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)

 

A good week for drama on screen & birdsong outside

Performance arts have been major victims of the ramifications of the past year, yet continue to respond with initiative and vigour. SHOOK by Samuel Bailey at Southwark Playhouse won the 2019 Papatango award for new writing and was set to transfer to the West End before the pandemic ended that option, but until the end of the month you can see this powerful piece of theatre online for a tenner here in a film of the show "dedicated to all the productions that never were."

Despite the grim institution setting, and the appallingly sad real-life glimpses, there's huge compassion and tenderness as well as humour and even hope in this story of three young men submitting to parenting skills education to while away their incarcerated days. Josh Finan as Cain and Ivan Oyik as Riyad are simply brilliant. Direction by George Turvey, with the effectively, depressingly, realistic set & costumes created by Jasmine Swan, SHOOK is definitely worth a tenner and 95 minutes of your life - highly recommended. 

Performance poet Rob Gee is one of the 'names' who has guested in Frome - he brought his first show Fruitcake to the Merlin for a Poetry Platter evening back in 2015. Undaunted by lockdown, Rob has devised another one-man show based on his combined of experiences of nursing and performing.  Death - A Romantic Comedy, staged at the Arthouse Southampton, was a zoom event, and though the story was on the Trainspotting spectrum in terms of anarchic behaviour, Rob's genial narration of a mortuary party prank that went pear-shaped and a lost-&-found second-hand pacemaker leading to terminal romance is a delight. Interspersed with these antics and in the same droll tone, Rob recalls the blasé stoicism of this older, war-surviving, generation: 'They'd faced death in their '40s and now they were just facing it again.'  Rob's narratives of deranged geriatrics is the sort of humour probably essential for a psychiatric nurse but it's not black, more a sort of Stygian sable, delighting in any eccentricity not actually fatal. And then those too. 

Still with performance, Artsreach, supported by Dorset Council, provides constant menu of options, the latest including Winter Warmers from the Inn Crowd - warm-hearted poems about pubs, online every Wednesday. This one's from East Anglia's Charley Geneve, it'll take you back to the better days. Here in Frome we're proud to claim haiku queen Liv Torc, still providing her fabulous HAIFLU film chronicles of the passing weeks - currently celebrating the one hundred thousand milestone, and featured in The Times as well as on BBC4 - I'm inappropriately pleased one of my photos made it into this.

Bob Marley's birthday was, or would have been, on Friday. Kevin Macdonald's iconic movie Marley, released in 2012, was premiered in Bath's Little Theatre - apparently a favourite venue of Haile Selassie during his years of refuge 1936-40 in the city. It's a fantastic authentic biography and social history of the era, still available to view.

And now for something completely different: Italian baroque arias accompanied by archlute, one of those esoteric events that turn up randomly in Facebook's eclectic mix. I had initial doubts about Musicke in the Ayre but a proxy visit to Iford Manor's beautiful grounds was an irresistible lure. In fact the whole event was delightful, a compilation drawn from several open-air concerts, subtitled with translation, superbly performed, and with wonderful shots of the Peto gardens.

Art spot now, which should have been in the poetry spot, but my visit to Poetry Ireland on Monday for a Celebration of Women Poets marking Brigid's Day & Black History Month was foiled by late arrival, but googling St Brigid led to a wonderful exhibition in Dublin's Hamilton Gallery two years ago.  The gallery is now hosting exhibitions online, currently with an amazing celebration of Bram Stoker - there's a great little video viewable here - so this year let's celebrate Imbolc with gothic horror for a change.

Tuesday was World Wetland Day, and Frome has plunged whole-heartily in the celebration of wet with waterlogged fields and swollen river. Until Roman intrusion in the 13th century, February was apparently called Solmonath - Mud-month - according to the etymological almanac of Susie Dent Word Perfect, but the plethora of rainfall hasn't deterred local enthusiasm for nature-watching. 

As well as several facebook groups keeping an eye on encroachment of protected reserves, others simply share enjoyment of natural beauty: trees, birds, and all life wild and precious in & around Frome.

Otters - here's one posted by Nathan Slee - deer, dormice, red kites & kingfishers were all spotted last week, offsetting dismay at the invasion of Easthill Field's precious biodiversity by a grave-digging team who mistook the ancient hill for a practice pitch... Mendip officials, ruffled by probing from -of all unlikely champions- a Daily Mail journalist, announced themselves 'satisfied' that the lugging of a mechanical digger into ancient land currently under disputed threat of development was merely 'a misunderstanding' - just one of current areas of concern for the town, with a disappointing outcome to the long debate over Saxonvale and the misnomer of 'Selwood Garden Community' looming - appreciation to the hardworking objectors... And If you can't get out as much or as far as you'd like, enjoy this evocative film created by poet Linda France in a project to record 'the natural world in a time of Climate Crisis and Coronavirus'.

Ending this post with a massively belated THANKYOU to all my readers who have been leaving  messages after my postings. This is apparently an option offered by the new blog format I moaned so much about, and I've only just noticed.  Do keep it up, 'Paul' and all of you: your comments are really appreciated, and in future you will get a response!