A week of small screen, big poetry, & waterproof boots.

Starting from the end of the week, with the big event at the South Bank, where this year's prestigious - and lucrative - T.S.Eliot prize for poetry was awarded on Sunday to Bhanu Kapil for her collection How to Wash a Heart, as revealed after an hour-long presentation involving readings from all ten shortlisted poets. Ian McMillan, who introduced and steered this streamed version, promised to be live next year but I hope they continue to make this event available on line - it was beautifully organised, narrated, and presented, and the filmed readings were superb. All the poets' books were submitted before the start of the year, so it was impressive how many had a continuing relevance, and Bhanu was one of the most accessible, so it's good to see once again a confirmation that poetry is about life now, whoever we are. 

And now a poem about a local railway line: John Betjeman's jaunty evocation of Dilton Marsh Holt  as intriguingly performed by David Ellington for Wiltshire Creative and streamed, with optional captions to his signing, in their World Wide Wiltshire project. There are two other short pieces in this set, both reminiscent monologues, viewable here.

Frome's  Liv Torc, supporter of all things poetic,  hosted another edition of the Rainbow Fish Speakeasy cabaret from Yeovil's Word/Play group, always offering much to enjoy and this time featuring the ever-surprising & totally brilliant Chris White.  

 Chris came to Frome a couple of years ago to record a 'Word Play' session for Visual Radio Arts and he was unforgettable, though this session had to be deleted after intervention by the agent of another of the poets - a very sad loss to our developing poetry archive. Once again Chris's set was full of unexpected clever wordplay, chicaning between absurdity, profanity, and political satire, and I hope somewhere there's a recording of this event that won't be deleted. Followers of Liv will remember that her USP is collecting lines & phrases from her audience for a 'compilation poem' shared at the end of the event, and this was cleverly managed through the comments section by Jon. 

It's really good to see, also, increasing numbers of performers and drama communities exploring online options: Frome Drama are gearing up for their made-for-lockdown Terminus and Bristol Old Vic are streaming two archived shows - next up a Sherlock Holmes comedy/murder mystery.

And a reminder, in skinny days for interactive stimulus, of Eleanor Talbot's ever-vibrant talk show Variations on a Theme and Liv Torc's HAIFLU revival, a moving collections of our shared experience of this year, now in its third week.  Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod has a US Inauguration Special, with Will Angeloro and John Nelson, deconstructing our 'turning world' as well as the ceremony from every angle including Lady Gaga's ballgown.

There's plenty of music online, as well as on Sky Arts, of course. The live blues session with Ruzz Guitar and Pete Gage at Frome's Cheese & Grain has twice been postponed now, but here's a taster of what we're looking forward to, with Ain't Nobody's Business. 

Following last week's theme of protecting our town from predatory developers: another at risk - as well as Easthill Field & Broadway allotments - is Frome river, where the footpath is under threat of inappropriate development (is there any other sort of development, along a riverside in a low-lying area notorious throughout history for its floods?) 

We're lucky to live in a town with such pro-active awareness to protecting and to celebrate too: there's a magical selection of bark samples you can view &/or download as a poster from the website of  Phil Barnett.

This was a week of wild weather in Frome: flood rain, sparkling frost, then fairyland snow, all looking amazing but limiting walking options, so I'll end with an image from today of the southern fields, seen from the edge of town.

When the white stuff came...

Roots Session at the Grain Bar provided an excellent session this week: Jon Amor, the man with the longest fingers in the world, with support from Rob Lear, very different performers but both impressively talented. I particularly liked Rob's topical song After the Storm, and Let It Go from his album of that name. Jon, a brilliant blues musician who sounds like a whole band of brilliant musicians once he gets his loop going, has a superb new album out: Colour in the Sky.

And then came the white stuff. Flakes whirled all night on Thursday, but didn't stop Bare to the Bones benefit night, another of Paul Kirtley's house-party style community concerts. The venue this time was the marvellously rococo and eccentric upper room of Three Swans, and an immensely good time was had by both audience and performers, mostly overlapping in status such is the amazing pool of talent in our small town. Special mention to Sarah Hobbs with Bill Farr for their Gypsy, and to superb new trio Good Man & the Bad Girls for their wonderful version of Wicked Game, and to everyone.

Weather like politics, even when perverse and chaotic, has no place in a blog about creative Frome, but the blizzard brought so much disruption in its icy wake that most of the other things I was going to report on were cancelled. On the plus side, the town looked glorious in sunshine next day when I teetered out and the events will be rescheduled - and the Frukes had a great party jam session.

Rich drama at the Old Vic - go by toboggan if necessary!

Natural beauty versus profitable land development... a big topic in Frome right now as social media buzzes with opinions about the proposal for our southern fields, and also the issue at the heart of The Cherry Orchard at Bristol Old Vic in a production so fabulous I'm posting this blog early so you can book before it's totally sold out. Lovely to look at, excitingly directed, with a fantastic team of actors - this ticks every box.
  Kirsty Bushell is mesmeric as well as heartbreakingly beautiful as the impoverished-aristocrat owner of the orchard in question who refuses to contemplate the rescue-package offered by the entrepreneurial son of one of her own serfs. Intended by Chekhov as an analogy of decadent old Russia losing its grip on the future as the end of serfdom allowed a new bourgeoisie to take control, it's also a moving drama involving complex passionate relationships and this production, with its faux-theatre surrounding all the action, is simply inspired. I'm annoyingly purist about my favourite classics and arrived feeling wary I might find a set made of trampled cherries, or Grisha as a puppet-child watching the action, but everything about this concept is superb with the poignant subtleties and the humour (there's quite a lot that's laugh-out-loud funny too) both exquisitely conveyed. I could say more, and will when in my full review ~ this is just to alert anyone who enjoys classy live theatre: this is essential viewing and it's on till April 7.

In other news: we had snow, and the hills of Frome were alive with tobogganists and even skiers. The river was frozen too, which I've never seen before, but not quite hard enough for skating. Supermarkets ran out of milk and bread over the three frozen days, and Three Swans ran out of ale, so the role of hosting Edventure's Open Mic was taken over by Cornerhouse.
A wide variety of music and words, including me doing some of me crone poems, raised funds for YMCA Mendip and Edventure's projects, congratulations all involved & that's all for now, after email chaos courtesy of Site5 I am again majorly behind in my work schedule... I need to get out less.

"Nobody is who they're supposed to be" says the actor who is not Nassim Soleimanpour (tonight he's Simon Shepherd) reading from Nassim's script, taken from a sealed envelope moments before.
This is White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, the most curious and fascinating performance I've yet seen among many experimental productions in Bristol Old Vic studio. It's a multi-layered parable involving a different reader each performance and audience members called up by their number to become rabbits in a circus with where cheetahs act like ostriches and showing your ears is a punishable offence ~ this plot detail is particularly vivid to me as I was that rabbit. Other rabbit roles are required as fantasy and anecdote mingle, ending with the actor supplanted by an audience member who reads the final pages, becoming by that choice the new, and endangered, red rabbit... Nassim will never see these unrehearsed readings of his play as his dissident status means he's forbidden to leave Iran: "You are my taste of freedom" he tells us, "I know neither the year nor day you are in. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive.” A salutary thought, though happily three years on he's still active on facebook ~ in fact now a virtual friend.

Jo Caulfield, 'wonderfully sharp and bitchy' star of TV & Radio 4 comedy shows, is touring her new show Better the Devil You Know to 33 venues over 5 months. Frome's Merlin theatre was the second date so Jo was quite fresh last Saturday though I bet she's sick of Premier Inns by June. It's not cutting-edge but Jo's mix of fairly traditional observational comedy, faintly potty-mouthed feistiness, and skilful audience interaction made for entertaining evening. Sitting rashly in row B, I did get picked on a bit but at least I didn't have to be a rabbit.

And now, as a blog is a kind of timeline, here's the long-awaited snow...

So as snow crashes all our schedules and intentions until that towering sledgeload of excess and stress we call Christmas skids into the bleakness of New Year Resolutions - here's my pick of the seasonal shows:

Herding Cats at the Ustinov features the traditional office Christmas party debacle as a kind of climax but it's a dark psychological story of loneliness and interdependency despite the jolly Slade jingles. Justine (she went to the fancy-dress party as The Pantychrist, if you're wondering about the costume) is franticly work-obsessed, while her flatmate Michael is agoraphobic and spends his hours working a phone sexline as the fantasy daughter of sadist. Michael can't resist the depravity of Saddo, the most difficult person in his work life, while Justine convinces herself she's in love with the most difficult person in her work life - her boss, who inevitably rejects her. Love and Hate look the same word in the mirror, on the teeshirt Michael gives Justine, and this seems a theme at the heart of this immensely powerful play: troubling, sad, but never drab. Olivia Hallinan and Philip McGinley were totally engaging as the young people, and the simplistic set enhanced their curious isolation. But what I liked best was Lucinda Coxon's script, which boldly created Justine's most significant relationship entirely offstage through reported dialogue as she confides in her sympathetic flatmate. In fact it would have been interesting to see what would happen if the playwright had been similarly brave with Saddo, who didn't really need to be spotlit for his menacing phone calls - a dark stage with Michael curled up whispering those sleezy endearments to 'Daddy' would have been even more effective. But I'd still give it four stars - oh, it's christmas, I'll give it four and a half.

And now one for the kiddies: Peter Pan at the Merlin in Frome, an all-singing all-dancing traditional pantomime with live music and cinematic special effects. We all know the story: Peter doesn't want to be grown-up, and Wendy tries to change his mind by introducing him to grown-up things like marital bickering and demands for improved housing. Of course it's all a dark psychological allegory with irrepressible surges of erotic yearning and loss of innocence really, but that didn't bother the little girls who adored the mermaid and fairy dances and the little boys who thrilled at wicked Captain Hook. My own favourites were Tinkerbell the feisty fairy who turned exquisite cartwheels in her flight harness, and tiny Michael asking Hook if his mother really wanted him to be a pirate... And everyone loved the crocodile.

And now, as the steep streets of Frome rapidly becoming a car-free zone and children groom them for toboggan slopes, here's wishing everyone a peaceful snowy solstice, with plentiful pagan celebrations to come.