Big news in theatreland southwest is the reopened, refurbished, Bristol Old Vic main house, returned to Georgian splendour in tones of ochre, olive & old gold, with a raised floor in the pit so audience eye-level is raised to that of 18th Century groundlings. The first show to celebrate this 18-month, £12 million, makeover is a revival by Mark Rosenblatt of John O’Keefe’s Wild Oats, first performed here in 1792 and chosen, says the programme, 'for exactly the playful interactivity this theatre was built for.’ Here's director Tom Morris in trademark Rupert Bear scarf looking pleased, and if you think £12,000,000 sounds like the kind of number that might have funded quite a lot of productions elsewhere in the region you might like to know the total bill will be £20 million... Finances aside, Wild Oats is wonderfully playful: a vigorous cast dashing through a set nearly as lively, clever props rushed on & off for each scene change. Costumes support the wild sense of enchantment too: combining last century modes with Shakespearian attire allows for multiple reference points, from filmic chase scenes and a steamy Brief Encounterish railway station (Keynsham) to Wildean comedic moments in the second act. There's swashbuckling comedy from all eleven players, especially Hugh Skinner as Harry Thunder, the rich drop-out whose life becomes entangled with Jack Rover (Sam Alexander) “a forlorn stroller with an abominable habit of quotation, his life a rapid stream of extravagant whim" ~ in fact everyone at heart is fond of each other, with the exception of Ephraim Smooth, a Quaker with the morality of a Jimmy Savile. I can only find rehearsal pictures but they give a general idea of the animated mayhem. It's impossible to summarise the plot which relies on complexity of mistaken identities until increasing confusion escalates to a hilarious fight scene, moving quickly on to resolution as bad-tempered Sir George mellows and is reunited in the end with everyone he ever cared for, Jack finds out who he is and gets his girl – transformed of course from a plain Jane when she throws off her Quakerish constraints, and the two friends each gain a brother as well as a bride. It's a warm-hearted revisiting of that sour theme in The Welsh Boy ~ that a single man in want of a wife must be in search of a fortune ~ and a charming revival.

  Alongside this polished high-energy production, as a contrast in every way, there's Does My Society Look Big In This? introduced as ‘flung together', 'relevant’(does my heart sink a bit at this?) and experimental. Devised by Tom Morris with writer Stephen Brown and performed by the Wild Oats team, it's billed as all about bang-up-to-date issues like the Bristol mayoral election. And over an hour of the 2½ running time was indeed devoted to voting a 'Mayor of Bristol Old Vic Theatre For The Night' from a random line-up of men (and one woman) on the basis of how to spend an equally randomly-materialising £200 of funding. By extraordinary coincidence ~ and I hope I don’t sound skeptical ~ someone spotted among the audience Simon Cook, an ex-mayor and current Leader of the Council in Clifton, whose landslide victory made my vote for singing traffic wardens a wasted one. His platform was free pantomime tickets for Poor Children, a jolly worthy plan which I imagine & hope happens anyway. Other than this time-consuming activity, there were some entertaining sketches and songs, the concept of local community was explained via audience interaction in a dog-related neighbourhood dispute and, more mysteriously, through eyes-closed visualization, but the overall impression was a bit like what you’d expect from an enthusiastic tutor group tackling social studies through role-play. Nothing like this has happened in theatre before, Tom Morris said in his introduction, and that may be true but a lot like this has happened before in end-of-session cabarets on courses, camps and holidays, and with tighter production values.

Theatre Royal Bath opened their 'Transformation Season' of productions adapted from literary text to dramatic script with Julian Mitchell's reworking of an 18th Century autobiography The Welsh Boy. These 'transformed' pieces, as the programme notes point out, are not traditional plays but a new form with actors as story-tellers as well as characters within the action. "Three hundred years on, here I am in a book" is Jem Parry's opening announcement, and that book holds the tale he now reveals, demanding our sympathy and taunting our voyeurism, as the real 'Welsh boy' did when he published his passionate affair with upper-class Mary Powell. A strong cast is led by Sion Daniel Young as the importunate young music teacher with Peta Cornish as his besotted student and Geraldine Alexander, Ed Birch and Rhiannon Oliver taking on nine support roles. Dalliance and intrigue, more bawdy than erotic, builds to a powerful climax in the moment when the lovers are discovered in flagrante, and farce turns abruptly to tragedy. It's a great show, beautifully dressed and lit, which goes beyond Jem's dubious memoirs to engage with a significant historical reality ~ the lack of protection for women, both financially and physically, whatever their social status. The end brings us back to the start: they are gone, aye ages long ago, not like Keats' lovers into timeless romance but the fading squalour of scandal and out-of-print oblivion. Was this love? As with every reality show, the last call is to the audience: you decide. (image © Jane Hobson)

Having ridden down Highway 1 on the back of a 1200 BMW I was keen to see Take Me With You at the Brewery when I read this "poignant, funny and heartbreaking story of three dreamers adrift" is located around the Pacific Coast highway. Writer Godfrey Hamilton creates a passionate, sometimes lyrical, evocation of the fragility of the American dream. Happiness is going home to a dog, declares the 'big old queen' after participating in a bizarre freeway canine rescue. It certainly isn't going home to a God for the disenchanted evangelist preacher who recalls with unhappy irony trying to drive the devil out of a gay man in his congregation. Actors Mark Pinkosh and Ross Bautsch deliver their stories in separate monologues, intensifying the aura of loneliness around these solitary lives. At 70 minutes it's slightly overlong but the bit about the dog is very funny.
I can't find an image on either Starving Artists Theatre Company or Tobacco Factory site that looks like the show so I've posted the bike I rode on instead. Nice memory!

Bath's Mission, originally a chapel and recently rescued from dilapidated decline by the enthusiasm and enterprise of Next Stage Theatre Company, hosts a medley of dramatic events including this week Shakespeare Rattle & Roll, devised & performed by musician/actor Martin Dimery. Martin's better known as the John in Sgt Pepper's Only Dart Board Band and as director of Frome Festival but he was in another incarnation a teacher, and this performance uses the conceit that the audience is a class in detention and required to study the musical influences of the plays and sonnets ~ an effective introduction to an hour that does indeed inform as well as entertaining. With references ranging from Spenserian iambic pentameter and Schubert to rap and vaudeville, Martin re-envisaged songs, speeches, and sonnets in musical styles including Elvis, Marley, Johnny Rotten, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and George Fornby ~ with a few famous speeches in the manner of Olivier and Frankie Howard... Witty parody combined with fascinating insights into the bard's life & work from a performer impressive in his own right, and the audience stamped mosh pit style in approval.

Here's a 10-second challenge for all you writers ~ complete this sentence: "The world is ______, _____, and _______." That's Duncan (Monster) Macmillan's opener to an excellent playwriting workshop at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday aimed at encouraging and supporting entrants to the Bruntwood competition. In two-and-a-half hours Duncan fed us a smörgåsbord of structural information on narrative arcs, hero's journeys and disrupted rituals, lavishly garnished with fascinating quotes: "Tell a story and the themes will take care of themselves" ~ Anthony Neilson, and my favourite from Brian Friel, "Writing a play is like stalking an invisible animal."
  Rosie Finnegan and I took copious notes and then dashed off to the Alma Tavern where my short play Park & Ride has now gone into rehearsal. I'm thrilled that Alison Comley of Theatre West will be directing, and delighted too with my cast, a reunion from Consulting with Chekhov in 2010 ~ Dee Sadler and Dan Maxwell, already luminously lifting my script off the page.

Back home it's Apple Day, the kind of event Frome loves to celebrate with live music & dance ~ circle dance, in fact ~ stalls of home-made bags and tubs of bubbles, cups of tea and plates of cakes. And apples, rows of them, with wonderful names like Golden Spire, Cornish Aromatic, Barnack Orange, and Wolf River.
Great names too ~ Gyrate, Gesture, Gymnastic ~ in Marian Bruce's contemporary art gallery The Parlour, where Alex Relph is exhibiting some amazing pieces of steel sculpture.
And finally... did you do the sentence? Your instinctive response is actually about your own writing. I chose The world is precarious, dangerous, and irresistible... point proven!

Theatre West's new season at the Alma Tavern Theatre based on locations in the Bristol A-Z is off to a cracking start with Steve Hennessy's Sleep Lane ~ already awarded a 5 star review from Remotegoat. A taxi driver takes a mysterious Greek businessman home late and becomes involved an extraordinary triangle of love, sex and money, played out at the gates of an affluent house in a leafy lane on the edge of town. Is anything in Sleep Lane real, or is it all just a dream where money grows on the trees?
This tightly-written play is stimulatingly thought-provoking on the economic crisis spreading out from Greece, but each character has a journey too and their stories are all fascinating and empathetically engaging. Alan Coveney is compelling as flawed dream-maker Yannis, Joe Shire as cabbie Jason brilliantly evokes poignancy as well as comedy, and Violet Ryder is simply stunning as Helen, half human half goddess... 5 stars? That's a Yes from me too.

 

Despite the fluster over apparent mouth-mutilation on the poster, Loose Tongues was well received by audiences Upstairs at the Cornerhouse. The project was a co-venture between Nevertheless Productions with Inklings who provided this intriguing collection of related monologues set in the same funeral parlour at the same time - it would have been interesting too to see how these could have combined in dramatic interaction as dark secrets were slowly revealed as the hour passed in real-time. Audience feedback was encouraging: 'thoroughly enjoyed it!' - 'interesting, ambitious with some very good acting' - 'intrigued by the unravelling of the story and the characters' - 'different to anything I have ever seen before'.

There's been a lot of poetry around this week too, what with Bristol Poetry festival ~ which I sadly missed ~ and 100,000 Poets for Change in Bath on Saturday with Frome's class-act bards Rosie Jackson and Rose Flint among poets at a 'concert of readings' at the BRLSI with a focus on our endangered earth.
Danger of a different kind featured in an extraordinary production by Irish company Gare St Lazare of Moby Dick at Bristol's Tobacco Factory. Conor Lovett, who with his director adapted Herman Melville's classic novel, narrated in traditional story-telling style, solitary on a dark stage with only the haunting fiddle of Caoimhin O'Raghallaigh to enhance the intense and eerie mood.
My illusion that this would be a plot-led adventure dispersed instantly and from that famous opening line Call me Ishmael to the incredible climax of the whale-hunter's destructive obsession like the rest of the full-house I sat spell-bound, fascinated by Melville's lyrical & complex language and transfixed by the quiet intimacy of interaction between actor and audience. Descriptions are vivid but the overwhelming imagery is larger even than this epic journey ~ mythic, cosmic... a timeless universal life struggle against elements and gods and the dark destructive energy within us all.

First posting of October starts with a fretful footnote: without option, Blogger has updated my template to a tidy new style which has swept away my collection of fascinating writers' blogs, along with my cherished poem and quote of-the-month spot. I'm annoyed about this as anyone using a free service is entitled to be, viz, to frustratingly little avail. If you were wondering, I was going to quote Apollinaire's wonderful words which I was movingly reminded of (thankyou Tristram) at the Writers' Soiree on the terrace of Atsista ten days ago:
       Come to the edge, he said.
       They said: We are afraid.
       Come to the edge, he said.
       They came.  He pushed them
       and they flew.”

March 2011. The Independent publishes a picture of a vandalised water-tank beside the Pacific highway near Los Angeles and investigates why this sparked furore and may - or may not - have made a man homeless. Removal of the now-notorious "Banksy Elephant" for sale as valuable art delighted locals: "I've been trying to get that piece of junk removed for years," a council member told the newspaper, "in fact, I'm now a big fan of Banksy's work." The resident of the tank, a vagrant called Tachowa Covington, was a self-crowned king who scavenged for art to decorate his interior until, ironically, the exterior became art-with-a-message: in this case, the 'elephant in the room' of homelessness.

It's a story to fascinate any writer, and Bristol playwright Tom Wainwright chose to tell it as a monologue, renaming the tank's ex-resident Titus Carpenter and making him privy to his role onstage at the Brewery, as well as filming his own story-telling. In The Room in the Elephant, Titus is an unreliable narrator who resents 'Mr Wainwright', and metatheatrical complexities though thought-provoking were almost overwhelming, but Gary Beadle's performance was totally gripping. Oh, and there's a pie & a pint with every ticket-holder ~ an excellent way to spend an autumn Saturday afternoon.

By evening we're back in Frome in time for Carnival, a seasonal celebration untouched by the pursed lips of PCness and seeming barely changed in spirit since Thomas Hardy's days. There were nods to the world as we know it, of course: majorettes following the tractors flourished tinsel pompoms and there were lumberjacks and vampires as well as Young Farmers. Here's "Hot Rock ~ The Twenties", which won a cup and a shield too, for best costumes.

Homecomings... always some big change, isn't there, this time not just a 15° drop in temperature but the end of a radio era... I thought I might mourn, but tbh Moyles in the Morning was getting a bit of a yawn, so welcome Nic Grimshaw, I'm enjoying waking up with you.

A visual glimpse to end this posting as my mental images of glittering sunlight on seas recede leaving me nostalgic for the sands of Twenty-minute Beach and the pebbles of Silverfish Bay, and most of all those dusk writing sessions at Maria's Taverna as the tomato-red sun lowered over sea framed by scented pines...
 Sto Kalo, all of you, wherever you are.

Update from Athens, poised half-way in journey time between end-of-summer on the island of Skyros, half sultry, half stormy, and a staid English autumn. The 'Writers Lab', as the brochure calls our loose impulsive gatherings at Maria's taverna by the shore, has been a challenge and a delight. The challenge, which was purely logistical ~ 16 writers is about twice my usual number ~ created the solution: we met twice a day, in the morning with frappés as the fishermen mended their nets (this is not the simple darning I'd always imagined, by the way, it involves slicing floats out of old nets and threading them into the new ones) and then again as the sky paled and the sun dropped below a fringe of pine into a sapphire sea. Nets are sunflower yellow, floats are terracotta red, and local wine is pink... To confirm what may be already evident, this was an amazing session for venue, sunshine, and participants combining enthusiasm, goodwill, and talent. I'd love to list & praise everyone but this isn't the place so I'll just say: Go forth and prosper ~ I know you will.

"Frome's premiere pub theatre team will be bringing lively new drama to the town when Loose Tongues start wagging at The Cornerhouse" promises This is Somerset, anticipating "a powerful play produced by Nevertheless Productions, run by Rosie Finnegan and Crysse Morrison, in association with Inkling Productions, on Thursday, September 27 and Friday September 28 at 8pm." There's more, so do check out the link and don't be deterred by the accompanying picture in which I look like a deranged nonagenarian and Rosie looks like my carer.

And I'm also looking forward bigtime to Theatre West autumn season of plays with Bristol settings, starting next week at the Alma Tavern Theatre: Steve's play Sleep Lane promises to be a cracking opening to the A-Z theme, and I'm thrilled that my shortie Park & Ride is to be curtain-raiser for the following production, David Lane's Rush.

If you've ever had a wild urge to write on a Greek island, here's just one reason to indulge it... Skyros island is one of my favourite places in the world. For the last week I've had the privilege of working with sixteen diverse and genuinely talented wordsmiths, and here's our base. It's an intensive course so we all really need a day off in town today and a chance to reconnect with what we laughingly call the real world ~ a bar by the plateia with funky remixes, wine, and wifi!
Kale'nikta...

This has been a good week for intimate performances: on Tuesday I was at Bristol's Bierkeller for Panning for Gold, back from its 4-star run in Edinburgh. From a simple premise ~ three jilted brides meet in a therapy group for a series of sessions ~ writer Jasmine Smart has crafted a play of surprising diversity, devoid of cliché or sentimentality, and with deep emotional impact. The women's words are angry and painful but also witty, lyrical and inventive, and the actors (Anna Gillingham-Sutton, Charlee Lauren, and Jasmine herself, with Penny Lamport at the counsellor) all movingly credible. The slow reveal of each suicidal story continues to the final moments ~ no spoilers as hopefully Thrice Three Muses will tour this show further ~ but this is ultimately about human capacity to heal. As Auden says, we must love one another or die.
Bradford on Avon Fringe Festival began in 2010 "to give an opportunity to local talent... with events that reach beyond the familiar arts format, to surprise, startle and delight perhaps." The even-better news is that even though the actual festival promptly took a 2-year sabbatical, lusty toddler Fringe B.O.A has decided to become a stand-alone event. There's a range of events from bring-it-yourself BBQ in the park to burlesque night, and a lively cartoon-style programme - wish I could find a link to the brilliant artwork: punching stylishly beyond its weight is the phrase that springs to mind. I went with a Frome posse to be surprised startled and delighted perhaps by the double bill in the Cellar Bar at The Swan: Bootleg Theatre opened with Rosie Finnegan's 'poignant, gently funny' short play The Girl with Blue Hair in an excellent revival with the same cast (Sara Taylor and Joe Bossano) successfully adapted to suit the small performance space. A change of mood followed as Bath Drama group took on Shakespeare's mechanicals from Midsummer Nights Dream to give us the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, both in rehearsal and final performance. 'Definitely an Arty Farty evening,' as the listing promised.

Thursday too was a night of intimate delight at Poetry Platter, a dramatic supper-party-on-stage concept unique to Frome's Merlin Theatre, as Chris Redmond and Patrick Jones shared their Private Passions. Chris, whose passions include food, foxes, family & most of all music, crafts his performance pieces with wonderful lyricism and rhythm. Patrick's experience of social outsiders & personal hardship gives his reading a more overtly political edge though he too introduced us to the family he loves. Two fabulous & very different poets, both able brilliantly to engage and entrance their audience, to mix moods between hilarity and profundity, and to consistently surprise ~ what else could we want? Well, nothing, and even the heckler ended up new-best-friends with Chris - you'd need to be there to get that one though.

Finally on Friday, The Deep at the Brewery, a sea story 'based on a true event' ~ or maybe thousands such: a monologue account of the last hours of a fisherman drowning in the North Sea. Timeless simplicity and a rich poetic voice made for a powerful script, adapted from an Icelandic play by Graeme Maley, and Joshua Manning was superb as the 'big, braw' young sailor who finds himself living for real the Titanic disaster he's just narrated to entertain his shipmate. My only quibble was the unsubtle embellishments: lights popping on and off, violin soundtrack appearing and disappearing, and an unnecessary amount of pacing about. With an actor of this calibre and a story this moving, less would definitely have been more.

Final footnote for a busy week: a thought from poet and dramatist Edna St Vincent Millay:
My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.
And after quite a bit of candle-burning recently, I'm poised now for a change of pace for a while on idyllic Skyros island. I'll think of you all as I watch the sunset...

September began with 3 days walking in Exmoor along moorland tracks and coastal paths probably little changed since Coleridge escorted Dorothy Wordsworth across these hills and she wrote in her diary of the 'furze gay with blossom' and 'songs of lark and redbreast' and mists over the sea. Late summer sunshine and an excellent base (White Horse Inn in Exford) enhanced a blissful break, and I was back in time for Blahblahblah at Bristol Old Vic, the 'relaunch' (when did it run aground?) of their monthly performance poetry event Word of Mouth. Luckily the makeover didn't change Byron Vincent, still self-deprecatingly endearing & the most absurdly funny MC around. The main difference apart from free wine and sweeties was the extensive line-up of guests ~ a dozen, in fact. Most performers were splendid, some were superb. I especially liked Harry Baker's witty mathematical twist on freshers week, James Bunting's fantastic love poem to Bristol, Anna Freeman's powerful personal poem My Right Hand, and everything Chris Redmond does. Which is really good because on Thursday he's coming to Frome's Merlin Theatre, to do some more!

Rose by Martin Sherman, on tour & at the Brewery this week, presents a searing critique of Jewish America and the effect it has had on modern Israel: “If that’s all gone isn’t that Hitler’s final victory?” asks Rose, finding her son and his stridently-converted wife consider the old Yiddish words embarrassing and allow them no place in their serious study of Hebrew. Rose is the flip side of the Jewish mother-in-law-joke coin, silenced by the certainties of the next generation. To her “There was always joy in not belonging – maybe God is a question like everything else.” Rose survived ghetto, prison camp and the 1947 Exodus, always longing for the promised land: now she questions Zionism, studies Buddha, and believes ‘knowledge is more important than pain’. Sadly, neither searing critique nor interesting characterisation arrive till Act 2, after an hour of hand-wringing bathos which precedes Rose’s arrival in America. But the packed audience, largely her contempories, were generous with their responses and clearly moved by the familiar saga of Jewish oppression. Despite the tragedies of Rose's multiple bereavements I found it hard to connect with the case-study approach of the first act: Only in the second act did this woman's loss of her dream homeland become suddenly real. Two hours is a lot of words for a monologue and it’s a rare actor who can not only memorise but also deliver so many lines as though afresh to each audience. Fiona York despite a rococo Jewish accent and as much arm movement as her static position would allow, didn’t quite manage that, and I whiled away long chunks of exposition musing on what could have been done to improve the set (removing it, I decided). Next time Red Kettle Theatre choose to explore oppression through theatre, I hope they choose a play from their native Ireland.

The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play, written when Queen Elizabeth, patron & fan of his earthy dramas, had been succeeded by a king who adored the magic, music and myth of Italian masques. Shakespeare added emotion to this mix, and created his marvellous allegory of rage and resolution through the power of love. This Theatre Royal Bath production thrills with every element. From the moment Prospero conjures elemental chaos as catalyst for his own inner storm, to his final violent abdication of power, this suberb production charms, entertains, and terrifies by turn. Tim Piggott-Smith is awesome as Prospero, making every familiar word seem a fresh thought, and the passion between Iris Roberts’ irresistible Miranda and her Ferdinand (Mark Quartley) is convincing as well as delightful as they crawl like babes towards their shared love. There’s comedy to best stand-up standard from Mark Hadfield’s Trinculo and his drinking companions, and a feast of spectacle: Ariel, looking like a Swinging Sixties postcard model and straddling his every scene whether on stilts or winged like a monstrous angel, Caliban a reptilian Prodigy, the sprites bizarrely costumed like extras in Scrubs as they watch the action like road-crash rubber-neckers (and even more bizarrely as they put shoes on their fists and river-dance them) the exquisite puppet sequence as goddesses come to bless the Miranda’s future union… I could go on. Dazzling direction by Adrian Noble and a superb cast make this one of the best Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen.

Me and Iggy Pop at The Toolshed, Frome's new contemporary arts space. Stephen Haines trained initially as a waxwork artist and still makes meticulous measurements for his work. "I see Iggy as a sort of muse," he says: "When he goes on stage he's in another zone. That's what art is like. You become a sort of shaman. It's what life is about." I've been thinking quite a lot about art and life this week, and Alan Bennett's insight into his own process: “I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind.” I think this must be true for most artists ~ even when we aim to entertain, there's usually a journey of self-discovery.

And now summer has meandered into autumn almost imperceptibly, with walks & picnics and for me a big life change. You could call it ~ Oscar Wilde would ~ the triumph of hope over experience, but I'm choosing a less cynical quote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.” It's attributed to Mark Twain though online opinion is unconvinced (one commentator with the splendid sobriquet 'Dude the Obscure' insists Twain would have blenched at such psycho-babble) but it resonated for me, and I have and I did and I am.

You know summer's effectively over when TV autumn schedules kick in, but the return of great drama is a reasonable price to pay for these slowly, inevitably, darkening evenings. Jimmy McGovern's Accused series restarted with a powerful story of transvestite Tracie, brilliantly portrayed by Sean Bean who overcame the need for a melodrama to fit the title, and made this a hugely moving human story of loneliness and struggle to survive the tawdry world of intolerance.
And The Best of Men was a moving tribute to the 'father of the Paralympics', Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a German-Jewish neurologist who revolutionised treatment of spinal injuries during WWII and in 1948 initiated the Stoke Mandeville Games. Brilliant performances, especially from Eddie Marsan and Rob Brydon, and a script which though necessarily simplifying roles never fell into clichéd stereotypes, showing with relentless clarity the existing responses the doctor had to battle with: sentimental {"My job is to make them comfortable!") and dismissive ("Moribund incurables - need a wet-nurse, that's all") And as the men's lives change without sedation & with return to hope, their own fears became another opposition: "I'll throw myself under a bloody bus" threatens Wynne at the thought of losing his refuge of institutionalised care. "I knew that upper-body strength would come in useful," twinkles the doctor, whose message is never about happy endings, only about reclaiming health ~ "You will have problems. We all do." He scythes through opposition by winning hearts and treading on toes with equal vigour -
- hugely apt timing for the start of 2012 Paralympics, and I'm hoping this inspiring true story will do for the disabled what Danny Boyle did for the NHS, and make it harder for those who control our community to ignore insistent demands for intelligent compassion.

Back in Frome, our local writers are winning gold everywhere: Alison Clink, who's had a busy summer collecting cuttings of her pieces in national magazines and newspapers, submitted her text version of Macbeth to Flash Fiction 500 and promptly won a prize - you can read her script here, and Rosie Finnegan's short play The Girl with the Blue Hair is being revived for the Bradford on Avon Fringe Festival And we're looking ahead to more pub theatre in Frome, and poetry at the Merlin... autumn is shaping up well already.
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Home again now, after a sublimely blissful week in Cortijo Romero, a haven of tranquility and creativity in the foothills of the Alpujarras. Take gorgeous gardens, shimmering turquoise pool, frequent supplies of fabulous food, and slow-roast gently in steady sunshine, then blend in a mix of fun & physical options like yoga, dance, song, collage, theatrework, & games, and you have a recipe for fourteen happy, fulfilled, participants. For me the creative highlights were two processes I'd never previously explored Playback Theatre superbly led by Amanda Brown, who is officially the goddess patron of empathy, and propreoceptive writing - a magical technique for locating and listening to your authentic inner voice: immense appreciation here to Diane Samuels, who is more than a bit magic herself, for leading our afternoon writing sessions. This isn't a 'Prisoner' paradise either - you can walk down to the local town of Orgiva, as I did most days, and mingle with locals who make no concessions to tourists, so fragmentary Spanish is a pleasing necessity.

Back in the UK, with the closing ceremony only inches away, there's a palpable and pervasive 'Olympics effect' around. It's not jingoistic patriotism, more a kind of surprised positivity, which began with shocked delight that the opening ceremony was so sublimely Britishly bonkers, soared as mad mod Wiggo not only made history on two wheels but tweeted pissed pix of his celebrations too, and crescendoed with the double gold that made Mo Farah the first athlete to launch a disco-dance move to rival the Village People. Or maybe those are just my highlights. But I offer them here, into the pot of general rejoicing. May your own Olympic memories go with you, these moments of awe are the only innocent religion we have.

Perhaps because the word hysterical is usually followed by laughter, probably also from the press image and the blurb ~ when surrealist painter Salvador Dali unexpectedly turns up, along with a young woman who finds it impossible to keep her clothes on, all hell breaks loose ~ I thought Hysteria at Bath Theatre Royal would be a farce. There were farcical moments, and belly-laughs too, but at the heart of the story is a serious issue: Sigmund Freud's change of heart after his research was reviled, and the consequences for the clients he may have betrayed and for the future of psychiatry.
Indira Varma is brilliant as the disrobing young woman, appearing in the analyst's life - or maybe his dream - in chameleon roles as student, subject, and super-ego-conscience to reproach him for re-condemning women he'd initially liberated by his 'talking cure', by labling them fantasists who longed for, and imagined, their abuse.
It's a fascinating play and a tour de force for the three men too - Antony Sher, David Horovitch, and especially Will Keen's Dali, blazing like a giraffe in sock-suspenders through the absurd surreality of Freud's mind-slip and speaking ego-eccentrically of himself in third person as "Dally". Set & lighting were impressive both as Freud's den and darkly-dreaming mind, and Terry Johnson directed superbly this 20-years on revival of his masterly script.

Ten hours after emerging from the theatre and by the miracle of modern Easyjet from Bristol I'm in Andalusia, soon to be dipping my toes in the cerulean pool of Cortijo Romero. Only day 2 of my week 'Being Here' with Amanda Brown, and already I'm blissed out by the place, the people, and the peace... A more coherent report may follow. Or just more pictures...
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