Wise children, reality disorder, and other war words

'It's a wise child that knows its own father', in the words of Homer, and paternity is a central strand in Wise Children now at Bristol Old Vic with Wise Child - which is also the name of Emma Rice's new 'joyful, emotional, ensemble touring company' here in co-production with Old Vic, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Oxford Playhouse, and York Theatre Royal. With all that involvement you'd expect something sensational, and you'd be right: it's a flamboyant, exuberant, show with all the elements BOV seems to most relish: onstage musicians, circus-style physicality, fantastic costumes, bold casting, puppets, and dark delicious fairytales made modern - it's Greek mythic in scope and Shakespearean in splendour and it's absolutely fabulous. In the past I've been querulous about puppetry but the little twins as babies and as fighting toddlers are heart-winners, and the dancing-singing-cartwheeling cast are all superb. I particularly liked Sam Archer as uncle of some of the twins and Katy Owen as the saucy naturist granny who sex-educates her adopted girls by demo with a ring donut and a stick of rock. It's based on Angela Carter's novel about warring theatrical families, so you might expect extreme feminism and Grimms-style grisliness, but the story chicanes evocatively through time & times largely happily, with some poignant moments and Wildean lines: It is every woman’s tragedy that after a certain age she looks like a female impersonator, opines Dora (delightfully played by Gareth Snook, which enhanced the epigram). For me personally the fact this is set in 20th century South London, around Brixton in fact - my stomping ground as a wayward teen - was sprinkles on the iced donut. On till 16th February, definitely recommended.

Two different art exhibitions opened on Friday: the HUBnub gallery, a beautiful space which needs strong work,  has a show that meets the challenge: impressive paintings by Jamie Gallagher which explore 'the psychological effects on humanity of the current extremes of social, political and cultural disruption.' Post Normality Reality Disorder attracted a big buzz at the launch, & I need to go back to interrogate these pieces again...

Also a powerful magnet and a lively & sociable launch: The Sands of Time in Black Swan Round Tower represents the 'creative estate' of Stina Falle, well-known in Frome for her extraordinary talent and visionary imagination. Stina has decided to sell, by chosen donation, all her drawings, paintings and makings collected throughout a prolific creative lifetime, with 100% of takings going to the mental health charity Mind in Somerset. The tower on Friday was cram full of sketches, storybooks, portraits, and installations - here's Stina behind a symbolic shroud - but they were going faster so get there before February 2nd if you want to have a piece of unique artistic history.

Music section is sparse this week, as Sunday jazz is on a midwinter break and no Roots session either, but there were some good sounds at Hat Tricks variety night at Three Swans, with jazz melodies on guitar from Graham and Adrian, and several excellent unaccompanied singers. With a couple of story-tellers and a handful of poets in the hat-mix too, this was once again a delightful night.


Moving out of town to end the week in Bath, where Frome historian and author David Lassman led a sell-out crowd of 40 Bathonians plus two interested Froomies and a helpful Toppings bookseller (Felix also organised coffee and cakes for us all) around key sites of Bath describing the events that had devastated the city. As sunshine pierced the frost, we heard insights into the blunders that led to the worst blitz, and descriptions of the lost vistas - it was all so interesting that several locals joined us uninvited at various points and there was a rush to buy David's book Bath at War 1939-45 at the end of the tour.

Finally... it was Burns Night on Friday, so if you enjoyed carousing with whisky and (possibly vegetarian) haggis, as I did, I hope you included in your reverential readings the Ode to the Immortal Bard of Ayr, Robert Burns, by Sir William McGonagall, a tribute so full of excruciating lines it's like eating turkish delight with toothache.Your genius does sparkle bright / like to the stars of the night,this 1807 paeon of praise declares, ending fervently You were a mighty poet, few could with you compare /and also an honour to Scotland, for your genius it is fair. And you can't say fairer than that.

McGonagall is often mocked now (like I just did) but for a handloom weaver in late-19th century Dundee he did well and never appeared to doubt the merit of any of his prolific output - he showed his first piece to his local preacher who admired it with commendable diplomacy: "Shakespeare never wrote anything like this." Failing to find fortune in New York, he returned to Dundee where, for 15/- a night in the local circus, he read his poems to crowds who pelted him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread until the council banned the act for causing riotous behaviour. Mcgonagall wrote a poem chiding them. Interestingly, the 'world's worst poet' was making a living out of his bizarre lyrics at a time when the weaving trade was dying, and there was a theory in his lifetime that Sir Topaz Mcgonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, was actually "not so daft". Reader, you decide....

Now that April's here... sunshine, singing, & some spoken stuff too

This illustrated edition of Frome life starts with some of the week's great music sessions ~ from Olli's Open Mic
at the Artisan on Monday to Sunday's afternoon jam at the Archangel and Jazz the Cornerhouse with Graham Dent's terrific trio with Simon Sax guesting ~ wish there was sound for their magic version of John Coltrane's Impressions.)

Music too at the first Sunday Market of the year on the first of April, a glorious day of sunshine as solid as the crowds at the wonderful Frome Independent. Here's Gina and her Company of Men rocking the busking stage, and the ever-rolling stream of market-goers crossing the river.

Big civic news of the week was the opening of the new Town Hall, an impressive Victorian building on the southern hill of the town ~ Frome has hills at every turn ~ now elegantly refurbished since Somerset CC moved out. You can read more in the Frome Times, or even in a book, but here's the splendid Italian Renaissance exterior, and a couple of our splendid civic dignitaries: Mayor Toby with Deputy Al and secretary Rebecca, greeting Froomies all keen to take the guided tours on throughout the afternoon.

There was a party in the evening too, which I missed as I'd already opted to go to Toppings in Bath to hear TS-Eliot-prize-winner Jacob Polley reading from Jackself.  Described as 'firecracker of a book' by the judges, the poet blends Jacks of rhymes and fables with memories of a Cumbrian childhood to create this loosely-autobiographical collection, 'playful and terrifying, lyric and narratively compelling.. an unforgettable exploration of an innocence and childhood.. one of the most remarkable imaginations at work in poetry today.' Jacob sees his writing process as "doing a jigsaw but without the front of the box" & I relate to his 'kind-of-strategy' too: "I would never stop it going where it wanted to go, even if it didn't seem very poetic or seemed stupid." An interesting event, and also a chance to catchup with Diana Cambridge who runs writing groups from her bohemian home in Camden Road.

No report from the Grain Bar this week as Wednesday was booked for another away-from-base event: As the Crow Flies at The Salberg studio theatre in Salisbury Playhouse, written by Hattie Naylor. The last play I saw by this writer was Bluebeard, a powerful piece produced in Bristol four years ago which I reviewed as 'tautly shocking from the opening line, words chosen with precision and cuttingly delivered, poetic and visual ~ not so much filmic as a series of savagely erotic paintings.'  So I was interested to see what this drama about a woman and her pet crow would be like. I have to say the crow was brilliant ~ Tom Brownlee totally charismatic with or without his superb mask. It’s an ambitious aim, to extend a story that could be summed up in a sentence (lonely woman finds wounded crow, keeps it for a bit, becomes less lonely) to a two-act play with story-telling through exposition and songs, but there's some interesting science: I didn't know before that birds fly using quantum entanglement:throwing out two electrons in opposite directions to inform each other and relay information instantaneously back to the bird. There is no way of knowing which particle is ahead in time and which is past. They both exist in the same moment.

Footnote for this week: a look back at the Poetry Platter at the Merlin, courtesy of photographer David Goodman. Frome's next poetry night, on 24th, will be back at the Garden Cafe with readings from Lindsay Clarke and Matt Duggan. 

So here in running order:
me, XJX, Hannah Teasdale, Chris Redmond, Liv Torc, and Buddy Carson.
You're welcome!

Of launches, sanctions, and masculinity

It's been a great week for book launches. In Frome, over a hundred people arrived at Merlin theatre hungry to hear poet and author Rosie Jackson reading from her newly published memoir The Glass Mother, with quite a few also hungry for the exquisite platters of tapas (thanks Jo Harrington) in the night-clubby ambience onstage. As 'Spoken Word coordinator' for the theatre I'd been involved in this event for a while, and as Rosie had shared her developing story at our writing group, I knew this was going to be a memorable evening, and it certainly was.
Rosie suggested at the start of her reading that memoir is a form more akin to poetry than to history, and her extracts all showed that quality of lyrical precision, as well as unflinching integrity to the poignant theme at the heart of her story.
Also there to celebrate their completed books were seven of her writing group, Des Harris, Dennis Costler, Maggie Pierce, Gillie Richardson, Steve Small, Tim Cutting, and Karine Butchart, who all read a short extract from their own memoirs. A fabulous evening and an unforgettable night ~ huge appreciation to the writers and thanks to the theatre crew for their superb support. As a happy footnote, Rosie's publisher Robin Jones reports after-show sales surpassing all his previous Unthank Books launches.

Now to Bath, where Carrie Etter, originally from Normal, Illinois now lives. Carrie and Frome's Claire Crowther are both powerful & compelling poets who are currently launching new chapbooks with Shearsman, and as they're also friends this was clearly a brilliant opportunity for a shared launch at Toppings, with a soiree at Circo afterwards. The diversity in subject and form in these two books made for fascinating readings: Carrie explores climate change in words scattered across the pages of Scar, vividly evoking the blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts & heatwaves that Illinois is suffering, while in Bare George Claire reports with esoteric precision on the history of coinage from her observations at the Royal Mint. Both extraordinary books that yield more meaning with every re-reading.

Claire's 'bare George' is the dragon-slayer, symbol of mastery and male dominance which segues usefully into my next report: Grayson Perry opened his Typical Man in a Dress tour in Bristol, entertaining a full house at Colston Hall with his thoughts on masculinity. As you'd expect, these were colourful and comical as well as thought-provoking, and after the interval some thoughts thus provoked were tweeted onto the back-screen. (I liked 'masculinity is having to fetch the interval drinks because the wife can't be arsed to get out of her seat.') Masculinity, according to Grayson Perry's six-point man-ifesto is: not innate but learned, it's power & dominance, it's performance, it's redundant, it's sexy, and it's a treatable mental health condition. Backdrop projections accompany the banter ~ a picture of Bear Grylls crouching in undergrowth, for example, to illustrate his point that skills a man needs have changed and nowadays it's more likely to be how to find a decent school in your area. His conclusion is that macho men are now skeuomorphs, a wonderful word derived from architecture meaning 'an object that used to be functional and is now merely decorative'.  Like those awesome tapestries, insightful detail creates an overall picture of our society, and his appraisal is compassionate as well as clever.

Also in Bristol: Watershed was showing I, Daniel Blake all week and I went to an afternoon screening. Director Ken Loach deserves every accolade for this searing case-study story of the iniquities of 'austerity' which professionals and users confirm as entirely accurate although Work & Pensions Secretary Damian Green, who hadn't seen the film, disagreed. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and has six nominations in the British Independent Film Awards, including best film and best director. Hang on there Ken, we need you.

On a lively firework night, bonfires were burning too in Silk Mill's yard as a Cider Festival raging within ~ not my personal tipple, but great to hear Al O'Kane and Andy Hill playing there, especially Al's wonderful Winter Blues: it's that time of year again... what will winter bring for us all. Indeed.
And there's always excellent live music at the monthly Frome Independent market, on the busking stage and in pubs and streets as well ~ here's The Wochynskis punking it up with London's Calling in Cheap Street.

And finally: here's the impossibly beautiful view at Stourhead on Monday at the start of a week that began with mild days and gorgeous autumn tones, and ended with a deep litter of fallen leaves as November winds bite..

Mirad the Boy from Bosnia, written 20 years ago but timeless in its aching insight on casualties of conflict, has been revived by Theatre Orchard and came to The Egg in Bath last week. Mirad is a catalyst and unseen hero, a victim in the Bosnia-Hertzegovena hostilities like so many others. His story is brought to us haltingly, apologetically, precisely, and with terrible lucidity by his uncle Djuka and aunt Fazila, who become dragged into the widening gyre of Serb-Croat conflict. Directed by John Retallack ~ also director of The Last Days of Mankind, another production with a powerful anti-war theme ~ this is acted with moving conviction by Dean Rehman and Gehane Strehler against a minimal set used sparingly to maximum effect. Script is by Dutch playwright Ad de Bont and based on actual events and Amnesty reports. The refugee couple end their harrowing story in Holland on a 'Selected Refugee' scheme, but there is no happy ending for those who are have lost livelihood, loved ones, families and homeland: they are, as Djuka told us diffidently at the start, not refugees but people blown by the wind all over the world... This is one of those experiences that makes you look afresh at the world outside when you leave the theatre, its railings and routes and signs, and at the casual confidence of people moving freely around.

And Emily and I are both back in Bath again on Sunday morning for a circular stroll recreating the streets the Regency Detective would have known. After coffee & croissants at wonderful Toppings Bookshop, authors David Lassman and Terence James escort our thirty-strong group around the territory of their hero Jack Swann, blending fascinating social history with tantalising plot-snippets from their crime novel. The story comes to life excitingly literally at several points as we spy as characters from the book sauntering past ~ and on one occasion dashing after a pickpocket down Avon street, in those days a red-light district rife with crime.  Interestingly, those affluent areas named after the rich and the royal look much as they did when Jane Austen tripped these pavements, but the grim homes of the dispossessed sadly have been merely replaced by an ugly soulless area which was mourned by John Betjeman: Goodbye to old Bath. We who loved you are sorry, they've carted you off by developer's lorry.
Our tour ends by the abbey as the clock chimes noon ("Dead on Twelve" says David cheerily, and some of the group look around worriedly in case this heralds another vivid reconstruction) and we troop back to Toppings for more coffee and to avidly claim our signed copies of The Regency Detective.  "Swann will do for Bath what Morse did for Oxford" predicts the Bath Chronicle confidently. Let's hope so ~ it will make a great TV series.

And now as Glastonbury is probably gathering up the last few thousand black bags of debris ~ are many campers going hang around for Mumford and Sons? ~ there's only five more sleeps before Frome bursts into the festival arena. Somerset Standard has done us proud again, with a big round-up of poetry nights ~ that's lovely Sally Jenkinson, Monday's guest at the Garden Cafe, looming large ~ and a nice push for Nevertheless Pub Theatre too. We're putting on an award-winning one-man play in a production that was Pick of Brighton Fringe and scooped 5 stars in Edinburgh from the Love Fringe review: "An excellent performance combined with Vincent Cassar's richly dark and comic script make this a rare treat." What's the Time Mr Wolf? is on from Wednesday to Saturday, quality theatre for just a fiver!
So you know what to do: pick up a brochure if you haven't got one and get booking everything you can ~ Tales from the Tunnels, the site-specific performance created by Frome Scriptwriters, is already fully booked!