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.

Art and life: reopenings, trips & plans and local heroes.

Last Monday celebrated another cautious step forward into community life when Words at the Black Swan poetry group reconvened in the Round Tower to create responses to In Pursuit of Spring, the current exhibition of artworks created in response to the book of that name written by poet Edward Thomas, which you can read for free here or buy at the gallery. Our group discussed the art on show - this is the ipad response by David Daniels, an image of the River Frome which we all liked - and we reflected also where our own personal journeys might take us, with some very moving poems crafted and shared by all the group. 

Still in the arty centre of Frome, congratulations to Daniel Musselwhite - who works, usually, in his jewellery workshop at the Black Swan -  for reaching the final of BBC's show All That Glitters. The task for the three stunningly talented finalists was to design and make pearl drop earrings and a bridal tikka. Here's judge Shaun Leane modelling Dan's pearl earrings, and Dan in his Frome workplace.

Mega congratulations too, to Andy Wrintmore, here posing for probably the most unconventional official mayoral portrait in history. Andy is Sick Ones' drummer & a tremendously popular figure in Frome, and I'm immensely pleased his talent and energy is represented in my book Frome Unzipped - from Prehistory to Post-Punk, where he talks about his music and his commitment to the town. Supporting him as Deputy Mayor, we now have Sara Butler-Bartholomew, another big personality with high energy. (I'll add picture credit when I find out!)

A change of theme now, with online drama from Stepping Out Theatre Company in Bristol: Pumpgirl by Abbie Spallen, set in Northern Ireland and first performed back in 2006, is a harsh story of drab, loveless, lives told in three separated monologues. A good choice for lockdown production for this last reason, it's also particularly pertinent in a year which has put a public spotlight on women's vulnerability. Danann McAleer is excellent as Hammy, car-obsessed and brutally sexist; Neroli Trammell strong as his emotionally unstable wife, with Emma Stadon memorable as the vulnerable pumpgirl who feels gratified by his attentions.  The virtual backgrounds are sometimes distracting but this production is an impressive achievement and a credit to the company. 

Ending now with some images from local walks, as spring merges with early summer with little cessation of howling winds and rain, but bursts of sun have allowed short sorties: a jaunt with friends to The George in Norton Saint Philip, in 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion used as headquarters for the rebel army, and in the terrible aftermath used by Judge Jeffreys as a courtroom: these idyllic lawns now being rolled as an immaculate cricket pitch saw hangings in the Bloody Assizes.

The short (under an hour) walk to Marston Park seems to have become a regular route for me so here again is the lake beyond the bluebell wood, where you can sit with a drink from the tiny bar and look ahead to Frome Festival, only 6 weeks away, when this will be the venue for many of the bands.  

Brochures are out now, and despite all uncertainties and anxieties, their 36 pages are crammed with events : walks and talks, performances of every sort, displays, workshops, and general celebration. As Festival Director Martin Bax explains in his welcome letter: We thought we might produce a much smaller festival this year. We have failed abysmally.  Don't forget the Poetry Cafe - page 12 - where as well as the quirkily egalitarian open mic, you can hear wonderful Liv Torc - the Best Fest Guest in the West.

Art, drama, pink drinks, poems, & potatoes

Festival time starts in February for Frome, with a flurry of form-filling to ensure a place in the brochure that lists everything going on in town in July - here's a sneak preview of the cover, as introduced by director Martin Dimery at the recent conference.  Theme this year is Singer family foundry, the massive creations of which can be seen around the world, but there will be plenty of non-bronze activity too: look out for poetry (from Hip Yak Slam & Festival Poetry Cafe) and drama from (among other groups) Nevertheless Productions who've teamed up with a talented quartet from Frome Actors Network for a sizzling hour of pub theatre at the Cornerhouse. The title is still under wraps but FAN are already smouldering into an impressive blaze so watch, as they say, this space.

The new exhibition of ceramics by Peter Hayes at Black Swan Arts has aroused much interest locally.  Peter has travelled widely in Africa, India, Nepal, and New Mexico and his explorations into 'how things are made' in the context of their landscape are assimilated in his work. His statement is perhaps apt for any of the arts: 'It is the material that is in charge.. it is my job  to push it to its limits and somehow an equilibrium is reached between make and material.' Friday openings are always followed on the Monday by a session for writers to respond to the art ('ekphrastic poetry' is the technical term - Keats was a fan, and so was Auden) and this month's leader Christina Sanders in an excellent session emphasised the 'landscape' of the gallery as part of the art: some responses from the group have been posted on the website of Words at the Black Swan.

Moving to drama now, in a week with two big shows: A Song at Twilight, now playing at Theatre Royal Bath, is one of Noël Coward's last plays and has been seen as essentially autobiographical although the playwright himself claimed the situation was inspired by Max Beerbohm's low-flame vigour when visited by an old fling. Somerset Maugham is also in the frame as a model for this repressed and caustic ageing writer confronted by failure both emotional and moral, and challenged by his ex-mistress to make amends.
Simon Callow has had to repress his natural wit and endearing twinkle in order to fulfil the part of Hugo Latymer, which will probably be a disappointment to his fans, but there are some amusing lines, mainly from Jane Asher's Carlotta.  Jessica Turner as Hugo's wife Hilde, confined in role to a loyal foil in the first act, is excellent when denouement arrives, and Ash Rizi's impassive manservant Felix uncorks a mean bottle of pink champagne. Action all takes place in a hotel suite in Switzerland for which designer Simon Higlett has created a set of pale opulence with a large picture window where the sky slowly darkens as a full moon glimmers across the lake beyond. Stephen Unwin's direction uses this chill space with its ignored beauty to emphasise the distance between his two central characters. On until February 23rd. Images: Nobby Clark.

Over to Salisbury Playhouse now, where in a similar decade (1962, to be specific, when Helen Shapiro was walking back to happiness with a woopah oh yeah yeah) Felix's rosy champagne was nothing like as lethal as Giuseppe Renzo's raspberry cocktails, literally a killer when the first corpse  hits the stage in The Mirror Crack'd, an Agatha Christie classic cleverly adapted for stage by Rachel Wagstaff.  Times are changing in St Mary Mead: there's a 'development' and not only are low types arriving but the big house has been bought by an american for a movie shoot. As shooting becomes real and confusion mounts, Miss Marple is thrilled to have something other than her sprained ankle to think about and uses her renowned knowledge of human nature to solve the mystery. Susie Blake follows none of the Marple screen models and is absolutely excellent in this central role as voyeur of a brilliant ensemble: lovely film stars (Suzanna Hamilton & Gillian Saker) brusque director (Joe Dixon) loyal butler (Huw Parmenter) and other suspects, including the husband of the first victim who looks a bit like Dr Crippen... while Chief Inspector Dermot Craddock flounders and Dollie Bantry (Julia Hills) keeps the spinster sleuth supplied with gossip and clues. Effective set & costumes and Melly Still's direction combine to create engaging story-telling through creative use of flashback cameos,  rewinding and fast-forwarding to recreate a different recall. Great fun for anyone who remembers the era and the who-dunnit genre, as a full-house audience at the Saturday matinee appeared to - though I did overhear one lady in the queue for the loo confide to her friend that the story seemed 'a bit far-fetched...' On  here till 9 March, then touring. Images Helen Murray

Rounding off a varied week, Sunday here in Frome was the annual Potato Day and Seed Swap in the Cheese & Grain, co-hosted by Incredible Edible. Not just lots of buckets of potatoes and masses of packets of seeds all for planting but environmental information too, this lively and friendly event attracted a big crowd throughout the day. And for anyone who ever doubted that our bit of southwest is simply magic, here's what the river looks like along near Nunney...

Post-festival blues cancelled, everyone too busy

The festival is over, with Frome's response - predictably - along the lines of 'bring on the post-fest-festivities.' Merlin Miscast 'Cabaret Extravaganza' on Friday was a brilliant celebration of the talents of the contributing performers - an all-singing all-dancing reprise of twenty-two solo and ensemble songs from the last years' productions, atmospherically choreographed, with onstage band. Projected information kept the show fast-moving, with minimal but entertaining compering from super-glam Artistic Director Claudia Pepler & show director Ryan Hughes, and if this sounds overly fulsome all I can say is, it really was a great night for community theatre - and for the Merlin for nurturing so much creative activity.

Exhibiting a Paul Nash painting is quite a big deal for a small town art gallery, and Black Swan is making the most of having this one in their current exhibition: Arborealists and Guests will be in the Long Gallery until 2 September, and on Monday the Words at the Black Swan writing workshop met, with poet Louise Green leading, to respond to the theme of all things arborescent and dendriform. We looked at tree prayers and poems, created a small collective forest in words, and then focussed on a personal piece - some of these will be posted on the group facebook page here. This is a timely exhibition, in a year Sheffield - previously claiming to be 'Europe's greenest city' - has plans to cut down 20, 000 street trees in what Woodland Trust has called a tree massacre - while China has deployed 60,000 soldiers to plant trees to combat pollution. Frome meanwhile has an active tree-watch group, led by historian and expert Julian Hight who will be talking at the Gallery on August 16th. The exhibition is worth a visit: there are some wonderful images on display, though the drab Nash isn't one of them.

Here's a new thing for Frome: inspired by Bristol Rocks, we now have  Love on the Rocks happening around Frome: painted pebbles with cheery messages, secreted around the town for discovery and relocation. Toni from Fine Fettle discovered these two in Kingsway precinct. Bristol Post reports this fun-for-all craze has taken the city by storm. I have many pebbles of various sizes... I feel a rummage through the art drawer coming on.
To Bath now, for a spot of comedy at the Komedia for an Edinburgh Preview show by Holt & Talbot - Rosie & Christian to their friends - Mansplaining Feminism. Christian's commitment to this cause is upstaged from the start by Rosie who's upset because she heard a man shout ‘Great rack!’ - but not to her. Rosie’s grievance at her unappreciated mammaries continues rolling throughout the script like a cunningly-shot billiard ball as her partner writhes through varied situational sketches -mostly very funny anyway but all massively enhanced by the personalities of this combo.

Wallace & Gromit fans are probably aware already that a hunt for Gromits has been unleashed in Bristol this summer, with 67 differently-decorated models of characters from the movies positioned all around the city. A great idea for a Sunday family meet-up, we thought, and collected a trail map from St Mary's Redcliffe where the Bristol in Bloom Gromit sat. I can also report there's a Wallace in College Green, but all the other locations we planned to visit were overlaid by the weekend Harbour Festival so we had a terrific day out anyway.
Also in Bristol: South Western at Tobacco Factory is actually a production from the Wardrobe Theatre team, pulsing with their usual innovative energy and verve but in a bigger venue: their promo photos all look like they were snapped on a dark night in a dirty part of the docks and give absolutely no idea of the vitality of the show, so I've taken this image of the ensemble from their facebook page.  A cornish-pasty-style western rather than spaghetti, this revenge tale trails from Bristol to Lands End, full of local in-jokes but slickly produced and very funny. Think Hot Fuzz, with an echo of Thelma & Louise and a longing nod to Easy Rider. The best bits are the faux-film-making, with cuts and calls for close-ups, and calm technicians spraying fake blood, and the finale is superb. There are inspired ideas and marvellous moments and it's definitely a show you'd take your stage-struck children or students to show how challenging and transgressive and engaging and physical live theatre can be - but you might hope they'd use those qualities in a drama with more content than parody. On till July 27th.
Home news again, and Frome Unzipped continues to take baby-steps into the world: I'm delighted by comments in conversations and mini-reviews on facebook: 'It is superbly written' ... 'written in Crysse's inimitable lively and funky style'... 'beautifully written and so very well argued' .... 'all Froomies need to get a copy.'

Well there are copies in Hunting Raven, and a few more events coming up. As everyone is busy with jaunts camps and fesivals I've gone for series of 'soft' launches in different venues, and the first was hosted on Saturday by Martin Earley at Cornerhouse upstairs in the gin lounge - no author-reading, just biblophilic chats, and sales, and prosecco.

Pleasure, passion, purpose - and sunshine

Let's start with the good news. Our national treasure of a health service is 100 this year, and Dr Phil is touring with a new one-man stand-up show to say Happy Birthday NHS! His first stop was Frome last week, to a packed and approving audience at the Merlin Theatre. As an anecdotal comedian Dr Phil is scatological and politically scathing, and as a medical adviser he's intelligent and humane. It's a good combo. He gives a potted history of the centegenarian institution, from its birthing by Nye Bevan to falling into the clutches of Jeremy Hunt. ('I have a mate who went to school with him and he says he wasn't very bright'.) But Dr Phil remains confident of the future - as long as we avoid privatisation and don't go down the other US route of 'incentified' prescribing, which results in a culture of unnecessary drugs, vaccinations, and operations.  The secret of health, he confides, is pleasure, passion, and purpose. Thirty minutes of walking - or any activity - every day is better than any drug. And other such adages which are even more encouraging when a fit-looking doctor insists on them.

Black Swan Arts has a new exhibition: Cicatrix, a wonderful word which sounds like a Greek siren but actually means the scar of a healed wound. Three Wiltshire artists have been commissioned to study and visually report on Salisbury Plain, for the last 120 years a battlefield with no enemy. One early casualty of this destruction rehearsal was Imber, the evacuated village. It's also been target practice for battles in Northern Ireland and test ground for unnamed substances fatal to the juniper trees. Tiny things there, however, are thriving: rare wild flowers and butterflies are rampant. Dawn Gorman led an excellent poetry workshop around the show for Words at the Black Swan on Monday.
There's also a new exhibition at the HUBnub Centre: Fragmental, paintings by Georgina Towler, combining to create vivid presence in a diffuse and expansive space that can be difficult to dominate.

Another author event at Hunting Raven Books - unusual only in that Tyler Keevil's connection with Frome is tenuous though charming: A Canadian now living in Wales, he won the very first Frome Festival Short Story Contest back in 2004 when his talent spotted by Alison Clink who inaugurated this event and it was this success - he claims, and we believe - which emboldened him to find his voice in writing. Tyler now makes his living through fiction and is on tour with his current novel No Good Brother, with his brother Jonathan who contributed a music element to the readings. An unusual launch event - but that's Frome isn't it...

Music information is sparse again this week - I intended to see that irresistibly-named Goat-Ropers Rodeo Band at 23 Bath Street on Saturday but the skies over Frome decided to put on a strobe light show all evening, accompanied by biblical proportions of torrential rain, so I stayed in and watched Dave worked, I mean. Pete Gage in fine form last Saturday created a dance party in Sam's Kitchen, (there was a Prince dance party afterwards too) and Velvet and Stone brought their haunting melodies and songs again to Roots Sessions at the Grain Bar.

And we had four days of summer! which is not strictly relevant to an arts blog, but when temperatures more than double overnight ~ we reached 29° (that's 84° to you, Mo) ~ it becomes essential to channel one's inner Nietzsche and stride out into the birdsong and blossom... especially when the medieval fields and ancient lanes around Frome may not be there to stride in future days...

We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the building we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.

           - Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness.

Wintry Wanderland, Wordplay, country rock, art & blood

On a freezing weekend evening the town's streets in every direction saw friends and families all out and about appreciating Window Wanderland as Frome joined this international project and around two hundred homes and businesses transformed their windows into illuminated showcases for every kind of imaginative tableaux up to & including complex fairytales like Rapunzel - even the Town Hall joined in. Big appreciation to all who took part, and to Lisa Glass for bringing this illuminating & wanderful idea to Frome.

Poetry - another Word Play recording at Visual Radio Arts for your delectation: four poets shared words and chat live on air on Saturday afternoon. Dawn Gorman, Josephine Corcoran, Jennie Gilling and Louise Green can be enjoyed on the archive link here - many thanks to Phil and Mags for their awesome commitment to supporting creativity. And I should also give a quick plug to an Open Mic at Three Swans next Saturday, organised by Edventure.

Music corner: I couldn't resist a break from writing to see the marvellous country-rock band Shootin the Crow at the Grain bar on Wednesday, and Sunday's jazz at the Cornerhouse when the John Law Trio played melodies as arranged by Bill Evans - both really special events, the kind that get people saying, isn't it amazing you can walk around Frome and hear stuff like this every week, for free? (well, there is a hat, but nevertheless!)

Art now, and an art & craft exhibition at Silk Mill all weekend in support of refugees with funds going via RAISE - I loved the big compilation picture created by visitors and stall holders contributing their image of 'home' - some fabulous evocations of family and safety, all a big contrast to the camp at Calais
and a new opening at Black Swan: Here's Kate Cochrane, one of the organisers, with the result - framed free by Mount - which will be auctioned.
And another art display opened at Black Swan on Friday with the spring exhibition of Frome Art Society, as always a huge range of styles and subjects depicted by talented local visual artists. As always also, on the Monday following an opening Words at the Black Swan offered a poetry workshop inspired by the art in the gallery. Dawn Gorman who led this session invited the group to respond to the overall vibrance of the works with a focus on colour, reading Choosing Yellow as further stimulus just as Liam bizarrely arrived with a random yellow rose. One of Frome's little moments... and another inspiring session.

Now, through snow flurries, whirling but light, to Bristol, to see the first Shakespeare at the city's Southville theatre since Andrew Hilton retired from Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, the separate company he founded in 1999 to bring a double drama season to that in-the-round theatre space. His directorial approach was strong but subtle: Lyn Gardner summed it up: "Hilton .... is a plain cook, whose unadorned approach – no concept, the barest stage possible, music used sparingly – pays dividends," and, in another critic's words, "It is tiresome a small, unsubsidised company in the suburbs of Bristol beat the great RSC, but one lesson ....is that it is time to return to basics." Some of the best bard productions I've seen have been there, often with local actors in lead roles.
Perhaps I'm grieving the end of an era, or maybe this Macbeth came too soon after the stunning wordless performance by Mark Bruce Dance Company, but this Blood Means Blood version, without Hilton's sure hand restraining over-embellishments of symbolism and sound, didn't do it for me. Awareness of audience seemed an unresolved issue, with actors circling throughout their speeches, and some casting seemed designed to baffle anyone unfamiliar with the play (the women dressed like Miss Marple's maids for soldiers, priests, and the drunken porter). And who'd have thought the old play to have so much blood in it?  Everyone seemed to be puddling their hands in blood and pawing the next person they saw.  Katy Stephens as Lady Macbeth though was extraordinarily impressive. Perhaps you should go & decide for yourselves what to make of it - on at Tobacco Factory till 7 April.