefield.

From poetry to prose: really great to have my tale of Mrs Rosoman's Dilemma picked for  Story Friday, Clare Reddaway's popular short-prose reading event in Bath's delightful performance venue Burdalls Yard, an invitingly cavernous venue on this occasion authentically decked for the current theme of 'The Garden'- and with real cucumber sandwiches. Six of our submissions were lucky enough to join Clare in reading, and our horticultural imaginations varied from animals' nocturnal exploits to jam mining and Eve's take on what Eden was really like, with some thought-provoking as well as entertaining tales. There's a link here so you can listen to all or any of our tales!

And still with the words, Nevertheless Pub Theatre's festival production, Where the Fault Lies, is being steadily buffed up by our four dedicated actors. I dropped in on the rehearsal for Under the Duvet - a bit of a twisty mystery with a sinister streak - and found them suitably moody... If you're in the Frome area during festival week, do get a ticket & come along to The Cornerhouse on 10th July- with four talented and energetic actors, we're confident this will be a great show. There's a link here, so you can listen to any or all of the stories.

Time for music, and masses of it, to take all our minds off the fudges and follies that climaxed on May 2nd, though they weren't far from our minds when Seize the Day featured at a TUC organised event in Bath last Saturday. Theo Simon and Shannon Smy lead this inspirational protest band which has a big following for its rousing performances as well as political commitment.  The Bell Inn garden's 'back bar' provided a perfect venue for a great afternoon. Here's a quite old version of one of their anthems No-one's Slave and No-one's Master - it sounds as good, and as relevant, today.
Back in Frome, the May weekend had an even-more-fantastic-than-usual range (do I say this every week? It sometimes seems that way.., ) of brilliant bands: The Peaky Blinders Family Friendly Music Event at 23 Bath Street gave us a long afternoon of superb performers: Rodney Branigan set the bar high with Radiohead's Creep played on two guitars simultaneously, followed by the Screaming Harlots, then Frome's new hottest band the HooDoos - they give St James Infirmary Blues the resurrection treatment - and sultry Bonne Nouvelle - then another talented composite group, JAMD.

Here's the Hoodoos (with apologies to two more talented members missing from the shot), lovely Coralie from Bonne Nouvelle, and the party atmosphere that greeted JAMD.

Then a dance night at The Cornerhouse with high-energy ska/punk band the wonderful One Tones to end the day, so what more could anyone want from a bank holiday Saturday? 

There's Sunday too, of course, and as it's the first of the month the Frome Independent market took over the town with stalls and its usual Mayday theme of fresh floral headbands. I was outside Hunting Raven Books for most of this time, promoting Frome Unzipped, (thanks Tom for the snap)
but I did catch the HooDoos' excellent set on the busking stage - though sadly missing Straight Fits, an up-and-coming young band of whom you will hear more.

Impossible to leave May bank holiday weekend without referencing the art, which burst around the town like the wild garlic and cow-parsley that have been grabbing every pathside space:

 The Round Tower is hosting Black Swan Guild's stunning exhibition of paintings, pottery,  jewellery and other craft: I was particularly impressed with Dan Morley's delicate, exact, paintings in the series of ephemeral fragments in the Sonnets series, but there's much to admire - it's on till 25 May.

And for two days only, May 4&5, Frome Art Fair took over the Long Gallery, the Silk Mill, and Rook Lane too with an extraordinarily high standard display of work by the artists and craftsfolk of Frome. Here's just one of the many striking pieces of work in each venue, by from Melanie Deegan, at Rook Lane. 

Attentive readers may note a bit of a blip time-wise in the middle of this bulletin: this is because your usually-dedicated chronicler grabbed a four-day sabbatical and celebrated Beltane in Dublin - in Howth, to be precise, a peninsular at the north end of the city entirely surrounded by seagulls.
Here I was hosted by my university-days-flatmate Jenny Sweeney (author of Encounter Ireland) so we talked of Irish poets and legends and walked the promenade, beach, cliff-tops and in the old Deer Park where Gráinne Mhaol the Pirate Queen put the garlic curse on the inhospitable St Lawrence family for closing the gates against her so even now their land is thick as snow with garlic flowers, and the Earl now always has a place laid ready in case she calls again...
and if you're ever in Howth and feeling peckish, do drop into The Bloody Stream, a fabulous fish restaurant named after the environmental consequence of a 12th century battle below its walls. It's underneath the railway station: five-star food and a centre for Irish music too. So this multi-coloured bulletin concludes here with the green headlands thick-rimmed with the molten gold of the gorse all around the bay.

The carnival is over, it must be autumn

There was much to celebrate on Saturday but as this is an arts blog I'll keep all that for facebook and just tell you, if you weren't there, that the annual Frome Carnival was as glittery and quirky as ever, and the streets were thronged to watch the colourful paraders prance, dance, cartwheel or totter down the hill and through the town centre.   In typical egalitarian style, the mayor & his lady chose to walk with the collectors rather than wave regally from a posh car.

This lively event was a great finale to week with arts in the spotlight, as Frome Town Council concluded a series of meetings to define the priorities for a 'performing arts' policy. Consultations with venues, performers, promoters, and potential audiences all culminated in this week's round-up, led by deputy mayor Al O'Kane who instigated the initiative, and a six-point practical summary for enhanced renaissance will go forward to the council.

Meanwhile the Roots Grain Bar sessions continue to give the best value evening entertainment for a hat donation you'll ever find on a Wednesday, this week featuring superb song-writer and performer Phil Cooper with his band.

And for spoken word fans this week there was Story Friday, the popular bimonthly event presented by A Word In Your Ear at Burdall's Yard in Bath. This session's theme of Outsiders particular interests me so I was delighted my story was one of the seven chosen. The standard is awesome and it was a genuine privilege to be in a line-up with Clare Reddaway and other superb writers - look out for Conor Houghton if you enjoy droll fast-moving Irish humour, a new star who may well go supernova soon. Stories now all on audio - listen here!

So now autumn has officially begun ~ it arrived astronomically on September 21st, also allegedly International Peace Day (don't get me started) ~ here's a couple of events to look forward to: Frome Poetry Cafe on October 4th has Hannah Teasdale as guest poet, and local writer Rosie Jackson will be launching her memoir The Glass Mother at the Merlin on November 4th.  Nevertheless Fringe Theatre isn't planning another production this year as Rosie & I are both involved in other projects, but there are exciting new theatre initiatives around as well as to the Merlin's eclectic autumn programme. Marc Cox is starting a script-in-hand writers group at the Atheneum in Warminster, and Simon's Blakeman's impro group now meets each Tuesday upstairs at the Cornerhouse. And for film fans, the good news is that new owners will reopen the Westway as an independent cinema again. And there's still one more week of Somerset Art's 'open studios' ~ venue list here!