A dramatic week: absurdity, tragedy, & some poetry...

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Who said February was a dull month? This week has been crammed with performance and creativity. Let's start with live theatre:The Late-ivity. Yes, it is the nativity story from the bible, Jim, but not as we know it.  Living Spit, unabashed that January is trudging onward, has brought their version of the arrival on earth of the Son of God to Bristol’s Wardrobe Theatre at the end of its short revival tour - revived from December’s performances when it was called The Nativity, that is.

The Wardrobe has fantastic audience atmosphere, especially for comedy, and Howard Coggins & Stu McCloughlin are absolutely on top form here - I speak as one who has followed them for over a decade of fantasies and histories, always steeped in absurdity. Here, Howard’s bored God picks a random woman (Howard) to impregnate, so Stu dashes around as an exasperated Gabriel, and both of them morph into shepherds and kings, skimming hilariously through the familiar tale to their own undoubted highlight: Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, recreated by audience participation as scores of dolls were chucked at us to dismember and hurtle back. The stage by the end looked like party leftovers from a cannibal feast. Sadly next week is the end of the run for this show: if you can’t get tickets, keep your fingers crossed for The Later-ivity - this one could run & run.

The recent remake of West Side Story, which has been popular with both reviewers and the public, has been showing at the Westway, Frome's charming little independent cinema: the combination of Spielberg and Sondheim, plus wild passion and hot nights, is clearly unmissable in a chill January, and the Westway has added attractions like icecreams on offer from a tray during the intermission, and a foyer bar. Adding to these small delights, this movie has been very well reviewed by both critics and audiences - and rightly so. This version is, as you'd expect, careful to get ethnicity correct, and also to establish a credible social context for the aggressions of the deprived teens.  Choreography & agility in the dances is as brilliant as you'd expect, and that clever, funny, song Gee Officer Krupke works particularly well as a private ensemble number rather than an unlikely challenge to real authority. It's great, altogether.

Still with drama: a chat in The River House with Frome's writer/performer Hannah Kumari whose one-person show ENG-ER-LAND will be touring the UK from February. As well as celebrating her own passion for football, Hannah says it's an exploration of her own mixed race identity, and what it means to be English. "I wanted to write a play that was fun and uplifting, whilst also confronting big issues," Hannah says. The play is coming to Frome in March, with a showing at the Football Club as well as the Merlin theatre.

This was a rich week for poetry too: Words at the Black Swan ekphrastic poetry group met on Monday to respond to the extraordinary Slow Time exhibition in the Long Gallery which opened last weekend. This fascinating project proved really stimulating to all ten workshop participants- do take a look at the website in the link, there are some extraordinary and beautiful responses to these pinhole landscapes extending Cartier Bresson's concept of a 'decisive moment' into an infinity of time. One of the group, Mike Grenville, also made a film you can view here.

Then Thursday evening Rainbow Fish Speakeasysession on Zoom led by by Frome's wonder-girl Liv Torc included some wonderful words, mostly crafted from heart-felt personal experience, with brilliant guest Rebecca Tantony also movingly personal in her poems: there's a sample of her work here. 

And after a couple missed Wednesdays, here's your musical blast from wonderful Bar Lotte! Saxophonist Iain Bellamy was with Nick Pini on bass, guest guitarist Denny Ilett, and drums this time from Marc Whitlock. I know nothing about jazz, but I do know that these sessions are fabulous.

And your final footnote this week is a recommendation for all those who for various reasons don't get up to the talks at the National Gallery in London: this is another of their short free-to-view exhibition promo films, this time Albrecht Dürer. It's a fascinating revelation of Dürer's huge impact on artists ever since.

Women being men, men being men, and life in Frome

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is an acknowledged classic, a novel with prescient awareness of the social cruelty inherent in the rampant materialism of 1920s of post-war America. The theme and the plot are contained in one of the last lines of the book: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."   It's a great read - a story by a man about men fighting over their status and over their women, quintessentially a tale of male rivalry set in a landscape of that luxurious, careless era. So you wouldn't expect two women,  with basically a settee as their set, to create the entire story so evocatively, powerfully, wittily, and movingly. Although as this production is from Bristol's  Wardrobe Theatre, you probably would.  Tamsin Hurtado Clarke and Jesse Meadows take on every character in Scott Fitzgerald’s novel to evoke the doomed romance between Daisy and Jay Gatsby as seen through the outsider eyes of Nick Carraway, often role-shifting several times in a single scene. They’re helped by excellent filming and music, and a set that, like the story itself, evolves from its frenzy of self-indulgent hedonism into violent chaos. Director Tom Brennan with director of photography Jack Offord & their teams filmed it all live in January, and you can book here to see the performance until the end of March - recommended. 

Also now streaming, Hymn at the Almeida is another two-hander but a more traditional and weightier affair: the story of two men who shared the same father, written by Lolita Chakrabarti and dealing with Issues with-a-capital-I, like parental responsibility and race and policing, with much weighty dialogue. Despite the fact that the actors actually shared the set, they were filmed separately for 99% of the story, so although Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani were very good, the sense of their interaction was disappointingly absent. Directed by Blanche McIntyre, here's a screen shot of a rare lighter moment.

Another of those of Best-Place-To-Live polls has revealed once again, that the top town in Somerset is Frome, for its 'arty artisan indy businesses and cafes' - let's hope they all survive the shutdowns. River House on the bridge is enterprisingly taking orders online for speciality donuts.  And fittingly for our notoriously dissenting town, Frome's own Tolpuddle Tree, a descendent of the famous Tolpuddle Martyrs' tree in Dorset, has been planted in Rodden Meadow exactly 187 years after the original memorial - Julian Hight, Frome's Mister Trees, gives more of the context and tells the story here.

A brief note on visual arts now: Banksy, Bristol's most famous 'unknown' son (also a friend of several street artists in Frome) featured on TV last week in an excellent documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art.  Sadly this isn't available online in this area but if you missed this inclusive look at how art was reclaimed from the investors and returned to the people, you can take a look at this short trailer.

And finally, poetry corner: Winter Warmers is a collection of seven heart-warming poems supporting pubs in a difficult year by celebrating their role in within their communities. Bristol poet Malaika Kegode performs the poem for the South West, and also don't miss Steve Pottinger representing the Midlands with The Best Pub in the World.  Over in Bristol, David Johnson, always a well-received guest at Frome Poetry Cafe, featured on a zoom event on Saturday at which the highlight for me was his reverie as Edward Coulson tipping into the Bristol harbour ("only a quick dip / no time to dive").  And looking ahead to June, the brilliant news is that Frome Poetry Cafe will be joining the town's Festival celebrations with an event on the ECOS amphitheatre - note our fantastic guest Liv Torc, and get the details in your diary now! (Thanks Suzy Howlett for the flyer)

 

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. 

End of May celebrations...

Bristol's little Wardrobe Theatre is always a delight to visit. For one thing, the Valentine bridge behind Temple Meads railway station, which takes you to it in ten minutes, is a thing of beauty so you arrive saturated with river views and the image of the Eye against a smoulderingly blue sky...   And the productions in this punching-above-its-weight fringe studio theatre are usually brilliant, as on Tuesday's magic-realistic drama How My Light Is Spent,one of Bristol Old Vic's Director's Cuts to showcase graduate work. Director Nikhil Vyas chose this Bruntwood Prize short-listed story of disaffected lives somehow connecting, and Robin Davis designed the clever abstract arena of their dual narration. Jonathan Oldfield and Eva O'Hara give beautifully nuanced performances as the adult chatline worker, the donut server, and all those with whom their lives collide. It's a confident and clever production, beautifully performed - in fact the last time I saw so delightful and touching a love story was David Grieg's Midsummer, but this was more magical and remained unexpected right to the end.

"You've never seen a production of Macbeth like this before" promised Anubis Productions of their gothic reinterpretation 'set amongst a druid wilderness... dark powerful and blood-thirsty, combining traditional theatre, mult-media, spell-binding, physical theatre, and stage combat.' Georgina Nelson-Troy directed this unusual production on the Merlin stage with an adapted script, backdrop imagery and interpretive dance. Drug-fuelled witches took a high profile role and there was much blood. Six multi-tasking players supported the murderous Macbeths in their tragic downward spiral: congratulations to all especially young Caian Gregory, a heart-breaker as the fated son of Macduff in a powerful scene with Georgina as his mother.

And before moving from drama to music, a sneak preview of the Nevertheless Pub Theatre production for the upcoming Frome Festival: for one night only, Where The Fault Lies,a quartet of quirky short plays by me and Rosie Finnegan, performed by Frome Actors Network in the upstairs room of The Cornerhouse on 10 July (tickets only £5 but essential as the venue is what's technically termed 'intimate'.)

My main music events this week were outside town. On Friday, the Three Horseshoes in Bradford on Avon hosted two terrific Frome bands: Back Of The Bus feisty purveyors of post-punk pop - with attitude, and the incomparable high-energy foursome The Raggedy Men, classic 70s punk with panache. Both bands are massively popular, and there were probably more Fromies there dancing than in the audience for Question Time recorded at the Merlin a couple of nights earlier. The ambience was atmospheric rather than lucent, but you can just about make out the bands.

The end-of-May bank holiday inspired a plethora of terrific free entertainment options locally: deciding which to support was tough but on a day of dazzling sunshine, the Packhorse Fair, all along Bruton's lovely riverside green, turned out to be the perfect choice, with great music at both the acoustic tent and the main stage. Fantastic funky Cut Capers never disappoint, but hiphopera was a novel experience for me, as Josephine and the Artizans blended extraordinary arias with rap to marvellous effect. Local heroes Ditto concluded the afternoon - congratulations Bruton on a day of delights in a fantastic atmosphere.


Meanwhile Frome had been enjoying a Rhythm and Blues Festival with some impressive names - here's Nick Lowe with Los Straitjackets on the final night at the Cheese & Grain.  Festival season starts early in the southwest!

Wild wuthering, wanton women, & war's shadow

Dramatic highlight this week from Publick Transport at Bristol's Wardrobe Theatre with We Are Brontë, and Sarah Corbett and Angus Barr keeping the promise of their promo: 'anarchic comedy, deconstructing not only gothic themes of love, madness and revenge' in their portrayal of the real and imagined world of Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Bronwin. I did literally ache with laughter, a rare experience in these troubled times - trailer here.  The duo's impressive physical theatre skills overlay a subtext of confusion over stories, plots, and characters, in which the audience are invited to collude - some of the funniest moments came in the impro interruptions when Angus anxiously checks whether we're following while Sarah rolls her expressive eyes whispering hopefully 'we don't want to spell it out...'  Have they read any the books? 'You can find a lot on Youtube' Angus counters defensively.

Frolicking fantasies in Frome too, as Hat Tricks brought a pick'n'mix of wild imaginings to the Three Swans: words - including comedy, poetry, dramatic monologue & story-telling - and music - including songs traditional & original, acapella or accompanied, synthesised, or with haunting harp: an evening of amazing diversity and quality, compered and curated by Jane Flood and David Tanner, who have promised they will do it again next year, so look out for that! Here's Jane & David, and me doing one of me crone poems to a delightfully supportive audience. Thanks Mark Brookes for the snap.

Further literary frolics on Saturday, and the longest meal you can imagine - of 18th century duration in fact. It's 300 years since the alleged birth of Tristram Shandy, the garrulously rambling raconteur conceived by Laurence Sterne, and possibly-his-biggest fan lives in Frome: hence an extraordinary lunch party at 'Shandy Hall' - authentic courses, all punctuated with dramatic reenactions of crucial moments in the narrative.
Most of us managed to find our inner Georgian - in my case something of a strumpet, I fear - this is me, with Suzy Howlett as Mrs Shandy with her forceps-damaged babe about to start his journey in the unsuspecting world. (thanks Neil Howlett) Such was the attention to detail in the immaculate preparations of our host that as well as costumed musicians, we were also treated to short lectures on the historical context from experts in their field - the brutal unreliability of early forceps deconstructed prior to potted shrimps, neurological trauma in the homunculus just before the syllabubs, and the fascinating story of Joshua Reyold's portrait of Sterne, the only one known, mysteriously never sold. My personal contribution was a spurious connection between Frome and the novel, undertaken in appropriately picaresque manner and I'm most appreciative of the attention generously given to this footnote on our long journey through time & times.

Sunday started on a similarly luxurious note with Frome Chocolate Festival, filling Cheese & Grain with sensuous aromas and delicious samples of products carefully sourced by organiser Jo Harrington, all fairly traded and top quality as well as and irresistible.
It's a real family event, with activities for children and a party atmosphere. Here's Kisihi on the Pure Raw Chocolate stall - their rose flavour tastes like turkish delight - and Chocolate Arthouse even sold chocolate shoes...
A very different mood in the afternoon for a Poetry in Motion event led by author Ed Green in memory of his great-uncle Allen, who a hundred years ago was conscripted to leave his farm in Chesterblade to join the fight in France. Ed recently published It Leaves Me The Same, which was the sign-off, hopeful of good health, used by his great-uncle on his letters home, and Ed read from these letters as we walked around the landscape his great uncle never saw again, supplemented by WWI poems selected by John Payne, with Martin Bax & I as readers. Superb landscape made this walk even more unforgettable: from the highest point, the iron age fort believed to part of the St Michaels leyline from Glastonbury to Frome, you can look down at the little village of Chesterblade where our walk begins and ends, and then gaze around an awesome 360º, identifying outlines of Cley Hill, King Alfred's Tower, Glastonbury Tor,  Priddy mast, and Cranmore Tower. 

Our group of around 18 concluded the walk in Chesterblade's little chapel, crouched under massive yew trees painted orange by the setting sun, and all went up to the farm house for tea and chocolate biscuits.


Musical finale this week: here's Scots folk singer Siobhan Miller at Cooper Hall, with ballads ranging from traditional to original, and Canadian saxophonist Terry Quinney
guesting with Graham Dent Trio at the Cornerhouse on Sunday - really enjoyed their take on Charlie Parker's Ornithology...
 And as these lovely mild days fade in a flurry of cold weather warnings, here's Stourhead lake in the mist on Thursday.

Our revels now are ended... for a while

And now the carnival is over... the 2018 Frome Festival enjoyed sunny days and warm evenings throughout and ECOS amphitheatre packed for Illyria Theatre's visit on the final night. The Merchant of Venice is considered one of the bard's 'problem' plays for its unmitigated antisemiticism, and some productions now present Shylock's crazed revenge demand of 'a pound of flesh' from his principle tormenter with more sympathy, but this gloating Shylock was a boo-hiss villain, allowing Antonio to emerge an untarnished hero. Director Oliver Gray always aims to stay close to Shakespeare's intentions, and the elements of fate and chance are emphasised in this complex tale of fortune and misfortunes. The best part, as always, was the clever way the tiny cast created every character with rapid costume-change and a few other tricks - I was particularly impressed by the mercurial personality shifts of Beau Jeavons-White whether merchant or wench.

Moving backwards, as you can in a review, the focus was on words throughout Sunday:  During the morning Frome Writers Collective hosted an interesting panel discussion with crime writers David Lassman, Nikki Copleston and Sandy Osbourne responding to audience questions on their genre and writing generally.
The library was also the venue for the Frome Short Story Contest finale, with a prize-giving ceremony for the winners and keynote speech frome writer Rosie Jackson who stepped in to replace indisposed judge Margaret Graham and provide appraisals for the winners and remind us 'We need stories that will anchor us in real human values.' First prize winner Julie Evans read her story The Artist's Last Model, inspired by Manet's famous painting of A Bar at the Folies Bergère. Prizes were also presented for the winning stories written in shops and cafes on the opening day of the festival, when the 'Writers in Residence' had four hours to invent and complete a tale inspired by the line 'Everything must have a beginning'...  (The FWC page  has more details on results, with names and photos.)
This was also the day of the Frome Half Marathon, so applauding contestants hurtling past the Boyle Cross became a fun filling in the sandwich of these two events.  Runners were near the finish once they reached the town centre, and widely scattered after 13 miles of hills under a scorching sun.  Results aren't out yet but here's one of those only-in-Frome moments as a couple of gypsy traps shared the car-free road with the runners.
Saturday night the Cornerhouse became a crowded dance floor for Flash Harry, one of Frome's favourite bands and a terrific way to end a day spent wandering around Mells reciting the words of war poets: In the footsteps of Siegfried Sassoon was the event name and I was privileged to partipate along with Martin Bax and John Payne, who devised a script of 18 poems for our nine stops on a really lovely circular walk around the lanes and footpaths of this atmospheric little village, from the war memorial to the poet's grave.

Words of women poets were included too: my favourite of these, I think, was this one by Sara Teasdale: ‘There will come soft rains:’
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, 
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound 
And frogs in the pools singing at night, 
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white; 
Robins will wear their feathery fire 
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; 
nd not one will know of the war, not one 
Will care at last when it is done. 
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
 If mankind perished utterly; 
And Spring herself, she she woke at dawn 
Would scarcely notice that we were gone.

(Thanks Mike Grenville for the image)

And now we've arrived back to Friday, where in Bristol there was a new show at Wardrobe Theatre,always a delight to visit: For Parlour Games they're teamed up with Sharp Teeth Theatre ;to create a historical romp with a serious undertone.  Set in 1848 when democratic revolutions were springing up all over Europe, on a stage that puts all its trust in audience imagination, Victoria and Albert have fled to their Isle of Wight hideout to avoid Chartist protest in the capital. The queen (6 ft 3 Peter Baker) is petulant, belligerent, demanding and imperious. Her perky moustachioed spouse Prince Albert (Lucy Horrington) prances around her with magic tricks and parlour games in attempt to calm her as they cavort the scary night away. The glue that holds this absurd situation together is provided by the piano-playing servant. Like all Wardrobe productions, it’s ridiculous, clever, and very very funny, but there’s real poignancy in the unexpected darker moments: Victoria remembering her lonely childhood, Albert knowing from boyhood he must marry his powerful cousin and forever be her lesser. Even sharper is the resonance with democracy’s continuing struggle against the wealthy and privileged. Watching this play on the day thousands of protesters had made their way to London - my  brother was one of them and I'd spent the day tracking his images - it was poignant to realise that protest prevails with the powerful no more now than when the Year of Revolution ended in failure, repression & disillusion.