Festival finale...

The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water sighs the streets... I don't know if the river Frome is exactly creased but it's a bit wrinkled, and this week looked like Seurat's Seine at Asnières with so many people lounging on the bank in sunshine, but since my Festival ended with Under Milk Wood, those final words from the poet's town saga seemed appropriate. This community version from Frome Drama Club was scheduled for the amphitheatre but bizarrely the weather was too good, and it had to be relocated inside Merlin Theatre as two people had passed out during the Saturday matinee. With 65 speaking parts plus six children & an 18-strong production team, this involved in the words of director Philip de Glanville 'an exceptional amount of goodwill on the part of an extraordinary number of people': an awesome achievement with many highlights including a tour-de-force performance by Laurie Parnell as first voice.
The Granary offered late night theatre from Fine Chisel, so Rosie and I went along to Midnight at the Boars Head, a roistering patchwork of Shakespearean clips from bawdy bits of his comedies and rowdy bits of his tragedies requiring water-squirting, balloons, angel string, party poppers and an awful lot of audience indulgence. A young cast bounded around strumming and shouting with exuberant self-confidence and trays of ale  ~ that's Rosie joining in their Edinburgh-stylee street promo.

Tales of the Tunnels, which was written by Frome Scriptwriters as a collaboration (compiled by Bath Rondo's David Lassman, who is a member of our group), was sold out online before the Festival began. I've yet to see it, as the filming performance has been postponed, but the Somerset Standard reviewer was impressed with both story impact and effective delivery of a site-specific piece which succeeded in creating an intimate vibe that you rarely get with modern works: a must-see for anyone who likes their theatre original and earthy.

The main theatrical event for Rosie and I, of course, was our Nevertheless Pub Theatre festival special What's the Time, Mr Wolf.  We were really proud to host a production of this quality at The Cornerhouse, and delighted that our audiences, despite its difficult storyline and challenging script, appreciated that what's shocking is not social inadequacy but the social prejudice which sees a lonely misfit as a Lone Wolf to be hunted down.  We had only 3 walk-outs in over 100, and feedback slips gave high praise to both script (Vincent Cassar) and acting (Ben Tinniswood). All the feedback for this show is on our website, and we've had lots of appreciation for Nevertheless Productions in principle as well, with repeated comments like 'We're very lucky to have this pub theatre'... Frome audiences, Nevertheless is very lucky to have you! Local reviewers loved it too: here's The FTR and Somerset Standard reviews.

Glorious weather day after day and a party atmosphere each hot evening made this possibly the best Frome festival ever.  There was an unusual, and very special, early evening event on Thursday when 'Five Award-Winning Poets from Cities Far & Wide' shared their words at the Archangel. Organiser Claire Crowther was a bonus reader, and Tamar Yoseloff introduced the rest of her A-list team: Anne Berkeley, Carrie Etter, Jenny Lewis, and Sue Rose. Tamar and I were both tutors at a writers' retreat in Crete in 2005 so it was great to meet up again, as well as to hear such awesomely excellent poems from all the readers.

And there was of course much more all week than theatre and poetry.  Scores of studios and exhibitions spaces were open all around the town, and with free music in pubs and gardens and free events for children in the parks and at the Library, it's easy to see why this week in July rates as one of the best community festivals in the country. So here, to end this effusive eulogy, is Teatime Treats at the Library, Circus Skills at Welshmill, Geneology playing jazz at Through the Blue Door, one of Fiona Campbell's copper wire creatures in The Limes garden, and me with friends at Silk Mill tapas bar. Cheers!

Midweek at Frome Festival: poems and performances...

Summer spits guts and blood and rage like sunshine.
The days are slick-slipping away
at the melting ice cream edges. 
You know those days
whenthe sight of the sun setting over Pizza Hut
is enough to make you cry?
Those days when you could just 
pluck out your own eye
to feel something else.
Sally Jenkinson came to our Poetry Cafe on Monday, hottest night of the year, and shared her 'sensuous, surreal, bold and beautiful' words with us in the sultry garden as dusk fell.  'Weaving the lyrical with the everyday' is another comment on her fabulous collection Sweat-borne Secrets and Sally showed how true in her facebook posting earlier in the day:
"Frome! Its hot as hell, I've slept for a grand total of around 4 hours all weekend, and I've got a nice frock on.
TONIGHT, The Garden Cafe, 7.30pm. I'M COMING TO DO POEMS AT YOU."
~ though she nearly didn't, finding Frome harder to reach than Mordor and losing her way tearfully in the wolds and orcs of rural Somerset for an hour, but her performance set was no less fantastic for the ordeal. A full-garden audience used the interim to enjoy a splendid Open-Mic event featuring fourteen local poets competing for the title of Frome Festival Poet Laureate. 
We used a demure version of slam scoring: numbers are held aloft, but quietly, and nobody takes much notice of them, and enjoyed some marvellous poems: powerful, profound, witty, reflective ~ with Norman Andrews, Anna Groves, and Mell Oliver equal on the (discrete) leader-board until an exciting recall round gave Mell Oliver a stonking triple 9 (now it can be known) to take the title. 

A wonderful poetic evening at the Garden Cafe ~ Andrew Hardy, reviewer

Great poetry and a wonderful atmosphere - Ann Harrison-Broninski, poet 

Frome is indeed a magnificent poetry place... John Seagrave, poet



Poetry was featured too among the workshops at the Writeathon event on Wednesday, with Rose Flint leading a session inspired by Edwina Bridgeman's exhibition The Place Beyond at  Black Swan Arts.  Art touches the heart, Rose tells us, our own emotions matter more than aesthetic value so work with the boundaries of yourself to find your own 'place beyond'.  Some of the responses evoked will be on display with the exhibition and posted on the Words at the Black Swan facebook page soon.

And Wednesday was the long-awaited, by Rosie and me anyway, opening night of WHAT'S THE TIME MR WOLF? ~ a co-production between our Nevertheless Pub Theatre with Doggett & Ephgrave, peformed by Ben Tinniswood.(Thanks Ian Drake for the image of Rosie with Ben, in role, before the show.)  'A darkly comic one-man play exploring a society where justice must be seen to be done, whatever the price' warn the flyers, not deterring around forty people from braving the Death Valley temperatures of our Cornerhouse venue for an extraordinary hour of unforgettable theatre.Writer Vincent Cassar was there to watch his award-winning script performed in an intimate room where sweat evaporated before it hit the carpet ~ oh no that's Death Valley again but we were, as one feedback form put it, 'Very Cosy.'
So what did the audience make of it? Here's a quick sample ~ full feedback on Nevertheless facebook page, and it's all BRILLIANT!!!!!
~ It was an amazingly powerful‘tour-de-force’. Brilliant actor. For one man to be able to explore such strong emotions was incredible. The wit balanced the dark energy. It should make us all think on how we judge each other. Thank you so much. 
 ~ Funny, brave, clever, well-written 
~ Fantastic. Provocative and compelling and just so real. 
And there's three more chances to see it, so don your thinnest garb and hurry along! Bottles of iced water will be thoughtfully provided free of charge by Cornerhouse host Martin Earley for the rest of the run.

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!