Hey Diddle Diddle at Bristol Old Vic is billed for ages 3-6 and delivers exactly what it says on the tin: nursery-rhyme-based entertainment to delight children up to first year at school, though probably not far beyond. A lively trio of performers ~ Isabelle Cressy especially awesome ~ used music and physical theatricality to create a story blending naughtiness with magic. It’s a timeless formula for success with this age group, and the adoring row of tiny watchers was a show in itself. There’s useful tips for parents in the replicability of aspects like simple shadow play, instruments created from trays and plates and tubes, with dressing-up-box costumes & homemade-looking military hats, but the undoubted highlight is the don’t-try-this-at-home-kids! sequence of Incey Wincey Spider’s balletic web-climb to dizzy heights. My only reservation about this simple and lovely show was the book-ending sections establishing roles and relationships for the three ‘children’ which seemed unnecessary wordage for such inventive performers.

Over the other side of the river Tobacco Factory has collaborated with NIE with a new production of Hansel and Gretel. Typically for this amazing company there’s inventive musicality and huge gusto as they tackle a particularly grim Grimm’s fairytale summed up by director Alex Byrne as "cruel and delicious ~ a tale of famine and cannibalism, bravery and to some extent redemption.” To a limited extent I'd add ~ as acknowledged by the children when their journey is near completion with witch slain and jewels claimed: “Hansel, does that mean we are now at peace?” “Do you mean as well as murderers?” responds her brother...  Mindful of the 'nasty and scary' aspects, the company uses puppets and humour in their storytelling, with helpful reminders like “This was a long time ago, please don’t be too concerned, this might not happen to you.” But worse than the roly-poly witch who gloats I just really like eating children. Is it so wrong? is the domestic abuse in the family Hansel and Gretel leave behind, with a mother introduced as “a kind of Jungian archetype.” After succumbing to another vicious tirade and agreeing to abandon his children in the forest, Father appeals for audience support, and the ensuing shocked silence makes us all culpable witnesses.  And that early hint might also invite reflection that Jung's interpretation of this story as an essential journey to adulthood includes too the notion that the terrible taboo of child-eating represents persecution of minorities, with the symbol of the oven especially gruesome in this Germanic tale. Dark material indeed, but the music is uplifting, the playfulness with puppets is beautiful, and the multi-cultural cast all terrific. And there's a magical ending as snow slowly descends all around.

 Third Christmas production this weekend in family-show terms is the Goldilocks planet: Pinocchio at Frome's Merlin was a hit right across the age-range, from tinies to grannies. Directed by Philip de Glanville for Merlin Theatre Company, this warm-hearted slightly wacky story was full of delights and surprises, notably the superb puppet-show scene. I specially loved Laurie Parnell's Puppet Master, Ryan Hughes as the Singing Cricket and Tina Waller in the title role, but there were lots of great cameos and ensemble moments in this hugely successful community production.

Finally... Do you trust this government ~ or any future government ~ never to use legislation based on the Leveson report beyond its intended aim of curbing press intrusion? 86% of those surveyed for English PEN don't, and frankly nor do I. As PEN campaigns coordinator Robert Sharp points out, Leveson's considerations focused on larger publishers such as national and regional press and magazines... and given the way news is now disseminated with bloggers and citizen journalists, it is important to consider the position of individuals and small publishers in any legal or regulatory regimes. PEN is the Amnesty of writers across the world, so when this organisation joins forces with Liberty to oppose compulsory statutory regulation in the interests of free speech, I think we should listen to their views. While we still can.

I'm preempting my next scheduled post with a Drop-the-Dead-Donkey item: Peter Pan at Bristol Old Vic. Based on JM Barrie's story and devised by the company, this is the most beautiful, funny, and deeply moving show you'll see this Christmas. Tristan Sturrock is simply incredible as the timeless child of our cultural fantasy, and the entire cast can move you to tears of mirth or sorrow at a plangent chord from the ~ excellent ~ live musicians. Peter and Wendy poignantly apart, the rest of the cast morphed thinly disguised (except fatly Tootles) and delightfully from Lost Boys to pirates to mermaids, the lagoon scene a high point of glam cross-dressing and bubbles with superb crescendo to that famous To die would be an awfully big adventure line. Act two returns us gradually to reality, with a scene of extraordinary beauty as Wendy decides to grow up and Peter is left falling slowly, agonisingly, back into his pram. But that's not the end, of course, as there's redemption and reconciliation and more music, and Wendy's daughter flies once more into the magic world of Peter Pan... a fabulous show, and a must-see for anyone who can get to Bristol before 19 January.

Hip Yak Poetry Shack put on a fantastic show at the Merlin on Friday when the usual Yakkers ~ Liv Torc, Jonny Fluffypunk and Chris Redmond all in fine form ~ were headlined for this Take Art benefit night by Matt Harvey. Jonny shared a recollection of childhood in Little Kingshill, the only village to win awards in both Britain in Bloom and Middle England in a Coma, and a passionate love poem to coffee, while Liv offered a similarly hilarious eulogy to The Wet Patch, and a touching new poem about her unborn, unconceived, child, you who may never be more than a nudge, a thought, a fear... Beautiful. Matt's speciality is brilliant links dryly delivered and he's wickedly funny about his home town Totnes where, he claims, a Holistic Hooliganism Workshop to deal with rowdy Torquay lads resulted in chants of You're going home with your chakras realigned... All great stuff, and a worthy cause: Take Art supports a big range of creative projects across Somerset to help sustain rural communities and encourage participation in the Arts, and long may they do so.

And in other news... Frome's roaming protegee Niamh Ferguson showed some of the exotic images from her book Love from India in Paul Street Pop-up Gallery, and The Parlour launched Marian Bruce's exhibition Shelter inspired by squatter camps in South Africa ~ woven refuges and hides made from "elements readily available, reference to Zulu huts in the bush, Cape Town camps, even the nests of weaver birds." These unadorned, unrobust, shelters provoke salutary reflection on this most basic human need.

Frome's streets were thronged throughout the weekend for the famous Extravaganza ~ it's been rebranded for some obscure civic reason but we still call it that because the ritual is the same: solstice celebrations in the streets, reindeer in the precinct, mulled wine in the reclaimed precinct toilets, masses of stalls and all things festive from carols to roasted chestnuts. Highlight is traditional lights-switching-on event in the market square: loud 5-4-3-2-1 countdown from the crowd followed by equally loud burst of mirth as nothing occurs for 40 seconds, loud cheer as the tree illuminates and half the street lights follow suit. A popular ritual followed faithfully on Saturday, with this year a fantastic pop-up market throughout the town centre on Sunday. Eat your heart out Bath!

Final footnote: fans of satiric animation featuring Jack Hersey, reddest-necked cop ever, will be delighted to know there's a new one on the way: You can read about The Patsy in Scriptwriting in the UK and even better, you can click on Kickstarter and make it happen! So don't worry if you missed out on supporting rural arts, here's another opportunity to show solidarity with struggling artists and get big warm glow inside as well as a hugely entertaining outcome.

Images for November: floods mile after mile along the Bristol trainline, and a spangly night in Bath when the storms finally abate.


Vox pop moment during the interval of The Double at Bath's Ustinov studio theatre: "It's a good play but I think enjoyable is the wrong word." Actually strictly speaking it's not even a play, it's a session of illustrated storytelling in the 'Transformation' season, adapted by director Laurence Boswell who confesses a lifelong fascination with this Dostoyevsky tale of paranoia in 19th Century Russian bureaucratic life. As with Chekhov and more especially Gogol's Diary of a Madman there's a universality about the mind-eroding frustrations of petty officialdom which stirs our pity: I also liked the minimalist set, brilliant manipulation of the life-size puppet, moments of humour and (rare) moments of stillness that allowed us ~ as theatre can ~ to engage with 'our hero' Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin rather than just observe his plight on animated pages. The cast are superb, especially Simon Scardifield as Golyadkin. Direction, with its multiple voices and wafting puppets and block-stacking, is energetic but a tad CBeebies in visual variety and determination not to let the action flag. The result is sad rather than poignant, clearly told rather than subtly shown. Worth a visit though, especially if the coming festivities make you empathise with a neurotic who self-medicates extensively and greets each new catastrophe with I knew this was coming!

Big relief and a nice warm feeling at Frome's Merlin AGM tonight as board chair Clare Hein reports the theatre has finally come through its recent financial woes. "We've had a tough time but now there's a real sense of celebration ~ it will be alright." This is fantastic news and massive credit to director Claudia Pepler and her team of tireless volunteers, and also to the new Community College Principal for his visionary commitment, and to everyone who swelled the audience numbers during that use-it-or-lose-it time. The message now is "we're here, and we're here to stay."
And so is Nevertheless Pub Theatre! our festive show Flaming Crackers features seven Frome Scriptwriters in "brand-new ten-minute scripts with a festive twist" to quote the flyer provided for us, like our top-class actors and London director, by our supportive co-producer Stepping Out Theatre Company. We're Upstairs at the Cornerhouse on Thursday December 13th then in Bristol at the Alma Tavern Theatre the following two nights and it's only a £iver for seventy minutes of original drama "light and dark, funny and touching, strange and surprising ~ a seasonal smorgasbord with a difference." Do come if you can.

Now here’s a thought. Since Shakespeare’s sonnets explore every aspect of love ~ passion, pain, tenderness, vulgarity, violence, madness, sadness, lust and loss ~ then maybe strung together they would add up to a play... or at least a theatrical performance. Swansea-based physical theatre company Volcano thought so, in fact Paul Davies deviser-director of L.O.V.E thought so back in 1992 and this twenty-year on revival is now touring with a new cast and “subtle and not-so-subtle” changes from the original. The genital rubbing & sniffing may come under the not-so-subtle heading, and perhaps also the extended snog-the-audience episode ~ not that I’m complaining, the kiss was lovely even though the Dark Lady did then swig deeply from my wine.
And this show doesn't claim to be a play as such, it's a series of dramatic cameos using Shirley Bassey songs, playfulness, balletic physicality, bawdy comedy and brutality too. The trio are amazing performers, especially Andrew Keay as the lovely boy, and bring ambiguous depths more often cruel than touching to the familiar sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? becomes a fight and My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun contemptuous homo banter. From seductive to (literally) biting, ardent to murderous, in Auden's words mortal, guilty, but entirely beautiful. There's madness, but maybe not like Will knew it, more Psycho than Ophelia, and by the end everyone is stripped to their undies ~ though white as a detergent ad and the Dark Lady's with a touch of Bridget Jones.  Back in 1993 this was hailed as dangerous theatre, obscene and erotic: maybe Beyonce videos on screen in every High Street Curries since then have redefined our terms but it’s exciting, skilful, performance with beautiful visuals and well worth seeing.

 Segueing loosely through Keats, who admired Shakespeare for his "Negative Capability, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" and inspired by a piece in the Indie, I want to suggest that people who complain Wikipedia isn't definitive or even unbiased are missing the point. We are, thankfully, moving away from the Age of Reason with its absurd focus on facts and certainty. So what if inaccuracies clamber in with more valid hypotheses? Reality is porous, truth is variable. We've all got a filter against the malicious, mendacious, or plain crazy: it's called instinctive intelligence. So bring on Wiki-world, and let's all remind ourselves how to use the mind-skills we used to have before the pernicious school system brainwashed us into believing learning meant being taught, education meant being told, and thinking meant second-guessing to conform. Scientists, or at least one esteemed geneticist, reckon our appraisal skills & hence intellect are in decline, maybe Wiki-chaos will show us the way back to evaluating situations as our ancestors did and honouring experiential learning over received wisdom.

 Looking ahead: Frome Scriptwriters are thrilled our next production, Flaming Crackers, short plays with a festive theme, will again be set alight onstage by a talented team of actors provided by Stepping Out Theatre Company ~ and this time our rehearsed-reading event will be on in Bristol too!   More details with next posting.
 And looking even further ahead, 2013 may be a vintage year for me for courses in spectacular places: check my website if you're interested, and pick between Spain, France, Greek islands, and two rather lovely venues where you don't need euros...

"Be ready for the Apocalypse" our neighbour announced when Steve and I arrived at our holiday apartment in Valle Gran Rey at La Gomera, littlest of the Canary Islands, expecting a relaxing break of sunshine and strolls. And Goyo did have a point. This idyllic environment of rustling palms and gardens of fruit trees and blossom was shockingly devastated: the fires that started during a tinder-dry August this year had smouldered on till the end of September. Hundreds of families were evacuated, scores of houses burned, and scorched trees and razed small-holdings all the way up the long ravine told of tragedy and terror. Even in the heart of the island, the primeval forests of Garajonay looked in some parts more like a war zone than a National Park. It felt like we'd come to a place that rain had forgotten.
 The next day the storm broke. The skies exploded in the same hour the front tyre on our hire car exploded, which would have been tricky except that extraordinarily fortuitously we were right outside the only garage on that mountain road. We decided to abort our planned walk, which was also fortuitous as most of it fell down the mountain that day, and we arrived home to find our road a lake and our path a waterfall. Goyo was jubilent: four years of dearth ended and all would be beautiful again, he said ~ and it certainly was awesome to see fresh verdancy unfolding daily.
Apart from Garajonay and the small townships most of La Gomera is ancient rock, which survives impassively in extraordinary formations from Jurassic times. We walked each day for hours: along coastal paths where blue skies merged with blue seas far below, on forest trails where twisted branches were frosted with long fronds of moss and lichen like witches hair, and on one memorable day we walked 800 metres above sea level on a stone path so steep I sometimes had to go on all fours like a spider-monkey. This was another occasion when, as on puncture day, it seemed the Goddess of La Gomera was looking out for us: we arrived eventually exhilarated but exhausted at Las Hayas to realise it had neither welcoming bar nor taxi option - but it did have a friendly-looking couple in a hire car just about to set off. They gave us a lift all the way back to Valle Gran Rey, negotiating the descent with exclamations of awe while we stared out murmuring near-disbelievingly We climbed all that... we must have been crazy.
We didn't just hike, of course. Valle Gran Rey with its hippy vibe & relaxed bohemian ambience isn't touristy at all by Tenerife standards but we found some nice cafes and restaurants down by the beaches. A favourite was El Mirador overlooking the bay, rightly proud of its fresh local produce.

And now our mythic journey is over, and I'm home again.
Great to arrive to good news from previous writing course participants: Teddy Goldstein's book Toxic Distortions has won the 2012 USA Best Book Award for Historical Fiction e-Books, and Cliff Lonsdale, initially inspired in September on Skyros, is celebrating his writer's journey with an excellent blog. Congratulations guys, and thanks for the appreciation but commitment and practice is all that really matters ~ which is why now I need to get back to writing...

It was full house at Tobacco Factory on Friday for The Paper Cinema's Odyssey, a feature-length version of the mythic journey in live animation, and if you wonder what that involves, it's lots of tiny paper cutouts magically manipulated by hand at the front of the stage to create an on-screen graphic novel of fast-moving amazing adventures. There's a brief demo here of the making of these preliminary elements. While the sleight-of-hand duo create these impressive visuals in real time before our eyes, rather wonderful live music and sound effects enhance the story. There's no dialogue, but a few helpful plot notes onscreen when the narrative becomes particularly dense. The audience were vociferously thrilled by it all, and especially enthusiastic when the hero's journey found contemporary references like hitchhiking as Easy Rider bikers drive past. An ambitious concept and an amazing performance, this BAC co-production is touring nationally all November and returns to London in February.

  And now for something completely different: four short plays at Salisbury Studio, a great little theatre space I was unaware of till Saturday when Ripped Script presented An Evening with David Ives. Like Christopher Durang's dramas combining wit with psychological bite, these Pythonesque pieces twisted logic and timescale to delirious extremes, drawing us into a world where monkeys struggle with writers' block while typing Hamlet, a casual cafe chat-up is a work in progress, and Leon Trotsky with an axe in his head reads of his death in the Encyclopaedia Britannica but remains unconvinced... all hugely entertaining, but carrying too a kernel of the real world, with its absurd but painful vanities. Directors Jon Nash & Laura Jasper and their team of four lively performers did a brilliant job with these comic gems from a contemporary American playwright who, I see from the New York Times is currently working with Stephen Sondheim on a new show - how great will that be!

Next posting will be from La Gomera... where? Here. We discovered it last winter, and heading back now for long walks through ancient forests and 20-plus temperatures... Enjoy the snow, southwest UK, we'll be thinking of you.

No Dickens character is ever ordinary. They are macabre, valiant, odious, saintly or brutal ~ victims or bullies in a vivid people-scape with no pallid shades, and thus ideal for Red Dog. This Stroud-based theatre company specialises in text-based plays with big immediate impact and is currently touring Dombey and Son which came to Bristol's Tobacco Factory last week. From the opening moment of the play ~ the explosive birth of Dombey’s son ~ colourful characters ricochet around like a fairground waltzer to create a salutory tale: the destructive power of greed and the redeeming power of love. Six superbly skilled actors created between them two dozen characters, some by poignant puppetry, some by extraordinarily absurd costume, and the city was convincingly contrived by stepladders and crates. With humour and pathos by the bucketload, this was the most emotionally moving theatrical experience I've had all year.

And now it's Samhein, the most important festival on our calendar, a magically potent time we call also Halloween when La Strada staff serve customers with not so much a smile as a bloody grimace. In the Cornerhouse, John Law's jazz session was interrupted by ghosts from 1685 as a vampiric Judge Jeffries strode in to harangue and finally hang a youth from Frome unjustly accused of supporting the rebel Duke of Monmouth... a powerful cameo penned by Frome Scriptwriter Eddie Young, and sadly based on truth. Twelve men of Frome were hanged right outside where the pub now stands, the road still called Gorehedge because of blood spilt there in the Orange Rebellion. Although another website throws doubt on this grim etymology, explaining that gore is an ancient name for a triangular field. Phew.
And well done Eddie, Jake Hight and hanging judge Howard Vause.  

A reading in Camden of a new play by my friend Diane Samuels is enough of a reason for a trip to London: The Arrest of Rosa Gold had a sell-out showing at the Jewish Museum, which contains among other treasures a record, both actual and virtual, of the popularity of Yiddish theatre in Britain. Diane’s play begins in 1969 when Rosa, already under surveillance for spying for 20 years, meets the woman who will revitalise her revolutionary spirit; the story traces the following 30 years and the consequences of this encounter for her family, with revelations about this idealistic, perhaps naïve, heroine’s passions continuing right to the end. A wonderfully sensitive team of actors vibrantly brought alive a fascinating story and an era that still casts a long shadow.
A Life by Hugh Leonard, on at that smashing little theatre in Earls Court The Finborough, was sold-out too, and also covered a full span from youthful hopes to the painful realism of old age.  This version of twentieth-century mores is more modest in scope though beautifully precise in detail as Drumm, an acidly-witty civil servant, confronts his past and mourns What I called principles was vanity, what I called friendship was malice in a superb script splendidly acted by the eight-strong cast headed by Hugh Ross who so reminded me of my father I wanted to wait by the stage door for him after.
Then, for as much contrast as another twentieth-century drama could offer, an evening at the Cockpit Theatre off Edgware Road for Rent, a rock musical with lashings of burlesque, queer-Glee set-pieces, and New York street tragedy. Jonathan Larson based his story of impoverished-artist life for the AIDS generation on La Bohème, and the student cast of Interval Productions brought heartfelt emotion to their triumphs and their tragedies, though a couple did look way off starving. Here's my favourites, Carlton Connell-Collins with his Angel, John McCrea.
 Back in Bristol after a weekend so packed with theatrical action even the clocks took an hour off, and now it's officially winter.

Writing drama isn't like writing fiction or poetry which have a kind of formal self-sufficiency that means, like those grownup kids the Guardian keeps doing features about, they never really leave you. They linger in books, magazines and anthologies, occasionally asserting their existence in an unexpected reference or a PLR payment. A play is brutally finite: there's the thrill of the production, climaxing in performance, and then people either see it or they don't, and then it's all over. How did it go? Great, thanks. Well, you can't say, like watching your tiny child through the school gates for a week and then never seeing it again. A nice review is comforting at such times, so thankyou WhatsOnStage for this one for Park and Ride at the Alma Tavern Theatre: "The evening begins with a short warm-hearted piece by Crysse Morrison about two strangers who form an instant emotional bond after meeting at a park and ride on the edge of the city. The two-hander follows Jack (Dan Maxwell) who dwells on the outskirts of society and who feels no sense of belonging having been brought up in various care homes. Jack is at the park and ride harbouring thoughts of suicide - after witnessing a particularly traumatic event - when into his world steps Fran (Dee Sadler) an unhappily married woman looking for more from life. This brief vignette about two lost souls is beautifully played by the two actors and has a script which is both natural and believable."
Back in Frome, the students of Michael Harper organised a Musical Soiree at East Woodlands Village Hall featuring pieces ranging from personalised Rumi to Madame Butterfly, all exquisitely and movingly sung. One of those precious evenings when there's a palpable sense of privilege to be present. Frome Poetry Cafe had that quality this time too ~ an all Open Mic event, since the last few sessions have featured guests so contributions from the floor have been constrained, but this time unusually few of the audience arrived rustling pages and it seemed at the break that like the double-ended candle we might not last the night. Luckily, true to the spirit of Edna St. Vincent Millay, words from all the poets did give a lovely light, with excellent debut performances by Rick Ryecroft and Karen Eberhardt-Shelton as well as wonderful sets from some of our favourite regular contributors - I found Rose Flint's prose-poem, inspired by caskets for the dead seen in Crete, especially thought-provoking at this time around Samhain when the veil between the lived and living worlds is thin and we move towards the darkest time of year. Stirring end to the evening at the Olive Tree with a brilliant set from Mark Abis Band.

And then to Bath, for a revival at Theatre Royal of The Judas Kiss, David Hare's 1998 play about the flawed heroism of Oscar Wilde. Rupert Everett, while not as beautiful as those iconic photographs of the playwright, is awesome in the central role in a fictional bio-pic that centres on two key evenings showing Wilde at his most passionately selfdestructive. Act 1 is the famous scene in the Cadogan hotel where, while all around him try to argue him into action before arrest, Wilde eulogises the 'hideous glamour and romance of destruction' and decides “I’m trapped in a narrative that has a life of its own” as he tucks into lobster. Act 2, after his years of penal servitude, shows the final evening with Bosie in Naples when once again Wilde submits to betrayal by the man he mysteriously loves ~ indeed if the script has a flaw it's the ongoing challenge to credibility of Wilde's devotion to so obnoxious and transparently self-seeking a character without even charm to redeem him. More credible is Wilde's assertion that "the governing principle of my life has been love," and director Neil Armfield commendably resisted overplaying the many Christ-like analogies of this figure so beloved by the poor and persecuted by the mighty.
     While this play is classic tragedy ~ the hero's hamartia his downfall ~ as with Wilde's own writing, the script is laced with witty aphorisms, firing on all syllables with quotable quotes and social commentary. Both acts open with terrifically erotic scenes and the nudity warning is seriously necessary in the second half - and I mean that in a good way. All the cast are superb (top tip: look out for Ben Hardy, possibly in the next Bond movie) and evocation of era is superb: set and costumes creating a muted tonal range mostly mahogany and bleach-white apart from the luminous glow of a Naples sunset. Lighting is fantastic, especially in the second half as Bosie's threatening shadow overwhelms the shrunken figure of his erstwhile lover.
     Attitudes and laws have changed since 1895 but truly great plays, however historical, chime in some way with contemporary life (Elizabeth I thought that too, which was why she kept a wary eye on Shakespeare). Here it's the recurrent theme of witness ~ the need to be heard and to be believed. It's shockingly plangent as Bosie insists to Oscar he could easily deny his conquests as unreliable witness: “These boys are just renters!" David Hare in interview as asked if he saw it as his duty to reflect issues of the day and answered firmly “No. Playwrights should write about whatever they like.” And on social attitudes to sexuality, he points to suicide figures. "Some things never change."

Very pleased with feedback so far for my short play Park and Ride, wonderfully brought to life by director Alison Comley with Dee Sadler and Dan Winter as the couple who meet in a location randomly decreed from the Bristol A-Z for my contribution to Theatre West's autumn season of new writing. "Big themes of loss, redemption, love and loneliness all satisfyingly embedded in flawed human lives. Very touching, poetic and neatly done." ~ "Vitality and humour... a chunk of unusual life"~ "really enjoyed, performances and direction were great. A powerful piece with a lot of layers to it." Trips to Alma Tavern Theatre for this and David Lane's longer play Rush (both nicely reviewed by Remote Goat) are preoccupying me this week, but my Nevertheless co-producer Rosie Finnegan has been even further afield: her short play The Chamber is in production with Goat Theatre Company for Halloween Night at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre in East London! What's next for the blazing aspirations of Frome's scriptwriters? you ask. I'll tell you: Flaming Crackers, our festive production at the Cornerhouse on December 13th. Put it in your diaries now!

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.”