Ghost story aficionados probably already know the name  R M Lloyd Parry as synonymous with thrilling dramatic exposition of the genre, but to me Count Magnus at the Brewery was a total sensation. The set is perfect to evoke late 19th Century gloom and slightly sinister candlelight, and his story-telling, in the style of a garrulous club member, makes it seem that every phrase has been chosen in the moment for this particular recounting of the M R James tale. Ghoulish spookiness is entwined into the narrative with elegant sparsity ~ only the occasional hint ("Mr Wraxall paid dearly for his curiosity...") until each dreaded and dreadful occurrence, never fully described but evoked with terrible sounds... "I heard one cry out and I heard one laugh, and if I cannot cease to remember those sounds I will never sleep again." Weird shit at its best.

Story-telling of a different kind from Big Wooden Horse whose half-term offering STUCK used songs and puppetry to embellish a direct-to-audience approach in this tale a tree-trapped kite requiring imagination & ingenuity to dislodge. The show is surprisingly close to Oliver Jeffers' picture book in imagery and Stan,6 and Joe,3 gave it thumbs-up from their booster-seats at Frome's Merlin theatre: Stan enjoyed the shouting and Joe the fire-engine but my favourite bit was the orangutango-dancer.

Who are these, coming to the sacrifice...  dancers, bounding, boundless, beauty and truth. “That piano is a bit annoying.” Green man, green knight, translucent glass drilled and stitched,  bounded, bonded, blind. Dangling man, medieval jouster, patchwork jester, triple shadowed, shifting in space as the piano plays, fusing with the movement of the dancers on the porcelain bowl.  Who is this, coming to the sacrifice, swaying slightly in the warm air, hum of projector, thrum of repeated solo piano note.. Whose is this glinting web, Penelope... Ariadne... ‘You are invited to contribute’ so I do, taking up more knitting needles like the sheep in Alice’s dream, or was it the queen? “I used to knit for my grandson - he’s 18 now.” Memories and myths entangle, nets and snares, and who knits up the sleeve of care? Current show at Black Swan Arts in Frome is SHIFT, a fascinating look at the relationship between craft & fine art ~ worth a look before 16th February especially for writers, as the gallery plans to start a group to respond to their exhibitions in words. There's a long tradition of wordsmiths, especially poets, finding inspiration in visual art so, after indulging in a some freeflow jottings at this show,  I'm looking forward to our pilot events next month ~ watch this space for details.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is a short story for children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ~ so short it's hard to see how Little Angel Theatre could manage, even by adding social parody, to stretch it to a full-length show with an interval. Well they do, using a gothic picture-book set where four clever puppeteers manipulate a large cast of villagers to tell the story of this fallen angel who mutely transforms the lives of all around him. Perhaps the cast is a bit too large: while all the figures are charming there's little character-differentiation and not always a chance for the kind of subtly-animated movement that makes skilled puppetry so striking. When this occurs it's superb and the relationship between the old man and the little boy, which is at the heart of the story, is exquisitely shown. And there's jokey fun,  especially with the chickens, but also a lot of wafting about. I loved the surprises at the start but everything gets more predictable as the parable of materialist corruption sets in, and an unscrupulous banker sits uneasily with the magic realism ~ but the very beautiful ending is worth waiting for. (BOV Studio & touring.)

Ferment is the 'artist development' strand of Bristol Old Vic and always a great chance to see experimental work in process ~ theatre arts as an extreme sport, you might say. I didn't see all 23 but the most extraordinary and awesome show for me was Just Because I Have A Launderette in My Thigh Doesn't Mean I'm Milkshake Wednesday, poet Byron Vincent's exploration of the 'fine line between insanity and genius', which pushes observational comedy of the former incontrovertibly into the territory of the latter. The show is mostly prerecorded or read, which seems at first odd for a performance poet whose unscripted fluencyis legendary, but against a clever filmic background this only enhances the impact of his material: his life-journey from an estate where if your tattoos were spelled right you got kicked as a pseudo-intellectual to incarceration on 5-minute suicide watch in an institution that, as his visiting mother blithely comments, would drive you bonkers if you weren't there already. "If a prison had sex with a hospital, the resultant wet patch would be the Psych ward" he sumarises, and ends with a list of side-effect warnings on medication aimed to lift the spirits ~ of which death seems one of the more benign ~ and concludes "Maybe it's better to engage with actual happiness and real suffering." He shuffles off while applause is still frantic, and when we emerge from the Studio theatre there's a January-sales-style rush for feedback forms & pens, and I wish I'd actually written more, but it's hard to explain why you hurt from laughing about the pain of being human.

Chasm of Sorrow gave us 35 minutes of a show in development by performance artist Andrew Dawson about the journey taken by Chekhov to the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin, off the coast of Siberia ~ "A prison the size of Scotland. Nobody went to Sakhalin voluntarily, until 1899, and that man was Anton Pavlovich Chekhov." It’s hard to know what genre to call this: not a play, but more than a slide-tape presentation, as Andrew Dawson narrates with affability and compassion ~ an odd combo, but effective ~ and evokes through physical movement the hard journeys and debilitating punitive constraints. Chekhov spent his sojourn interviewing all 10,000 of the island’s captives, 6 an hour, 17 hours a day: the resultant book didn’t create much stir in Moscow but the experience must have affected his plays, and undoubtedly shortened his life. His words, recorded by David Ricardo Pierce, were affecting but more profoundly moving were the portraits of prisoners with the same demon-facing eyes I saw in the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh last year.

Kilter, operating from a delivery van converted into a Mobile Sorting Office parked outside the theatre, provided light entertainment not only site-specific but audience-specific too. A trio of postal service conservationists sang on letter-related themes while we browsed correspondence on display and added to it by means provided ~ coloured pens and a trad typewriter. A charmingly nostalgic interlude, though I couldn’t assent to their rallying song: When was the last time you sent your love in an email? There are times when the medium isn't the message... :-*

The Second Coming Of Sue reintroduced the alter-ego of Dafydd Jones, a tragi-comic naif and virtuoso pianist whose tinklings and falsetto trills inspire irresistible chortling. The show lifts into another dimension when Sue confides chirpily “God came upon me early this year in the changing room at Debenhams. I was ever so pleased. He’s giving us another chance!” At her urging, the front row audience timidly pat the bump and after more banter Sue returns to the piano to sing a prayer of wonderment and hope for her new baby: Will you be a boy child, will be a lady, or will you be a bit of both, just like Paul O’Grady? which slowly becomes as exquisitely truthful of parental longings as it is absurdly funny. Sue is at her best when she demands & deserves more than your usual tranny. The Mrs-Thatcher-like control-freakery she exerts over her look-(not)alike band is great, as is her survival story as an unloved orphan ~ it’s the dark side that makes her farcical humour so brilliant. I hope that's the way this fantastic character continues to go.

Bristol-based Stepping Out Theatre Company's current production opened in London at the White Bear Theatre Kennington. Five Kinds of Silence has won two awards for writer Shelagh Stephenson and it's easy to see why: the story is heinous but the script glitters, lyrical and laconic by turn, and with startling dark humour from the opening moment when Susan and Janet shoot their father while their mother whimpers 'I should have done that.'  From this point we follow the fall-out as years of normalised abuse are peeled back to show what happens when two traumatised children grow up and meet and marry, and then there are two more children... 'We're just a case history' says Janet, learning the vocabulary of 'feeling' that will pacify baffled professionals, but to both girls words like vulnerable are useless. 'You just survive,' says Susan, 'You don’t tell anyone. Because it’s private.' These curt interviews are interspersed with richer imagery in their personal monologues ~ especially Billy, who recalls the night he met Mary: 'The world is black and cold but I’m taking her with me. She smiles. It’s better than killing the cat. Though somehow that’s muddled in too.' Billy is an immensely complex man as well as the savage dog of his dreams, and his daughters loved him ~ though as Janet says, it's sad he wasn't nicer so they wouldn't have to kill him.
This is a play that could be too harrowing to watch easily, but director Chris Loveless and a stunning cast have created a totally gripping piece of theatre which, while deeply moving, allows us to engage with compassion and even with hope. The relationship between the two daughters, superbly played with sensitive restraint by Violet Ryder and Olivia Dennis, is tender and truthful, and Zach Lee as Billy can change from beautiful to monstrous in a moment and is always charismatic. This extraordinary production runs to February 17th ~ it had pin-drop attention and passionate applause from the full-house first-night audience so if you're anywhere near London, book while you can.

A city break is a chance for theatre both on- and off- West End, and Privates on Parade is on, at the Noel Coward Theatre.  Filthy innuendo, men in frocks frolicking, what's not to like? I thought, and the show is indeed mostly hilarious froth & camp bubble but with with a rock of hard reality there below: the blundering folly of our 1940s conflict in Malaya ~ and war generally ~ and the crass racism & homophobia of the ruling classes who decreed & directed it. Hugely entertaining, with great performances from Simon Russell Beale as an endearing poof and Angus Wright as an obtuse god-bothering Major General.

Then to Southwark to the delightful little Chocolate Factory to see Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, another musical revival of a zesty show with a spike at the heart:  no deaths in this but a personal tragedy of wasted talent as musician Franklin Shepard ~ Mark Umbers is mesmeric in the role ~ looks back over a supernova-success story that's destroyed every relationship he valued. What's most poignant about this salutary fable of the relationship between art and money is that the timeline is in reverse, so we see with dreadful hindsight how every misjudgment and weak-willed trade-off has led irrevocably to the burnout of his real happiness. The production won Critics Circle Theatre Award and now even the extended run has sold out.

And finally before I leave London ~ though we have now actually, on the noisy late train from Paddington ~  a big-up to The Refinery where we had a fabulous supper presented all posh in a restaurant so lovely even the loo deserves special mention.

Back in Frome after Steptoe & Son for another retro tale of social misfits as Miracle Theatre bring Frankenstein! to Merlin theatre. This version is set in 1947 and ostensibly devised and performed by the Ffitch Repertory Players, allowing Ben Dyson to entertain us with his droll, clipped, absurd-chap voice as well as spoof BBC newsreel film about cryogenics and Housewives Choice theme music during monster-making. Frank(enstein) in this tale is a nerdy boffin who arrives at the Eternal Life Cryogenic Institute in time to hear its director announce he's "made an awful bish of things" and the bankrupt business is literally in meltdown with all its famous frozen clients rapidly defrosting. When Dr Schwindler lives up to his name and dashes off with the filched cash, his daughter Elizabeth helps Frank snatch a selection of prime parts ~ the brain of Noel Coward is one ~ to create a composite of assets and, using a very sharp knife, to split an atom and toaster-jumpstart their creation into life. Alas, prejudice against stitched-up monsters who talk like Noel Coward blights his new life. Like Steptoe he longs for a mate but the frozen hearts are now all thawed, though Elizabeth has a nice one... and thus only one human character survives for the final showdown in Patagonia, a struggle of worthy of Holmes and Moriarty which is appropriately ended by an avalanche. Flash forward to the future, and three deep-frozen bodies have been discovered and are about to be revived...
Miracle offer reliably accessible entertainment and are always popular with audiences, but this one for me is overlong and relies too much on the confidence of a clever cast. I've followed this company for years and seen them ignite classic scripts with insight & compassion as well as their trademark humour ~ their outrageous Shrew and passionate Romeo and Juliet were to me what Miracle did best ~ and I'd love to see a revival of their vintage style.

How did you celebrate the 200th birthday of Pride and Prejudice on Monday? You probably merely mused aloud on universal truths about single man with good fortunes. The Jane Austen Centre in Bath marked this epic bicentenary with a reading of the entire novel, streamed online throughout the day. "We're up to chapter 39 - we've just gone live to Arizona" said Readathon organiser David Lassman when Rosie and I arrived with Muriel Lavender in the evening for our designated chapters. Our bit was around the fallout from flighty Lydia running off with Wickham so it was more like Folly and Furore, with emotions running high and great dialogue. We mingled with the other actors and watched Bath University Media Productions student team sorting the technicals as David heroically held the event together for over fifteen hours ~ I tuned into the live link at 3am and there was still one chapter to go, with the social stream still feeding in appreciative comments from around the world. A great idea and fabulous fun to participate: big appreciation to the whole team, including Wendy and Lenca who kept the Green Room supplied with coffee and sandwiches while we played with the period costumes and waited our turns. When's the next bicentenary?

Steptoe and Son, generated in West Yorkshire, has been touring since last summer and arrived this week at Bristol Old Vic, continuing their long association with Kneehigh Theatre Company ~ “Good to be home” was the company’s Facebook message. Did you know Galton and Simpson dreamed up the idea for the TV series lying on their backs on a carpet? Me neither. Apparently a habit they’d used since they first met in a sanitorium as young men both with tuberculosis and began a collaboration that virtually invented the genre sit-com. Artistic Director Emma Rice adapted four episodes using the original scripts embellished them with trademark Kneehigh physicality ~ abrupt, energetic, and often macabre ~ each story demonstrating that Satrean hell combined with Godot-waiting loneliness made famous by two rag-and-bone man in a relationship that turns Forster’s famous epigram on its head. Only disconnect would be the mantra for Harold and Albert. Doesn’t sound much like a comedy put like that, and it isn’t really, it’s a tale full of fury and pathos that ultimately lacks variety, with Harold and Albert as trapped as Rimmer and Lister in their Red Dwarf space capsule but in a repetitive scenario. There are some lighter sequences, many provided by The Woman, an emblem of era and epitome of lost joy in all their longing dreams (brilliantly played by Kirsty Woodward.) Others come from a cleverly evocative soundtrack and dainty capering. But it takes a while not to miss those distinctive original voices, veering from sly triumph to bleak dejection ~ Dean Nolan's Harold, in particular, finds the belligerance but not the existential angst and delusions of glamour that Harry H Corbett embodied so well. The set is marvellous, an extreme version of the imagery of early episodes and there were tender moments of real poignancy but ultimately there's a mismatch: the dark physicality that Kneehigh does so well doesn’t really connect with scripts which expressed tenderly, terrifyingly, but also platitudinously, the dysfunction of ordinary life.

"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...

First BlahBlahBlah of the year ~ that's Bristol Old Vic's idea of an efficacious name for poetry performance ~ featured demurely lyrical Welsh bard Rhian Edwards and brilliant boisterous Scots political wit Elvis Mcgonagall. With definition-defying Byron Vincent topping & tailing the event, this event was one I wouldn't miss however dire the weather forecast (the Beast from the East still hasn't arrived southwest yet as I write, btw). Elvis laces his high-energy poems and polemics together with irresistibly funny comments on cultural icons like Kirstie Allsopp, Sarah Linden's jumpers, and Masterchef judging techniques.  I specially liked the Queen's Christmas Speech presented gangsta-rap stylee.

Speaking of poetry... next Frome Poetry Cafe is the Valentine special,on the theme of love in any of its guises ~ rhapsodic or cynical. How do I love thee? let's all count the ways... warily, scarily, wholeheartedly, departedly ~ come and share your style at the open-mic on February 13th. Deft & dazzling wordsmith Robbie Vane, who won the popular-vote prize in last year's love-in, is guest poet.
And speaking of writing generally... Chateau Ventenac, the superb-looking location in Languedoc where I'll be leading a session in October, invited my thoughts on creative holidays. Since I credit a writing course on Skyros for changing my life, I was happy to expound my theories for their blog. It's all true, too, so if your New Year Resolutions list is looking a bit spindly or samey (detox, tidy desk...) why not add Writing Holiday ~ somewhere gorgeous?

McCullin directed by Jacqui Morris ~ the only non-victim female featured in this candid retrospective ~ is on limited release so I was really glad it came to Bristol Watershed. Here's the whole story in pictures, from the 60s London teenage gangs that fast-laned him to big commissions to the revelations about Christian Phalangist atrocities in Palestine that got him banned from covering UK action in the Faulklands. "War is madness, mostly insanity and the rest is schizophrenia" says McCullin looking back on his three decades of photojournalism, "I became totally mad, running round like a tortured animal." Even as a self-confessed war-junkie he loathed the implicit voyeurism of his role and resisted both sentimentality and glorification in his war images. Howard Evans, his Sunday Times editor, says simply "He was conscience with a camera. He used his sensitivity to make people wake up." Courage and compassion aside, his photographs show extraordinary artistry. He speaks of intuiting a Gaudi moment of grief, of the Hogarthian imagery he found on Skid Row, and reveals moments of bizarre beauty as well as inconceivable brutality. In this chronological documentary we saw film footage from every major war-zone of the last fifty years but, painfully evocative though these moving images are, it's Don McCullin's stills which grab the soul of the experience ~ the horror, poignancy, bravery, and futility of armed conflict.
"Do you ever have nightmares?"
"Only in the day, remembering."
Way back before alleged 'compassion fatigue' decimated this genre, magazine images from Magnum photographers literally papered the walls of my first home and a 1982 assignment for Camera gave me a chance to interview Chris Steele-Perkins, whose sensational pictures of El Salvador were making ripples across Sunday morning breakfast-tables. He lived in Brixton, quite near where I grew up. Like McCullin, he seemed unconvinced of the value of photojournalism in conflict but in one hesitant moment he spoke of an 'illusion' that his witness might stop the fighting as something he carried around with him 'in a thimble'. Even more exciting than meeting Chris was the letter he sent me afterwards: "I just wanted to let you know I thought you managed to make a more articulate statement of my turgid ramblings than I had expected. So thanks, it's nice not to be hyped or turned into an equipment freak or a bullshitter or whatever fate often lies after an interview." That letter's in the scrapbook of things I'd save from a burning building.

To end on a different beat, it's time for Hatchet Job of the Year, the award that brings a deep breath of relief to every published writer unnamed and a bit of a giggle to all unpublished too. Perhaps the most scathing of the winning reviews is by Ron Charles in The Washington Post, finding  Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis a "ham-fisted novel" that "quickly falls apart.. as Amis's class mockery curdles and we’re left with a misanthropic vision of human suffering...  The problem is really one of initiative, even effort. Amis seems unwilling to exert more effort than it would take to change channel... serving up blanched stereotypes on the silver platter of his prose. “You go numb,” Lionel tells his nephew.  Halfway through, persistent readers will feel the same way."
The best of bad reviews, of course, rise sublimely above their source. Who now remembers that Dorothy Parker's sassy put-down This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly ~ it should be thrown with great force was inspired by Mussolini’s The Cardinal's Mistress?  And though it's amusing to see our own prejudices supported, no writer can evade the candour of subjectivity: Samuel Pepys found Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream "the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." Still, I'd take fairies over class snobbery any night.

One week into 2013, I seem to be still catching up on last year's cultural highlights. I finally got to see Skyfall, which I'm surprised no-one's yet noticed is a kind of remake of Cat Ballou as a Nintendo-graphics spy thriller with Daniel Craig taking the Lee Marvin role of the flaky hitman pulled out of drunken retirement by a beleaguered damsel - Dame Judy standing in for Jane Fonda here, though not quite so prettily. Entertaining though overlong.
And still online though perhaps not for long: Simon Amstell's show Numb which is genuine genius.  Starting from the familiar existential angst of Granma's House Simon builds gradually from shrill nerd to bold visionary, staying with his stand-up persona through some excellent strategies for world peace ~ "if you're going to have a flag, have a flag of a vagina, so then you can meet people and say "Hi, where're you from? Oh! Same as me, let's be friends!" ~ to undisguised profundity: "We need to feel as human beings, otherwise we will just consume and consume. Why have we nearly destroyed the earth? Because we felt alone, and it was there. But we're not alone, we're profoundly connected to each other."
Which is also the premise of Cosmic!, the show that Annabelle and I are currently devising for First Cut Theatre, inspired initially by our Cosmic Walk last summer. As Brian Swimme says, we're living in a chasm between the stories of the past and the new story from what we now know about the universe but haven't yet learnt to live. Let's hope this is the year we all begin to find a way.

What do you call this lull time between festivities ~ Crimbo Limbo? New Year's Eve-Eve? Surely our ancestors knew a name for this cusp between solstice fires and emergent new light which could touch the heart more than Sales start now... It's been a good time, though, for missed catch-ups, squelchy walks in flooded fields, and screen-slouching. Life of Pi is perfect: fabulous visuals and stupendous technical effects. If you've read the book you'll know the resolution is more enigmatic & the role of God(s) more complex, but the movie doesn't entirely smooth out the multilayered allegories or over-glamorise the central truth that, as TS Eliot said, Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Time for another year now... go well, and may your tigers go with you.
As TS Eliot also said:
"For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

As Mayan fables grabbed headlines from the usual Messianic one, festive celebrations here in Frome featured a swinging End of the World Christmas Party at the Cheese&Grain with much mesmeric music and as an added bonus the 'close-up magic' of Kieron Johnson.
Meanwhile in Bristol, Five Jars theatre company decided Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any ghoulish horror so Danann McAleer performed A Thin Ghost at the Alma Tavern Theatre, a selection of macabre tales by MR James which ~ especially disturbingly ~ all featured boys' boarding schools...  Bedtime appears particularly dangerous at this time of year, according to the festive shows in Bristol, what with undead boys flying into your room accompanied by vicious fairies, hungry Norwegian stepmothers pushing you out into the night forest, and paranoid nursery rhyme characters dragging you into a trunk with a wolf... Sleep well, children!

Recycled Stockings 2 by Show of Strength at the Southville Centre, however, achieved family fun without any shadows as three excellent actors (Angie Belcher, Oliver Millingham and Kim Hicks) delighted the children and entertained the adults with six simple but very funny scenarios. I especially enjoyed Santa's personal trainer, the boy stuck in going-to-granny's traffic, and the geriatric artificial tree yearning to be topped by a Lady GaGa fairy doll...

 And now the run-up to 25th is all over bar the flooding, I hope you're safe & dry and wish you everything you'd wish yourself for the end of this year and all of the next.

Sound Mind, neatly-named cabaret night for mental-health charity Mind at the Alma Tavern, pulled in some great acts including delicious acapella from Eirlys Rhiannon and gorgeous accompanied songs from Rebecca Cant. Highlight for me was a superb set from performance poet Sally Jenkinson ~ I would give you a sliver of her witty & lucent words but I dropped my bag down a gap at the back of the auditorium at the start of the show so wasn't able to make my usual sneaky notes. Trust me, she's awesome.

Also awesome, and with an even bigger audience: the all-male production of Twelfth Night at Apollo London in which Mark Rylance (Olivia) and Stephen Fry (Malvolio) have been gathering daisy-chains of rave reviews. Tim Carroll's stylish direction clarifies both the beautiful and the brutal, ranging from homo-erotic tenderness to South Park levels of comic violence. Mark Rylance is brilliant as a lustful and teetering Olivia, especially in an unforgettable manic Jerusalem moment of pike-wielding, and Stephen Fry brings human frailty to her beleaguered steward. Even from 'restricted' seating in the crows nest - sorry, balcony - an experience to treasure, and as part of the Stepping Out Theatre Company charabanc outing I had the bonus attraction of a photo-call with Mark, who is their patron, afterwards.

And then to the Queens Head for a festive supper before heading home through seasonal illuminations... Happy Christmas, everyone.

The Frome Scriptwriters' brief: write a play featuring a candle. The outcome: Flaming Crackers, 'seven short scripts with a festive twist, performed as rehearsed readings last week at The Cornerhouse Frome and the Alma Tavern Theatre Bristol to capacity - and very appreciative - audiences. This was another Nevertheless / Stepping Out Theatre Company collaboration, following our successful Festival venture last summer, and Rosie & I are delighted to have this professional input to our projects. Our writers ~ that's Morgan, Eddie, Tighe, Brenda, Paul, Rosie, and me ~ were able to follow the production process from director's first comments to public performance with costume & props, and finally with full lighting effects onstage.
Big thanks to Livi, Duncan, Danaan, Gerard, and Jasmine for bringing our characters to life, to director Chris, props & technician team Ann & Ali, and to Steve for suggesting a festive reprise for this pairing of writers and actors ~ full names for credit are listed under "Shows 2010-2012" on the Stepping Out website.
And the candle... was variously a symbol of rebellion, a scientific experiment, a song by Elton John, a moment of solace, the cause of a row, a glimmer of hope, and a gag for a failing showman, in plays equally varying in mood and style. "Light and dark, funny and touching, strange and surprising" the flyer promised, and I think we delivered.

Finally, something completely different: no account of local entertainment would be complete without a big-up for Frome's CobbleWobble, surely the only uphill cycle race held over several hours in which the winning time is 22.96 seconds. That was BMX pro rider Michal Prokop, who flashed past far too fast for me to photograph, but I did get snaps of some brave locals who managed a respectable half-minute for the slippery sprint up Catherine Hill. A brilliant event, typical of so much that happens in fabulous Frome: egalitarian, innovative, inclusive, creative, and slightly crackers.

Hunting Raven, Frome's popular independent bookshop took an enterprising leaf out of Bath's bookshops on Sunday, with a reading by art historian, poet & novelist Sue Hubbard from her latest book The Girl in White. This fictionalised biography tells the fascinating story of Paula Modersohn-Becker, late 19th Century German expressionist painter and intimate of Rilke who wrote Requiem for a Friend after her early death after childbirth.
 Don’t be afraid if I understand now, ah, 
it climbs in me: I can do no other,
 I must understand, even if I die of it.
Part of the fascination around Paula's life is the nonconformist spirit she showed in both her painting and her lifestyle ~ she joined a bohemian artists' colony and after her death was officially labelled a degenerate. Sue researched so exhaustively she claims she "sometimes felt like the puppy in the Andrex ad, all this stuff unwinding, how do you get to the end and find a form?"  Her answer was to write from the later perspective of her daughter Mathilde who, since she never knew her mother, is also researching Paula's story.
Hunting Raven will be open every Sunday till Christmas ~ an ideal opportunity to browse and buy without supporting grand-scale tax evasion. And while I'm beating the drum for local independents, Raves from the Grave is rated "music heaven" and Ellenbray Press has toys to make you giddy ~ you could restructure the town centre in Lego.

Moving randomly on, today's date is my chance to share a wonderful Erich Fromm quote I found posted on facebook (thanks Charty): “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence”.  The Ancient Mayan calendar apparently regards 12-12-12 as the beginning of a new cycle of evolution for humanity and the cosmos, heralding a momentous shift in the collective consciousness of the planet. I look forward to it wistfully.  Eric Fromm's words reminded me of that sensational Auden line "We must love one another or die" which I've now discovered (thanks Steve) the poet himself later rued as shamefully sentimental. He withdrew the poem from his collections and refused further permission to use it, but I'm far from alone in feeling huge resonance in the elegant magnificence of this laconic line: E M Forster in his political essays wrote of Auden "Because he once wrote 'We must love one another or die' he can command me to follow him", and the injunction remains in popular culture as an aspiration even if not a truth universally acknowledged. Auden is possibly my favourite poet so I'm baffled he recoiled so violently, and wonder if it was precisely that ~ recoil, like the kickback from a powerful gun connecting with irrevocable impact. So that's my message at 12am on 12/12/12: numbers come & go, but never underestimate the power of words. Happy New Cosmic Shift!