Do novels make great plays? What's unmissable at Frome Festival? and other imponderables...

A balmy evening on Friday, and the ECOS amphitheatre at the Merlin proved a perfect venue for the Miracle Theatre production of The Third Policeman, adapted from the novel by Flann O'Brien. The Miracle treatment involves physical hi-jinks, improv interaction with unguarded audiences (picnics invariably raided) and super-sized characters in silly costumes. This time they had supers-sized oirish accents too. This drama starts at a bar like any drably sentimental pub-based play by Conor McPherson and quickly becomes ~ to quote a friend at the interval ~ Alice in Wonderland meets Father Ted. On this dreamlike version of Craggy Island it's not clear whether the police are fruitcakes or time-lords but there's an uncanny logic in some of their arguments. Can you be executed if you are nameless and ergo never existed? And since skin is porous surely it will eventually absorb the molecules of anything in constant contact... so who's to say a person can't turn into a bicycle? Note to NASA: This would surely be a more useful line of research than string theory...
A compact cast of four takes on all roles. Ben Dyson looking a bit like Bart Simpson is on absolute top form as a policeman and Catherine Lake is hilarious in multiple roles, but while there's much mirth and playfulness there's a dark side to the narrative too: murder, mistrust, violence and punishment are constant themes.  Flann O'Brien's novel was initially rejected, and only published after his death. There was a note in the manuscript which read "It was again the beginning of the unfinished, the re-discovery of the familiar, the re-experience of the already suffered, the fresh-forgetting of the unremembered. Hell goes round and round." And because ECOS amphitheatre has a circular stage, so too did the bicycles. I like to think Brian O'Nolan would have found a droll irony in that. The show is touring the south-west till August 26, catch it if you can.
 
Sunday was an even balmier night, with an even bigger crowd on ECOS for a return tour of  Pride and Prejudice as dramatised by Oliver Gray for Illyria, also a compact & talented touring company but rather more well-behaved regarding picnic-raids. Audience interference would be inappropriate of course for Jane Austen's etiquette-conscious characters, as created by five actors and a fabulous wardrobe of costumes, all evoking both era and personality while simultaneously looking like the sort of dreams you'd have if you spent too long studying the Boden catalogue. Pat Farmer & Curlywilly Prod are credited with these delights, and the set design ~ a backdrop of fan shapes in Georgian blue with wickedly multi-purpose seating and laundry baskets ~ is by Jill 'Wigs' Wilson. The acting team all had wonderful energy and great stage presence, with Toby Webster outstanding as noble Darcy and caddish Wickham and annoyingly bookish Mary, while also filling in as a coachman when long distances required seated jiggling rather than the (also entertaining) on-the-spot pacing of their walks.
It's all fast-paced and with wonderful visual details like the flourishing of quill pens, a frequent requirement in a story where much is narrated by long emotional letters. The original novel of course is universally acknowledged to have possibly the most famous opening line of any novel, and probably the most misunderstood. Jane Austen was no early chicklit author (Northanger Abbey was written to parody the Gothic romance trend) and idea that a man of fortune 'must be in want of a wife' heralds one of the greatest, most complex, social satires ever written. Our heroine is one of five daughters of a man whose property must, by the laws of his time, be passed on to a male, so there is a real practical urgency in Mrs Bennett's desperation to marry off her daughters ~ any of them ~ to absolutely any man who can support her and the rest of her brood should she be widowed. This adaptation follows the plot, social mores & all, with conscientious detail Janites in the audience will appreciate, and P&P virgins can enjoy the frocks and the antics (and buy a programme for plot-watch). Highly recommended, and touring till 28 August.

So that's two terrific nights of drama, and we're only three days into the 2017 Frome Festival. I barely scratched the surface of the 55 events of last weekend: like all the best fests, Frome has constant clashes and every conversation seems to start You missed a fabulous event last night... So I can do no more than show a few slivers of the sensational vibrance throughout the streets and venues.
Saturday was a big day for our writers, with the Small Publishers Fair at Silk Mill, always a great venue and with the yard converted into a Cantina, it's tempting place to linger. Writers in Residence meanwhile were tackling the challenge of writing a short story in four hours while ensconced in designated shops and cafes in the town centre. And from late afternoon until midnight, we were hijacked by music:  Frome Street Bandits led a parade to the Food Feast in the central market, where they were followed by Jamma de Samba and a bizarre and wildly popular performance from SATCO street theatre, while within the Cheese & Grain itself there was brilliant folk-rock from Julian (Bugs) Hight and punk-uke from the marvellous Wochynskis.
After all of which it was time to scamper up the hill to the Cornerhouse for a truly amazing performance from Captain Cactus and his Screaming Harlots, whose 9-piece band was nearly as tightly squeezed in the space at the far end of the bar as their audience was in the rest of it, though that didn't stop us dancing.

Sunday daytime for me was mostly about jazz. Both of Frome's excellent jazz bands were playing at the Cornerhouse throughout the day supplemented by trad jazz from the New Academic Feetwarmers in the garden of the Blue House, perfect for picnicking on cherries and prosecco. My report on the Art Trail is therefore postponed....

And having missed the marvellous Edward Thomas commemoration at Rook Lane last night, I hope to make amends at the Poetry Cafe tonight where the theme for the open mic is That Adlestrop Moment, so I'll leave you with a quick preview of the  Garden Cafe, by day a favourite with ladies who lunch, by night hosting the mordant post-punk mutant fantasies of Beef Unit...

As blackberries ripen and August ends...

It's that heavy end of summer now, fields stripped down to cornrow ridges and the verges decorated with silver thistledown & bright red hips. Autumnal, in short, but a pleasant aftertaste of  the summer festival this week: readings from the Writers in Residence event revealed the impressive inventiveness mustered on sight by the phrase 'It was a chance meeting that changed everything". Impromptu tales penned in shops and cafes, romantic, historical, poignant, quirky and very funny, were all shared at the Bell in Buckland Dinham on Thursday night in a delightfully laid-back event hosted by Sue Watts for Frome Writers Collective. Here's Nikki Lloyd reading her winning story, about the relationship between two women revealed with beautiful delicacy and an unexpected ending.

And what can I say about the Tri-Art Summer School production of West Side Story at Merlin Theatre except that it was a spectacular triumph, thoroughly deserving the standing-ovation applause of each full-house audience: a vibrant ensemble show that dazzled from the opening chords of  the overture to the moving final moment, with funky dance routines, superb voices, fabulous costumes, great filmic visuals, and a stark set that cleverly utilised mirror effects to increase impact.  The boys' gang set pieces were terrific but even more impressive were the girls: I like to be in America and I feel pretty were absolute highlights, as was the poignant duet between Maria (Tabitha Cox) and Anita (Marie-Claire Wood) after the street killings. Strong support from Ryan Hughes as Riff and Aynsley Minty, Nick White and Steve Scammell as the grownups, but the night belonged to the youngsters. There was a ban on cameras but I do hope someone managed to video the lads' unforgettable Officer Krupke routine with Ben Hardy-Phillips as Action leapfrogging his gang across the stage and 'Baby John' Dillon Berry's incredible trilling social-worker pastiche ~ posted on Youtube it would get about a zillion views.  Creative Team Leader Claudia Berry must be very happy ~ and brochures are out now so you don't miss out on the next big Merlin production, Little Mermaid.  

There's art stirring in wild places too, with the Step in Stone project in the disused rock quarries of East Mendip.  Six different venues throughout the summer till 18th October are featuring site-specific artworks in various media, and on Sunday the Westdown/Asham Quarry featured a call-and-response trumpet duet by Frome composer Helen Ottaway, together with birdsong and shadow sounds from long-gone industrial processes.
The art trail is intriguing but the whole place is enchanting now, reclaimed by trees and buddlia bushes and reedy marsh pools where dragonflies flit, reminding me of the temples of Cambodia reclaimed into jungle by determined Ficus Strangulosa trees.  The trail route is a walkers' right of way now, definitely a place to return and explore, when I'm home again in a few weeks.

I'm off to California now, to walk the coast and write and spend time with good friends. As always, there's much over here I'll miss ~ Merlin's 40th birthday celebrations for one, and all the excellent live music around in pubs & bars ~ here's Chic Mystique at the Artisan this afternoon.
Also happening while I'm away is the Festival of Puppetry in Bristol which looks awesome, various stage shows, and the Great British Bakeoff (only joking) but I did at least get to see the extraordinary and brilliant Grayson Perry self-portrait in Bath's adventurous little Victoria Gallery. It's a map of his life, half-chronicle half-citadel and totally engrossing.

Monday at the Garden Cafe was the finale for festival Writers penning their pieces in Residence at shops & cafes, with organisers Gordon and Mike hosting and Tricia Wastvedt picking her favourites for prizes. A real treat to hear all these little gems, several of them evoking their venues, like Jenny Gilling's sweetshop reflection: Nostalgia comes in many forms - this time it's in a jar. Popular winners were (in photo-order) Caroline Smailes' lyrical beach reverie, Rosie Finnegan's sassy & brilliantly- read monologue, and Jenny Woodhouse's well-crafted coming-of-age story.

Now life is settling down after the festival flurry and I've had time to transcribe my jottings from this summer's events, here's a mezze of quotes I found inspiring, wise, or just head-noddingly true.
• Exercise is brilliant for creativity. - Debby Holt, novelist
• Humour is vital. It deflates tension, increases desperation, underlines deep sadness. When in deep trouble and sorrow, laughter is all you can do. - Barry Cunningham, publisher
• Lines should not explain the image. We think about sex while we wash up. Line and image should be at variance. - Patrick Sandford, theatre producer.
• The process of poetry is like sculpting an elephant, just chip away everything that isn’t an elephant. - Rosemary Dun, performance poet
• What you leave out is as important as what you put in. - Geoff Holt, writer
• Every sentence must be there for a reason. If it’s not, take it out. - Lorella Belli, agent
• Be fearless. You can terrify yourself with a plan, so just plough on and get to the end. - Matt Graham, screenwriter
• 'There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.' - W.Somerset Maugham, quoted by Steve Voake, author

Laurence Parnell, luthier extraordinaire, gave a brilliant solo concert in the chapel of Wells Cathedral which demonstrated his craftsmanship as well as performance skill - his fretless classical is a thing of moorish beauty as well as sounding fabulous. One especially lovely melancholic melody, Dance, for those who'd rather not, I remember well from Liquid Jam days, when Laurie joined Hazel Stewart and I at poetry performances and we would end our set with a plus-words version, jointly composed. I wanted to embed the Dance tune here but don't know how - any ideas, please? - so will link instead to Laurie's interpretation of Writing with a Knife. Our trio disbanded naturally when Hazel left Frome some years ago, but I can't resist including an image from our promo in those fresh(er)-faced days. Ahh...