Final festival bulletin from Frome, where our revels here are ended... there's been fantastic free music all week, from the Boot Hill All Stars at the food feast and the Critters at the Olive Tree to Emma Harris and fabulous friends at The Cornerhouse.
Nunney Rocks on Sunday duly rocked, especially the amazing voice of Simon Allen. Jill and I walked the three miles there and back, dodging showers, in time for the The Death of Sherlock Holmes scheduled for the Merlin amphitheatre.
Miracle Theatre is one of my favourite touring companies, but sadly the drizzle relocated their performance inside, never a good alternative in my view as without the delightful absurdity of creating an interior world in open space, expansive gestures and voices become charade-style exaggerations. Indoors, shrill is not funny, it's just... shrill. But there was much to enjoy as the cast of five - including brilliant Ben Dyson as Dr Watson - with a variety of props, wigs and jokes about spiritualism, created thirteen characters to evoke the 19th century world of the great detective. In their best moments they achieved this with glorious hilarity but these moments were mostly in the second half, which was faster, smarter, and more inventive. Conan Doyle famously later revoked the death of his hero, and this adaptation uses the clever conceit of introducing the author into the story, outwitted like Moriarty by the craftiness of his own creation. Al Munden's versatile set not only looked good but allowed for full costume changes and some of the best theatrical gags - like the moving train that foils Moriarty and a frenzied puppet fight. And now at least the mystery of why Sherlock Holmes was revived is satisfactorily solved.

So ends probably my best Frome Festival yet, mostly because I got to see so much more of it. I'll conclude with an image from the start of the week, that opening night when the market square was absolutely full of people celebrating summer sunshine and the creativity of our town.

Frank Hardy has a talent to heal. Or does he? Frank sometimes wonders, and Gracie almost dismisses the notion. But loyal promoter Teddy believes in Frank as an artist of healing, and stays with this fighting couple as they travel through a litany of the Celtic villages until one tumultuous night in Donegal which was, it seems, the last night of Frank’s life. We don’t know this for certain, but there’s much we don’t know about this man and his chaotic relationships with himself and those who love him: his woman, and his mystified, adoring, promoter.
Brian Friel's mesmeric and marvellous play Faith Healer, currently playing at the Bristol Old Vic, takes the form of separate speeches from these three key characters who never connect on stage, and whose long monologues each tell a dramatically different version of this story.
It may sound tough, but this production is luminous: a stunning script made unforgettable by brilliant acting especially from Finbar Lynch - totally charismatic as the flawed healer - and Richard Bremmer's loyal Teddy. The theme of faith, held and lost, is strong, but what emerges most forcefully and compassionately is the private and public struggle of the artist, and the quest for identity. Simon Godwin directed with wonderful simplicity and minimalist sets (Mike Britton) and shadowed lighting (Guy Hoare). Faith Healer is showing in the studio while the main house is refurbished, till 5th March - go if you can.

And now for something completely different. How would you direct Under Milk Wood if you believed spoken word inadequate to create imagery, mood, or story? Splice Productions decided to spice it up with slapdash comedy to distract the audience from the tedium of Dylan Thomas's words. How? Distractingly. I don't know about the rest of the tour, but at the Arc in Trowbridge a jovial audience readily took their cue to while away Captain Cat's reverie with noisy interruptions. Two excellent actors wasted their potential to entrance and the writer must have writhed in his grave.
"Think Dylan Thomas meets Round the Horne" the flyer suggests- that should have told me everything. Fern Hill and Fifties' Light Programme farce... not a good combo.

Better luck on Saturday: Miracle Theatre has been touring its winter show since November but there was no sign of flagging energy when Beauty and the Beast from Mars arrived in Frome. It’s the kind of show Miracle does best: a ramshackle contraption of simple ideas absurdly connected, strongly reliant for success on individual personalities and audience collusion. Such is their charm the last ingredient is readily forthcoming, so there was lots of interactive panto-style shouting and even mass singing of the Chin-Up song. The storyline, to use the term loosely, connects two 1960s phenomena: heart-throb male singing stars, and fears of alien invasion. Tom Adams as Bobby Beauty has hoola-hoop hips and a great voice, and the wonderful Ben Dyson is on best baleful form in an auburn wig as Major Bunty, in charge of the attack on Mars. When Beauty is abducted in retaliation by Martian Empress Bestiana (think Blackadder’s Queenie in Quant frock and green scales) the Major – who happens to be his mother - races after him on the Schadenfreude space probe, accompanied by number one fan Nurse Bumper… all ends happily of course, as the white heat of Bobby’s charisma can charm even the beastly empress, and the psycho-magnetically inserted pin number is retrieved in time to save the world. Lots of fun for everyone, nostalgia for oldies and double entendres about suction to delight the kids.

Final weekend of Frome's festival gave me a chance to catch up on some of the fantastic art, music, and community events... like the Silk Mill exhibition of quirky paintings, full of intriguing private narrative, by Kay Lewis-Bell who took as her starting point four lines from Wordsworth's prelude:
How oft, among those overflowing streets
Have I gone forward with the crowd and said
Unto myself, "The face of every one
That passes by me is a mystery."
A very different mood at the exhibition entitled simply "LOOK" - contemporary art by Samuel Lee, Mutalib Man, and Alex Relf in promoted by Marian Bruce, the installation artist who I collaborated with some years ago on a Fallen Angels project - the scarlet angel, I found, still sits somewhat dejectedly in Marian's garden, succumbing now to woodworm.
Then on, via the Bastion Gardens where Jill Miller was singing her own jazzy songs, to the Moving Home community project at the Key Centre, where I got a chance to join the all-age instant artists carving chalk pebbles to send down the river Frome in flotilla at sunset.
A crowd gathered around the bridge to cheer the launch, our intrepid Mayor with gold chain and life jacket in the lead punt, with help from the canoe club to whoosh our crafts along the sluggish river. "Even by Frome standards this is a somewhat bizarre event" murmured John Payne as Maitre Chives the cabaret captain gave running commentary and the crowd sang impromptu harmonies of Row Your Boat.
My boat with its carving reclaimed, time for jazz from Salutemus in Divas courtyard garden till darkness fell.


Event 178, Nunney Rocks, was a must-go for music fans: a 9-hour fest-within-a-fest, featuring all the best in local musicians including Frogbelly (pictured) and Richard Kennedy.
As well as beer and refreshments there were art tents and story circles to keep the children happy, and the sun shone gracefully throughout.

I'd like to have stayed for Bugs and the Collaborators and Three Corners, but Jill and I were walking the three miles there and back to the fields of Castle Quarry in Nunney, and we had to get back for the theatre.

Miracle Theatre always delivers, and I hope the company feels the same about Frome's ECOS amphitheatre, where on Sunday night over 300 people nestled beneath the circle of stones under a frail moon in fabulous summer warmth to enjoy the tragedy of Romeo & Juliet performed by six versatile and talented actors in a mix of Shakespearean text and 20th century vernacular.

Like most outdoor theatre companies, Miracle usually goes for laughs, and the opening act played up every possible comic element in a show that began like a house-party Charades romp set early last century. After the death of Tybalt it seemed this concept wouldn't be able to hold the necessary depth, but the second act was brilliant: the bullying simmering in the Capulet household erupted as a potent energy to push wild-child Juliet into recklessness, and she and Romeo both found powerful emotional connection with the core of the tragedy - great acting from Catherine Lake and Wesley Griffith as hauntingly sensuous lovers in both life and death.
Some bits didn't work: the usually excellent Ben Dyson as a Widow Twankeyesque Nurse for one, Lady Capulet with her dress stuffed down trousers as a mockney Mercutio for several more. And the slightly Bertie-Wooster feel to the inserted language didn't always gel (Juliet's mum: "I would the fool were married to her grave" - Juliet's dad: "Steady on!") Overall, however, a powerful interpretation that made timeless passions seem as contemporary as this year's sensational headlines, entertained all ages, and was so gripping I didn't even notice that due to illness two key roles were played by stand-in with lines sometimes in hand. It was all so good it didn't really matter.

And finally: My writer friend Christine Coleman, who became a proxy 'local' for the Desert Island Reads, give a visitor's view in her blog - and there are regular review updates on the pages of the Festival website.

One of our charming, if slightly bonkers, national traits is the impulse to celebrate each calendar highlight out of doors. Perhaps there really was a time when maypole ribbons whirled gaily at the start of summer and hogs roasted undoused by autumn storms and all was idyllic in the bucolic daze of yore. Climate's changed, but optimistic exuberance lingers on. Frome's Christmas Spectacular last Sunday had a full programme from noon till nightfall. On Catherine Hill rain sluiced steadily down the cobbles as stall holders crouched under cover and the chocolate soup stand did steady trade. Over in the market yard two small reindeer stood resignedly as small hands emerged from umbrellas to pet them, and pools of water were being swept out from the Teenage Kicks tent.
And now silver snowflakes are glowing along the main street, M&S is plying shoppers with port and mincepies, the Pogues are back on the radio... it's definitely that time of year again.
Which is, in theatre world, panto time.
Most pantomimes, whatever the title, follow a simple storyline: a couple of men in frocks & wigs being silly, and a goody-goody girl who ends up with the prince. The first part is the bit everyone likes best, so why not have three men in frocks & wigs, and the girl a bit of a Violet Elizabeth Bott who eventually chooses the dwarf instead of lovely Prince of the Golden Halls despite the prince's white tights and habit of loping through the forest like a Monty Python knight on the quest of the Holy Grail?
But don't think Miracle Theatre's winter show The Revenge of Rumpelstiltskin is all just transvestites and tantrums, despite the prominence of a menopausal forest fairy: this tale, based apparently on the writings of Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy, is embedded within a tale of an 1830s troup of travelling players, and the pantomime set is embedded in a stage set, with the actions of the actors off-stage as part of the on-stage action, if you see what I mean. It's a clever device, not only enhancing the humour but also giving us an extra chance to enjoy the dressing ups and downs, and in the Merlin performance bringing a local edge to the show by allowing a mini subplot featuring an intruding scallywag chased by a peeler, and some very sweet little girls dancing. With or without the interruptions, this is as charming and entertaining a show as you're likely to see anywhere this panto season. A wonderfully spirited cast: Ben Dyson as the effeminate prince/aka Mr Carter, and Tom Adams's Mr Ffitch singing his way through the roles of Queen and fierce fairy, are particularly splendid.

Footnote of the week: Has it come to this? another futile salvo in the gender war as Lily Allen complains she's been tagged 'the female version of The Streets.'
Lily lovey, that's because Mike Skinner came first. If you'd had a breakthrough hit in 2001, followed up with groundmaking material every year since, and he'd been the one to emerge in 2006 - with Smile - maybe people would refer to his band as 'the male version of Lily Allen'... Or maybe he'd still be hailed as "the most original, lyrical British rap in memory".
If I was you I'd wear the badge with respect.
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Back on planet normal, and the final event for the Words@ Frome Festival team: prize-giving night for Writers in Residence, at the Garden Cafe. "An amazing achievement", judge Lindsay Clarke says of these stories scribbled in cafes and shops and bravely read aloud by their writers for his verdict: Gordon Graft and Tim O'Connor commended for two highly entertaining stories, and Tracy Wall taking top prize for her millinery- inspired poem.
Lindsay is 'not one of nature's judges' he says, but he's unfailingly eloquent on the subject of writing. Among his salient gems: "A good sentence is a breath taking shape, so it can’t carry too much in the way of excess baggage." "Qualifiers are not intensifiers, they weaken. Find the verb that dramatises."

What is the collective name for drama enthusiasts & practitioners? An OST-group would be Tuesday's answer. Open Space Technology, if you're not familiar with the concept (I wasn't), was devised in the 1980s which accounts for the slightly last-century jargon of ("We did vision that work but it's hard to progress in this funding landscape though we're making bridges") and Theatre Bristol's To You To Me session attracted over 100 writers, performers, directors, and fans to Bristol Old Vic to contemplate the creative future. OST has few rules and they all have a cosily indulgent flavour - the 'Law of Mobility' encourages participants to buzz off when bored - which was further enhanced by bowls of cherries and maltesers, and a scrummy greek supper after the debates were all done. A relaxed non-cliquey atmosphere is a great way to network, and Niamh and came back enthused, informed, and entertained, and very pleased to have found this bridge into the Theatre Bristol landscape.

Miracle Theatre is touring their adaptation of Tartuffe, Molière's once-scandalous parody of the hypocrisy of the Church and gullibility of the bourgeoisie, in an open-air season. They arrived in Frome on Thursday and were instantly diverted by torrential showers to the Merlin stage. Bill Scott’s version of the text plumps for one-liner wit rather than scrupulous translation or conventional rhyming couplet, and the overall effect of marionette-show–cum–farce is clearly designed for the picnic season theatre-goer, but it’s a wonderful high-energy romp nonetheless, with Ben Dyson as villain-hero Tartuffe effortlessly stealing every scene. For this preposterous drollery Molière was apparently dubbed 'a demon dressed in flesh' but it's still the most performed play in the French language, and has that strange vicar-in-the-wardrobe kind of innocence of a bygone era.
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Miracle Theatre Company brought the Taming of the Shrew to the Ecos amphi-theatre this week on a blessedly balmy night, allowing the audience to picnic among the stones before settling down to laugh their socks off at this wonderful contemporary staging of Shakespeare's first drama. It's considered one of the 'problem plays', relying as it does on psychological cruelty to bully an incipient feminist into near-bovine submission, but with these 5 actors there's never a queasy moment, though many delightful cheesy ones. It was easy to believe this bored Kevin-the-teenager-Kate could be entranced by the New-Agey anarchism of Paddy/Petruchio as he dragged her away from bourgeois academe and cuddled her on hilltop in the rain - helpfully provided by a relay of watering cans. 'Pick up the grass' he instructs his bride as she gathers the camping equipment at the end of their scene, and Kate obediently carries the set offstage too. Five stars, def.

And now I'm planning my long weekend at Edinburgh Festival - short but hopefully spicy. I want to catch Luke Wright's show and as many other Spoken Word events as I can cram in.

I always have a pile of by-my-bed books on the go - currently Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, Small Island still unfinished, The Blood of Strangers by surgeon-poet Frank Huyler, and Esme Ellis's extraordinary biography Pathway to Sunrise - and since my birthday another three: Ian Sinclair's 'Edge of the Orison' tracking John Clare's long walk in 1841 when he fled the asylum; 'Unaccompanied Women' by Jane Juska (the American sexagenarian who advertised for lust partners in the New York Review and had enough adventures to fill a best-selling book - a theme to interest any writer attempting to reclaim the notion of 'elderly' as more than a roadsign warning of dodderer hazard), and Moon Palace by Paul Auster. The prose style this last one seemed initially unencouragingly stolid yet strangely compelling, and now I'm finding moments of iridescence. Look at this, glimmering suddenly in a rather maudlin backstory: "Like all the Foggs, he had a penchant for aimlessness and reverie, for sudden bolts and lengthy torpors." I paused to muse on my personal penchants.
"..for restlessness and obsessive notetaking, for addiction to heart-beat rhythm music and laughter, and a perverse persistent sense of being an outsider in her own life"... Well, it was 3 a.m.
Looking at these diverse titles I realise they're all about journeys in the Rilke sense that "the only journey is the one within." And maybe in the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin sense too: "We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey." I'm currently editing an anthology on the theme of 'transit' for the very talented Santiago Writers, so it's a notion much on my mind.