Midwinter Magic... and Monsters on the move!

Moominland Midwinter is the seasonal show at the egg in Bath, though Moominland isn’t a place of sparkling lights and jollity in winter. There’s solitude and scary trolls and a fearful Grope seeking solace she will never find, there’s slippery snow and breaking ice and people who eat all your jam. There’s loneliness and anxiety and danger and even death. Hattie Naylor’s brilliant adaptation baulks at none of Tove Janssen’s Nordic existentialist melancholy, creating quirky dialogue that can range from absurdity to despair without losing the rapt attention of the watching children. Pace of dramatic storytelling ~ aided by magical lighting effects and funky music ~ never flags, despite set pieces swooping on and off stage and characters changing size as they race from close range to mid-distance. The puppets themselves, made and manipulated by  Horse+Bamboo, are magical creatures full of personality and pathos, and effortlessly became the focus of our watching and listening; Little Mi, though clearly held on to a tea-tray by a jerseyed young woman, was as much in peril in the thaw as if she were a real child skating cracking ice. 
 I loved the show, and the four children I brought all loved it too: although three are considerably younger than the recommended age of 6, they remaining engrossed and fascinated throughout ~  even dashing out of the foyer Wendy House as soon as they heard the bell ring for Act 2 ~ now that’s an impressive indicator. Congratulations to all the creative team.

As snow falls on the egg stage, my mobile is silently bringing me the news that Media Monsters is now fully cast. Marc Geoffrey our director has a Yes from a fantastic trio from last week's auditions: Vincent Enderby, Robert Myer, and Paddy Navin are joining Olivia Dennis. Rehearsals start 6th January, preview in Frome 24th & 25th and then two weeks at Alma Tavern Theatre in Bristol from 28th January... It's all fantastically exciting, not least because becoming involved in production process is the best way to learn the craft of script-writing ~ I can already see some exchanges the actor doesn't need verbalised, so my red pen will come with me to first rehearsal... can't wait.

Mainly about performance..

Frome Poetry Cafe is always a sparkling way to start the week, like having champagne for breakfast, and this Monday night was a very special cuvée. Mell Oliver, our 'festival poet laureate' was on fizzing form, and Daisy Behagg, slightly startled herself to discover she was our 'surprise guest', showed exactly why she's this year's Bridport prize-winner. As this was our annual tie-in with the Merlin Theatre Christmas show, open-mic poems were on a theme of Alice's travel into the wonderland of imagination, and nine poets shared journeys lyrical, cynical, dramatic, witty, and full of rich imagery. Ali Campbell, actress and Merlin marketing officer, came to pick her personal favourite for 2 free tickets to the show, choosing Rick Ryman for his beautiful dreamlike Sonnet with rain. (I didn't get a good picture of that, so here's me with Mell, taken by Skip.) It was great to see new faces among the full-house at the Garden Cafe, and hear poetic voices both local and travelling specially to join us. The evening ended with Mell's unforgettable poem Learning the language of the sky: "basically about connection and learning to be together as one - the only thing I really know how to write about." Thanks to all who came, performed, and listened. 

Meanwhile at Merlin Theatre, Alice's journeys have begun. Tiny animals and playing cards are performed by different teams on alternate nights: I saw Team Hearts, all delightful especially the dormouse and the enchanting little Alice. The set is charming, enhanced by great lighting and effects, and the Cheshire Cat unforgettable: a vast Tenniel-style grin combined intermittently with enormous eyes and a tail, manipulated with feline slinkiness by a sextet of young puppeteers. Add a lugubrious Mock Turtle song, flamingo croquet dance and other fantasies from the imagination of Lewis Carroll, this added up to another show that producer Claudia Pepler and the whole creative team can be proud of.

Over in Bristol it's family-show time too, with The Little Mermaid at Bristol Old Vic, based on the Hans Anderson story but without the sombre ending. This version is billed as a tale of adventure, courage, and the pursuit of true love.  It’s also a tale of family dynamics psychologically explained as Mer-dad and Queen-mum analyse their interactions to us, and it's a Richard-Curtis-style hero’s journey with the shy Hugh-Grant-ish Prince questing a bride, and there's a bit of a trad panto as we hiss the witch and clap the mermaid back to life from her disintegration into bubbles (don't have nightmares on bath-night, kids!) with a nod to X-factor in the singing competition and a Jackanory thing going on too as the action is explained in voice-over...  So there's a lot in it, and despite fabulous sets, exquisite lighting, and some good comedic moments, it doesn't really flow.  Katie Moore is simply dazzling in the title role: she looks, sounds, and moves superbly ~ which makes it all the more of a mystery why she wasn’t allowed to move her own tail like her sisters instead of being carted around like a rolled-up rug delivered by two bell-hops. The nine actors were all faultless, but the adaptation and script didn’t do them justice and the production, at 2 hours 20 minutes, felt too often laboured and long.

Media Monsters update: Rosie & I spent Saturday at the Hen & Chickens in Bristol with director Marc Geoffrey at auditions, with the people who might become our characters in January when our double-bill goes onstage (24th & 25 in Frome then two weeks at the Alma Tavern Theatre, for those of you with next year's diary to hand). It's a strange experience, encountering different incarnations of people conceived in our heads, wondering which one will birth into our dramas. Olivia Dennis is already cast for both my play Fixing It and Rosie's, My Big Fat TV Bitch, so she had the surreal experience of flirting with seven Ricks and challenging three Glens. Marc was mega-impressive, running the day like a military operation from a corner-table smothered with CVs and printouts of selected scenes, while Rosie and I sat like kids at a panto, all big-eyed with excitement.  A fantastic shortlist, some awesome performances ~ final decision to be announced on Wednesday.... 

Extravaganza: a spectacular entertainment or production.

Other towns do Switching-on-the-Christmas-Lights. Frome has an Extravaganza. On a cold but fine night literally thousands lined the main road cheering as Jenson scorched up and down in his Formula 1 car doing donuts, and also more sedately in the Santander open-top, waving and sometimes dismounting to give a hug or an autograph. Oh, and he switched on some lights too ~ not that we cared, most of them were on already but we'd saved him a tree: a suitable pagan emblem for a demigod. "Frome is just a dot on the map but he's shown you can go out and conquer the world" declaimed the emotional compère introducing our most illustrious export, as the Youth Town Band played. I didn't get a close-up so nicked one from the BBC (who also made a great video for Points West) showing the switching-on moment with the Frome Mayor on the left, because I really like mentioning that Dicken is the youngest, tallest, Mayor in the country. Warm-up acts included bands, choirs, Muriel Lavender in a viridian corset, and the three sweet little winners of the Christmas card competition.

 In fact having a street party was such fun we did it all again next day, though without Jenson, but with street music and an amazing Food Fair at the Silk Mill where the yard was filled with stalls of amazing scoff ~ lush fish soup from La Paimpolaise ~ with a noon-till-late all-age party with blues & reggae disco. Frome Library edged in on the festivities discreetly by ensuring their evening talk on historical fiction had a focus on Christmas celebrations through the ages, with four local writers on the panel (Jenny Barden, David Lassman, Kylie Fitzpatrick and Tricia Wastvedt) all entertaining as well as interestingly informative. Eras ranged from Elizabethan 'Lords of Misrule' to Nazi suppression, and saw the first emergence of media-message impact: the picture of Prince Albert's decorated tree that changed England's festive focus from burning yule log to dressed pine forever...

And then we did it again, the street celebrations thing I mean not the library talk, as Sunday was Frome Super Market day with roads closed to traffic and open to stalls selling everything you could imagine to wear, give, eat, drink, or put on your bike. Mayor Dicken was out in a different role hawking ties ~ yes, if you're inspired by tales of the independent state of Frome, you can buy the tie: colours still available are bright blue, bright red, bright green & bright orange... bright yellow has sold out. Lots of tastings of local products, and the busking stage extra good this month with Tell-Tale Signs poguing out Fairy Tales of New York and world songs from massed voices of Jackdaws choir. And as the disco lights in the Silk Mill go out and the glittering street lights in town come on, we settle down on facebook with greenie grumblings about Buttonmania versus consumerism....
So to end this Frome-obsessive posting: photo-journalist Edward Johnson has created A Story of Frome on his gallery website. It's told entirely in portraits of locals who work creatively here, and I'm delighted to be included (penultimate picture) and to see some good friends there. I can think of several more who deserve a place, so hopefully there'll be a second gallery soon.

An elegant Betrayal...

Harold Pinter's Betrayal begins at the end, with the 'adulterous' couple Emma and Jerry meeting after their affair is over and her marriage has ended. Their brittle exchanges linger with an unease so infectious a woman behind me in the Merlin auditorium murmured "I think a prompter's needed." Sequential scenes told the story of their seven-year affair in reverse, showing the impact on Emma's husband Robert who is also Jerry's best friend.  Rebecca Pownall and Steven Clarke as the wayward duo and Pete Collis as the colluding husband all gave brilliant performances in this classy LCT touring production directed with razor-sharp precision by Michael Cabot.  The play looks terrific throughout, set against non-specific ruins and debris with characters hard-lit like Hockney couples, and with the same sense of emotional distance ~ I've used one of Hockney's paintings here, as the flyer image throbs with red-hot suggestiveness totally absent from the play. The love affair itself is a grey shadow of the past like the rubble around them: as audience-voyeurs we are granted no glimpses of exquisite intimacy, just key moments of destructive duplicity. The affair ends, choked with its own deceit, with not a bang but a bicker, as the story continues in retrospect, taking us on the journey of insight about which the protagonists themselves still seem oblivious. If the plot sounds dreary, the production is not: it sparkles with social-observational wit, and the absence of musical sound-track keeps a focus tightly on words ~ the said and the unsaid, the secrets, silences and lies that are Laing's knots binding these three together.

The script for Betrayal is notoriously based on Pinter's own affair with Joan Bakewell, and Jerry voices the playwright's anger at her husband's unvoiced knowledge which he saw as another, perhaps more profound, betrayal. It's inevitable to wonder in the final scene, when Emma allows Jerry to seduce her, whether his cosmic passion is expressed with lines the playwright used himself back in 1962 when everything in his world disintegrated and falling in love was "the only thing that has ever happened..." No-one who's been there would judge either the character or his creator, however forseeable the future. Superb revival, timeless masterpiece.

Nevertheless ventures and adventures

"Women have been taught that for us the earth is flat, and if we venture out we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off."
I don't often quote Andrea Dworkin,  anarchist, feminist & anti-war activist, but it seems appropriate for this posting which is all about Nevertheless Productions.  It's only three years since my amazingly dynamic, entrepreneurial and all-round gorgeous friend Rosie Finnegan asked me to join her in bringing pub theatre to Frome...  we had no funding, no production company, and no idea how this would work but nevertheless we went ahead using an upstairs room at the Lamb, now The Cornerhouse and probably the most popular venue in town.  Rosie and I made countless theatre trips to find shows with the kind of edgy writing and professional production values we wanted, and last year founded our own group, the brilliant Frome Scriptwriters, and also linked up with Bristol's inspirational Stepping Out Theatre Company.  We've now given Frome 12 productions, mostly sold out and all receiving enthusiastic audience feedback, and there's another show simmering: On Thursday & Friday December 19th & 20th you can enjoy an hour's original entertainment comprising short plays written by Frome Scriptwriters ~ and this one is definitely the best yet.  Festive Stockings features four 15 minute plays chosen by director Chris Loveless: Kate's Story by Eddie Young, Who is Santa? by Tim Addams, and Letter Home by Emma Stadon will be performed as rehearsed script-in-hand, and Ackroyd's Christmas Stocking by Alison Clink fully produced.  And we have a dream-team of actors: Olivia Dennis, Danann McAleer, Gerard Cooke, and Kim Hicks ~ so get your name on the list for a seat now!

And even before the tinsel is down Rosie and I will be deeply involved in another drama, which will be be premiered at The Cornerhouse before its 2-week run at Bristol's Alma Tavern Theatre 28th January to 8th February.  Rosie and I were commissioned by Stepping Out Theatre Company to write a double-bill, and Media Monsters is the result.  Director Marc Geoffrey is holding auditions on December 6th and rehearsals start early in the new year! Is there anything as exciting as seeing your play in a Casting Call in Theatre Bristol 'Jobs' section? Talk about Christmas coming early...

ACTORS WANTED - MEDIA MONSTERS

Salary: £300 per week Application Deadline: 30.11.13 17:00

Bristol

DREAMWEAVERS IN ASSOCIATION WITH STEPPING OUT AND CHRYSALIS THEATRE PRESENTS 

MEDIA MONSTERS

A double bill of new writing

Directed by Marc Geoffrey

MY BIG FAT TV BITCH by Rosie Finnegan

An original and comic satire on Reality Television 

and 

FIXING IT by Crysse Morrison

A complex, subtle and fascinating look at the erosion of personal ideals and the changing face of sexual mores over the last 40 years set against the background of the Jimmy Saville scandal.

Rehearsals begin 6th January 2014 

Performance dates : 

Fri 24th & Sat 25th January 2014 at The Corner House, Frome. 

Tue 28th January to Sat 8th February 2014 at The Alma Tavern Theatre, Clifton.

Trending this week: Deadly females

Frome faced the first frost of winter flamboyantly with a plethora of varied creative enterprises this weekend: Friday's brilliant Acoustic Plus night at the Cheese & Grain featured the legendary Bugs as well as Frome Afrobeat Project ~ a town-sponsored scheme for young musicians led by Lekan Babalola. Saturday was the 5th birthday of Deadly is the Female ~ internationally famed since Nigella Lawson's twitter endorsement~ celebrated in quirky baroque style with tequila cocktails and live mannequins in the window... great fun ~

~ and strangely surreal to go direct to Marian Bruce's exhibition a few doors away... "Studio Collection" is what the title suggests: an assembly of random items from the artist's working area, in various media. I've worked with Marian on several projects and it's almost impossible to find words to express the life-vision her work embodies or the dark energy that emanates.  The small pieces cramming The Parlour stir memories, evoke myths, and dig deep into feelings of human endurance and frailty. They are provocative, disturbing and inspirational. Picasso said art should 'bristle with razors' and these disempowered, dismembered, silent heads and small sewn-up bodies have that power.

Another woman artist's exhibition opening too: Charlotte Moore, taking classic paintings 'Off the Wall' at the Black Swan, presenting familiar images from art ~ mostly naked women ~ recreated as daubed figures on wire mesh, cut and layered to offer spaces for the intruding viewer. Words at the Black Swan group found much to discuss and debate in this challenging re-making of cultural iconography. Our responses when shaped into poetic form will displayed with the exhibition, which runs until 24th December.

And, loosely connected with surreal journeys through time & place, a quick plug for the next Frome Poetry Cafe on Monday December 2nd, themed to tie in with the Merlin Theatre winter show,  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  By then Frome will be all a-glitter with festive lights switched on by local hero Jenson Button, Nevertheless Productions will have moved into top gear with our seasonal Pub Theatre production Festive Stockings, and it won't be long before the mayhem begins...

Just when you thought it was safe to leave Transylvania, another irresistible beast...

What do you get when a born freak, a former beauty queen and an award-winning director tell the true story of Beauty and the Beast? asks the promo for this ONEOFUS/Improbable touring co-production visiting Bristol en route to London. The answer is a full house in BOV studio and a stunning show, impressive as much for its honesty, humour & humanity as for its startlingly erotic interpretation of this classic fairytale. Mat Fraser, probably UK’s best-known disabled actor, uses his deformity to become a beautiful beast to Julie Atlas Muz, burlesque artiste from Detroit, his feisty fairy-tale captive and real-life wife.

 “What better way to make a fairy tale than to fall in love?” Julie asks the audience at the start as the couple introduce themselves to us with an intimacy that becomes integrated with the performance as personal anecdotes and private moments in their own story are spliced into the legend. Silently assisting these two extraordinary performers, puppeteers Jonny Dixon and Jess Jones dexterously manipulate props and contribute much to the wit as well as the glamour of this amazing study of human emotions: fear, lust, loss, loneliness, tenderness, and finally redemption through love.
There’s a lot to laugh at too: from complicit looks to the audience at dramatic moments to a raunchy banquet scene which would make Tom Jones look like taking tea with Philip Larkin. The final scene strips any last vestige of vanilla from the traditional fantasy as bridal Beauty stares at her newly-transformed Prince Charming, yells “Where’s my beast?” and tears off both their clothes again ~ most of the story has been performed naked ~ to create a fittingly explicit finale with the puppeteers as rose-strewing cherubs to their erotic romance.  Mat and Julie are supernova stars, but it clearly took teamwork to devise this unforgettable show, with special credit to Philip Eddols for the atmospheric set, Kevin Pollard for exquisite costumes, and director Phelim McDermott.

Frome saw a small surge of sensuousness too, when the Lip Smacking Chocolate Festival arrived on Sunday to fill the Cheese & Grain with all things chocolatey, syropy, and luscious. Sacchariferous consumables are currently off limits for me but the aroma was ambrosial, and entrants in the lip-smacking limerick competition were olfactorarily inspired, according to judge Muriel Lavender. (I only made up one of those words, btw.) Here's my entry, declared by Mlle Lavender as quintessentially about her and thus winning a place in the runners-up:
If I was a champagne truffle
I'd lie round all day on a ruffle,
     Dance with Viennese Whirls,
     Flirt with Caramel Swirls ~
I bet that would cause a kerfuffle.
First prize went to Jackie Cornish aka Miss Marshmellow. I think it was a big box of chocolates...

Black metal, black magic, autumn sunshine

I had no plans to watch Andrew O'Neill is Distracted  at the Merlin until I saw him on Stuart Lee Presents, when attendance became irresistible - not a general response unfortunately, as Andrew had a sparse sample of Fromies to analyse in his what-kind-of-audience-are-you routine. 'Offensive, yes, but also politically acute,' he commented, pointedly, after a paedo gag didn't get us rollicking. His 1980s heavy metal references were a bit over our heads, too, but by the interval howls of mirth were rocking the empty-ish aisles. The first half of his act had delivered everything you could want from standup: sharp observational comedy combined with surrealism, delivered in a noisy, unpredictable way and very very funny.  The real impact came in the equally hilarious second half, when Andrew talked about being a transvestite, how he's dealt with stigma, and about his ADHD. He's come to enjoy both, he says, and encourages everyone to accept and welcome their own distractions ~ for their mental health's sake.  For a black-metal occultist comedian, Andrew O'Neill has big humanity and talks much sense.

Henry Walker and the Wheel of Death was adapted for theatre by director Shane Morgan from the novel Mr Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace. The author apparently agreed a title change was a good idea. Roughhouse Theatre took on this ambitious project, which was performed at Bath’s charming Rondo theatre. The story opens with profound and beautiful words taken from Carl Sagan's 'vision of the human future': Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark, to introduce this tale of a man first white then black, and his struggle to become a magician. Another fitting quote might be Tolstoy’s observation that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Specifically, Henry is unhappy: his mother is dying, his father is drinking, and his sister is besotted by a dog. Henry, well played at this stage by Dan Gaisford, unwittingly enters a Faustian pact with mysterious Mr Sebastian and discovers that by acquiring magical skills he has traded his beloved sister Hannah (excellently played by Madelaine Ryan.)  Much of the twisting plot offers metaphors for human life ~ as commented on, perhaps overmuch, by external narrators including a greek chorus on microphones side stage. Vast red curtains create a circus-like environment for the story as Henry changes persona, goes from riches to rags, and finally disappears but this "dark fairytale” is also an allegory of human life. Cue Sagan again: In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Or, as the narrator puts it: "You need to let go of the past when the things you have to remember are sad."
Interestingly, the original story is set in a Southern US town in the 1950s and starts with the disappearance, focussing on the search for the real Henry by three outsider-status circus friends. Possibly this, rather than featuring the change in Henry's pigmentation, might have offered more dramatic scope ~ but new approaches and bold ideas should always be applauded.

Fictional footnote: Enterprising Clare Reddaway, doyen of Bath's spoken-word Story Fridays, has branched into audio and I’m delighted one of my stories has been selected for recording. Sisterly Love will be on the Word in Your Ear website soon.
And before winter closes in on us like Andrew's menacing claw-hand descending on the guy in front row on Friday night, here's how Stourhead does autumn... 

Meanwhile in Transylvania...

Theatrical sensation of this autumn season was Dracula from Mark Bruce Company, which ended its highly-acclaimed tour in Merlin Theatre Frome this weekend. If you didn't 'kill for a ticket' as recommended by the Observer critic, you have missed a marvel. Erotic, beautiful, and violent, this adaptation arouses the all emotions evoked by Bram Stoker’s haunting classic before vampire tales became Twilighted. Without a word spoken, every dramatic element combines to tell the story: the music, atmospheric and eclectic, ranges from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to 'Down at the Old Bull & Bush', and the visual effects are sensational ~ set, lighting, costumes, masks, and props all superbly support the shifts of mood from Victorian propriety to the terrible allure of the dark forest beyond. But it's the dance which defines the characters and weaves the narrative threads, exploring the monstrous side of being human as well as the human side of being a monster. All the dancers are amazing but Jonathan Goddard in the title role is simply unforgettable: whether your Dracula is metaphorical or mythic, terrifying or irresistible, you'll find him here.

Frome goes everywhere...

Frome's Queen of burlesque Muriel Lavender last week went to Leinfelden-Echterdingen to compete at the World Beard and Moustache Championship and came home with a runner-up trophy. Her Whiskerina triumph is featured by Frome Standard with the venue located obliquely in 'Germany' but with some comely shots of our Muriel, whose lippy talents are now turning to chocolate as she'll be judging succulent limericks at the Chocolate Festival  on Sunday 17th November at the Cheese & Grain. Only a quid, have a go!

Travelling metaphorically even further afield, the exquisite mandalas on exhibition at La Strada this week have all been inspired by Tibetan art, all meticulously hand-painted by Frome musician Pete Gage. Like Muriel's beard, they're more complex than a mere copy: Pete introduces Celtic themes, graphic design skills learned at St Martin's Art College in the sixties, and striking colour combinations to create enigmatic pieces with depths and even movement below the surface of their immaculate precision. You can buy, and commission, through Pete's website.

Moving my virtual sat-nav to Bristol for this post's footnote (sorry about these appalling segueways, I'm finally feeling better so probably all part of the detox process) Nevertheless Pub Theatre prepares for our next production: Festive Stockings, an evening of short seasonal plays which will be premiered in The Cornerhouse and then professionally performed onstage at the Alma Tavern Theatre in Clifton.  Frome Scriptwriters have been fine-tuning their dramas at our last few workshops and Rosie & I now have ten script submissions to send to our director for his verdict on the final choice... more details soon!

Hi, November...

I've been avid to see Philomena since I first read about the true story that inspired it ~ the lost little boy and his mother's journey of atonement ~ so the first showing at the Westway on release day saw me seated in style in one of the much-coveted half-circle 'boxes' at the back (I mention this because Frome's wonderful independent cinema deserves a plug at every opportunity.) I've not read Martin Sixsmith's book, but Stephen Frears' film superbly told this moving personal tale. Judy Dench and Steve Coogan are both utterly brilliant ~ Martin Sixsmith writes he hopes his 'snootiness and self-absorbtion' are both exaggerated in the portrayal, but both the mother and the journalist are shown with sympathy not sentimentality, and their relationship is moving but never mawkish.  Rotten Tomatoes is succulent with critical acclaim ~ I specially like the Financial Times verdict: "This is a doleful, radiant, understated comedy of hope and faith. That's almost a definition of good British cinema". Tears and laughter is the general verdict, though one squashed tomato was chucked on grounds of anti-catholicism, which seems strange for a film that despite the harrowing, angry-making, truth about Church practice in the past is delicately assertive that things have improved... and so they bloody well should, since this was a baby-farm business model run on cruelty and hypocrisy (not my summary, the Guardian's.) Only occasionally does the journalist fail to swallow his atheism ~ as when exasperated by Philomena's unshakeable insistence on her 'sin' he demands "Why did God bestow on us a sexual desire that he wants us to resist - was it just to alleviate the extreme boredom of omnipotence?"

Nunney Acoustic Café on Sunday afternoon always provides great live music ~ with newspapers and scrummy food on the side ~ but this month was especially sensational, featuring among others David Waddington, Julian (Bugs) Hight, and the fabulous combo of Richard Kennedy and Pete Gage with a sumptuous & totally stunning blues set.   And rain doesn't stop outside play in Frome either: the streets were as crowded with witches, zombies, and vampires on Halloween as they were with shoppers for Sunday's lively stall-holders' Super Market. So I'll end this post with a Samhain scream and a morning rainbow.

That's the way to do it...

Winston on the Run, touring nationally to well-deserved starry acclaim, came to Frome's Merlin this week. This one-man show written & performed by Freddie Machin is set in 1899 when Winnie is an escaped prisoner-of-war "in a fiendish spot of bother, lost in the African savannah, wanted Dead or Alive." Addressing the audience as rats in his hide-out, he tells his story with dramatic use of lighting and sound design (Martin Thomas and Harri Chambers, congratulations - some posher companies could take notes) and incredibly, even though it sounds like a Boys Big Book of Brave Adventures, it's all taken from Winston Churchill's autobiography of his first 26 years. The yarns of daring-do are outrageous but this is no 2-dimensional hero: he's haunted by fears of his own futility and memories of his father's contempt, and there's enough parody of upper-class belligerent arrogance  to satisfy even a leftie pacifist like me.  "Dammit, I'm the son of a Lord," whimpers Winnie in frustration when thwarted in wild schemes or failing to impress as best-paid war-correspondent. It's a gripping play, acted with panache, energy and conviction, but I'm using this image of Freddie because he looks more like WC in life than in his fluffy orange wig. The post-show presentation was fascinating too, especially for any stage writer as it included an account of the Fol Espoir development process:  Freddie and co-creator John Walton used a Scratch performances all the way to Edinburgh as "you make more discoveries on stage ~ a relationship with audience is what moves a show on."

Still on the subject of top tips from practitioners, a new series on Frome FM entitled Best Job in the World  launched with Matthew Life-on-Mars Graham about his scriptwriting career. Matt's experience is with screens small and large, but much of what he said is sage for stage too.  To wit, the need for re-drafting several times, and then letting the director tweak too... "Is there a good way to get started?" asked interviewer Phil Moakes. "Yes. Write. If you're not writing, you're not passionate about it. I don't see writing as a career choice, it's something you have to do." Great words... and a good excuse for another glimpse of overweight, nicotine-stained, bordering-alcoholic Gene Hunt.  

News from the Western front...

Dawn Gorman runs Bradford-on-Avon's successful and friendly Words & Ears poetry cafe with a visiting guest poet each month, but on Monday it was her turn to feature at the UK launch Mend and Hone.  US publishers toadlily press selected four entrants from their annual competition for this anthology, and Dawn is the first English poet to feature in what one reviewer has called "an astonishing chord of poetic voices." Dawn sees her pieces as 'journeys through an emotional landscape' and spoke of the importance of finding 'sacred space' as well as her New York launch party at the Poet's House in Soho Manhattan, which certainly sounded a long and possibly emotional journey from the coach-house at the Swan Inn. Ten more poets then stepped up to the virtual mic to share a range of readings on topics from apple trees to Temple Meads, including an amazing personal response to a cancer diagnosis from Andy Fawthrop ~ do take a look at his blog and scroll down to "Green".

Exeter's unique clowning-theatre group Navet Bete is touring with Once Upon a Time In the West, the current chaotic & hilarious show devised by this highly original, hi-energy team.  Using gymnastic physicality and extreme facial acting, with plot twists as unexpected and deadly as Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, the lads deliver everything you could want from a Wild West parody and more: a hero’s journey, gunfights, baddies, corruption, jeopardy,  marshmallows, a banjo-playing cactus… Unbounded by their quartet status, they take on multiple roles in absurd ensemble scenes, while successfully maintaining a just-about coherent storyline for their younger viewers ("He's not a very good Mayor" a small girl announced audibly and accurately as one cowboy dangled another upside-down by his heels) ~ indeed, audience participation provided some of the comic highlights and the actors are often at their funniest adlibbing and upstaging each other. There's a bit too much pooping for my taste but I guess if you pulled away any individual thread the extraordinary energy might unravel entirely, so best to just enjoy it all, and a full house at The Egg in Bath on Saturday vociferously did just that. Next up, A Christmas Carol at the Barbican throughout December ~ I'm already contemplating a winter trip to Plymouth...

Flimsiest of links for my final footnote this week: as a visual masterclass in establishing genre and raising expectations, the opening sequence of Ambassadors is neat, effective, and very funny.

Great Expectations...

Great Expectations is one of Dicken's gloomiest stories, the tale of a poor orphan whose journey is not to riches but mistakes and misplaced hopes, humiliation, debt, and loss of all those he loves. Quite a challenge, then, to create an evening's entertainment from such a theme, so it's not surprising the Bristol Old Vic current production has met some reservations from audiences.
The main problem is that Neil Bartlett’s adaptation couldn’t seem to decide whether this was story-telling or theatre. Some scenes are theatrical, like the entertaining lesson in etiquette Pip receives from Herbert Pocket on arrival in London, and the unforgettable conflagration of Miss Haversham, but mostly it's left to Pip ~ taller and paler than everyone else which makes him seem lost in an Alice-in-Wonderlandesque revererie of the past ~ to relate long sections explaining plot and describing feelings.
There is much to appreciate though, like the evocation of those classic illustrations by Seymour in the monochrome costumes, and some excellent performances: Adjoah Andoh deserves her accolades for a superbly scary Miss Haversham, Martin Bassindale is a delight as Herbert Pocket, and Tom Canton an impressive Pip.  But there are other problems: the overwhelming sound design, the awkward use of entries and exits (nipping in and out of peony-pink Narnia-like wardrobe doors as the alternative to a long walk across a bleak set)  and the lack of any glamour, however gothic or perverse, to contrast with Pip’s austere childhood. And Estella seemed more like the sour little girl from The Secret Garden than an object of aspiration. This was a show with a lot of darkness and a lot of sadness and quite a lot of buckets of water. We end as we began, with adult Pip washing his hands, possibly biblically, until Estella's return activates a loud sawing sound which, if it was the file that cut Magwitch’s chain and set this bleak story in motion, was a fittingly cerebral end to a story full of fine detail and narrative but ultimately skimpy on visceral feeling.

words & music, words & art, words & lions

Moving around in the outside world after my prolonged demi-incarceration is wonderful, like having a house-arrest sentence lifted. I'm still cautious, replacing wild dancing at the Silk Milk with the newly-discovered joy of Strictly Come Dancing ~ don't judge me till you've slouched a mile in my slippers ~ but daytime activities are back on the menu. So on Saturday afternoon I was down at Crocker & Woods coffee shop in Catherine Hill to hear Pete Gage playing fabulous 12-bar blues, and on Sunday went along to a superb poetry workshop led by George Szirtes at the Holburne Museum in Bath. Interestingly, George's guidance resonated closely with Seamus Moran's words on Friday about the artist's entire life coming out in his work: The shape of a poem, George suggests, is "haunted" by the stuff around it - "all the stuff of our life which we bring to it." He used the analogy of a perfectly placed goal shot being described as sheer poetry and focussed on the 'playful' element of writing. "Don't be be burdened down ~ there's this impulse to be significant, to seek for admirable poetic qualities. Be playful!"
So we did - and I took this notion to my Words at the Black Swan workshop at Seamus' exhibition that evening. Nine imaginative writers shared responses to the imagery and 'played' with the notion of creating 'moulded' patterns in words, with some stunning responses which will all be posted on our facebook site and displayed in the Gallery while the exhibition lasts, so do take a look next time you're at the market or in Divas.

Luke Wright brought his latest show Essex Lion to Bristol last night: it had glow-stick reviews (I nicked that image from Anna Freeman, good one eh?) in Edinburgh but this Blahblahblah performance Luke reckoned as his best night yet.  Luke's lion is lifted from last year's news item about a spurious siting, and he takes as link theme to a diversity of character stories ~ hilariously satiric, angrily political, or unexpectedly compassionate ~ "the things we see because we want to see them." As well as rapid-fire rhyming, striking imagery, and sublime turns of phrase, Luke's observational comedy is never far from self-deprecating and it's this quality that makes his flamboyant style work so well. Whether he's pretending to strut in Cuban heels, parodying his penchant for posh plumbers or recalling teenage delusions, he reminds us that we all share the same conviction as the Essex lion spotter: how can a thing that makes you feel / be anything but fucking REAL?

Final footnote: congratulations & big virtual bouquet to my co-participant at the Holburne workshop Daisy Behagg who has won the Bridport Prize for best poem, viz: praise from judge Wendy Cope and a cheque for £5000. Wow.

Two openings and a wine tasting

Séamus Moran, currently exhibiting at Black Swan Arts, says most of his work is about capturing a non-representational presence, which is interesting as much of it is cast from wood-knots and some uses natural elements like feathers, and even an apple. It's the artistic process that shifts his imagery into fantasy ~ a word Séamus agrees resonates for him: “Fantasy is what's in your head ~ all the things that go into your life come out eventually.” So these constructions, each unrepeatable, created by mouldings from hundreds of casts, are distorted into patterns that evoke gothic armour, rituals from medieval religion, myths and fairytales. There's a feathered piece that looks like a charred Icarus, and ~ my favourite, pictured here ~ a tangled pattern that could be the thorn forest Sleeping Beauty's prince strode through on his rescue quest... it looks very like the Arthur Rackham illustrations in my 1920 copy, anyway.  This one's called Decade, because "it took ages ~ it started from a drawing and when I'd got all the mouldings in I put the brambles through it because I wanted that scribblyness back."

Then on to Rook Lane Chapel, where artist David Chandler is showing I came, I saw, i-Pad, a delightful collection of atmospheric images from wine-growing regions of France sponsored by Yapps. David's website has some thoughts about creativity as useful to the writer as to the visual artist: Art is not a hobby, it is a life skill... the artist ...works with the treasures that the rest of humanity discards; reaches to the heart of the world and cherishes the experience of living.

The language of love

St James Vault in Bath was crowded on Monday night for Poetry & a Pint where Philip Gross read from his latest collections ~ with some gems on the open mic too, notably from Rose Flint, David Johnson and Stephen Payne. Philip's main theme was family routes, rather than roots, and his father's never-talked-of journey from Estonia to England and the poignancy of his father's final days deserted by all five languages he'd once known. The poems are about silence and absence, using extreme precision of language in so visceral a way that listening becomes more kinesthetic than aural. Philip's introductions are profound too, evoking his childhood realisation that 'silence is a language of its own, always quivering with something else like anger... my father passed on a silence the exact size and shape of what he was not saying.'  The passion in his quest to find words for what is unspoken evokes and then transcends the relationship he describes, reaching out to that universal sense of the tremendous / silent language we may some day speak /or be?

Still in Bath, the Ustinov new season features three plays from the Spanish Golden Age ~ the era of 'comedia nueva', a radical new form which allowed tragic & comic elements, kings & commoners, and varied verse forms all in the same play.  A Lady of Little Sense was written 400 years ago by Lope de Vega using this formula, and this dazzling new translation by David Johnston joyfully combines farce and social satire in a fast-paced romantic comedy as beautifully lit and dressed as if Velazquez had painted every scene. Imagine a version of The Taming of the Shrew in which both sisters need taming by suitors whose eyes are fixed solely on the dowry, with the added twist that while one is sour the other is totally bonkers. It's almost beyond belief that the power of love can transform an autistic simpleton into a woman of passionate eloquence and dignity, but this is the happy transformation that occurs during the interval ~ not that Finea gets any appreciation from her louche but luscious lover Laurencio, who panics that the suitor who previously spurned her may now reclaim her. "I was safe in your simplicity" he scolds her, "I am destroyed. Why on earth did you learn to speak?" The outrageously non-feminist attitudes of all the men would be  shocking if they weren't so absurd and frankly funny. A clever set, pageantry, duelling, dance and song all enhanced this brilliant production directed by Laurence Boswell: some of the clowning was a tad OTT but the high energy and superb acting of the entire cast made this antique comedy of manners a delight ~ and special praise to Frances McNamee so gorgeous as love-cured Finea it was almost possible to believe Laurencio's noble protestation:
Love makes us greater than we are.
What love touches, love transforms; 
where it plants desire its roots split stone. 
If we love well, then we live well. 
And once Finea begins to love,
love will begin to transform Finea. 

Out of the tunnel...

By Saturday night I was just about recovered enough from my epic malaise to manage Front-of-House duties at the Cornerhouse for the Stepping Out production of Diary of a Madman which Nevertheless Pub Theatre hosted for two nights. Gogol's account of paranoia and the treatment of madness remains a classic dark comedy piece, and Anthony Hoskins held a full house gripped. Feedback forms enthused: Great acting and writing, very moving, disturbing, real... Absolutely convincing and powerful descent into madness ~ and we had facebook accolades too: Great pub theatre again. Love those evenings.... So cool to have quality pub theatre here in Frome! 
After the hectic clash of weekend productions life has quietened, though feedback is still coming through for both ~ my favourite Muffin Man email verdict read: "funny, astute, truthful, witty, beautifully structured, and a lovely playfulness about it that had the audience beaming with joy." 

Creative life in Frome never quietens, of course. Sunday night at the Westway cinema celebrated some of the work of local independent film makers, including Greenspin, a clever video-poem by Helen Moore animated by Howard Vause which recently won an award at the Liberated Words festival at the Arnolfini. This event, musically hosted by Sara Coffield, also included the official screening of Tales of the Tunnels which was filmed during Frome Festival under the tunnels of the town while watched by an audience paddled in by the Canoe Club.  Andrew Shackleton, of Recondite Spaces site-specific production company, had the concept of a mythical version of a medieval morality play about man's disconnection with nature and the option of return to harmony, and asked Frome Scriptwriters to create the dialogue. The result was one of the sell-out successes of the summer: a combination of unique setting, great musicality and fantastic costumes all adding to the lyrical, sometimes comical, thought-provoking symbolism of the script, and the movie captures it all.

"Fantastic theatre.." ~ twitter has spoken!

 I made it to the one-day intensive rehearsal of my 'cheeky Short Trip' as Venue, Tom Phillips, and Theatre West et al have been tweeting Muffin Man, playing before Tom's second week of 100 Miles From Timbuktu. Seeing a director working with the actors to lift your play off the page is a gold-dust experience for any writer: Alison Farina's approach is to focus on the interplay between public and private personas at the heart of my play, interrogating Meghan Leslie and Andrew Kingston to find the subtext "which is how you get to the emotional truth". Fascinating.
This is week 2 of extreme convalescence, and I'm still judiciously jettisoning a lot of activities... frustrating but Virusgate has made this essential. Not, obviously, jettisoning my first night! It was great to have family & friends joining me at the Alma Tavern Theatre to watch both my play and the main feature:  100 Miles North of Timbuktu.

Tom's play is based on an intriguing premise:If you could sit at your laptop and change the weather anywhere in the world, what would you do? Create a little light mist to beautify Lake Windermere for a poetry conference? Arrange for a shower to spoil school sports day, or sunshine to glamorise a wedding? Genius nerd Zac is inundated with such requests when the world discovers he can make it rain in the Sahara, but his partner Pete knows the lucrative way to go: “Offensive weather, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction!” It's an offer the MOD can’t refuse, but as ‘Whatsisface who split the atom’ also found, such forces once unleashed can go unstoppably beyond control… this is the darker side of Tom Phillips’ chaotic, clever, farce set in a seedy office in Chapel Street, with Marc Geoffrey as Zac, Piers Wehner as social-media manipulator Pete and Kirsty Cox as Clare their MOD chum. Directed by Hannah Drake with lots of witty visual detail, the story builds up to a frenetic climax reminiscent of Young Ones anarchy combined with quite a bit of Walmington-on-Sea ‘don’t panic’ mania… a uniquely original concept ingeniously developed in a sharp script which is thought-provoking as well as very funny.

Closer each day... to my 'short trip' play

Tom Phillips' play has opened Theatre West’s autumn season to great acclaim with Venue's reviewer giving four-&-a-half stars and declaring "The bar has been set cloud-high.'  So I'm thrilled that next week my Muffin Man will be the "short trip" before Tom's comedy 100 Miles North of Timbuktu.  Director Alison Farina has cast my couple: Andrew Kingston and Meghan Leslie, both members of the team who create Closer Each Day, Bristol's "Improvised Soap Opera".  Intensive rehearsals this Sunday!

And suddenly production involvements are coming not in single spies but in battalions, as Claudius might have put it. Salisbury Fringe next weekend is featuring our Nevertheless Pub Theatre production of When She Imagines, written by Frome Scriptwriters and directed by Rosie Finnegan, plus a Bootleg performance of Girl with the Blue Hair written by Rosie as well as her new monologue Sons of War, written especially for this festival. And before Muffin Man finishes it's week-long run,  Diary of a Madman in a new touring production from Stepping Out is coming to The Cornerhouse, our pub theatre here in Frome. Wow.

Meanwhile, my convalescence teeters on like a unicyclist on a slackwire, determined but unsteady. I've had to cancel loads ~ like seeing the excellent-sounding production of Sweeney Todd here in Frome, as well as joining Rosie for her triple-triumph in Salisbury, and missed all celebrations for National Poetry day.

As a positive footnote: research reported in The Guardian suggests a healthy interest in plays among younger people, who are far more likely to go to the theatre than 45-55 year olds. (87% compared to 63%)  Ticketmaster, who carried out the survey, noticed a trend "towards a younger and less affluent customer base", and found that last year more people went to the theatre than to a music concert or a sporting events. Nevertheless Pub Theatre is proud to play its part in keeping ticket prices down and quality up, so if you're anywhere near Frome October 11th & 12th, come and see Gogol's "surreal, heartbreaking, hilarious" masterpiece at The Cornerhouse. Less than the cost of a couple of drinks... phone to save a seat or just turn up for 8pm.

That was the week that wasn't.

Rose Flint and Graham Hartill are an awesome combo and Frome's Poetry Cafe was privileged to welcome both as guests at our Equinox session. They've both published collections to critical acclaim and both work on the Creative Writing for Therapy course in Bristol. Graham has worked extensively in prisons too, and believes 'poetry pops up like mushrooms in unexpected places.'
As well as two strong sets each from our guests, we had nine great readings, from popular local poets like Helen Moore, Rick Rycroft and Linda Perry as well as some fine debut performers.

Since that night I have been histrionically ill all week ~ not me being histrionic, the virus has been histrionic, it's a Demon Diva. The call-out doctor (what an amazing service! big thumbs up to NHS) diagnosed a triple whammy of causes each one of which would have been quite enough thankyou and maybe not left me shivering and sweating simultaneously, muzzy-headed and fumbling around like a geriatric zombie.I knew it was just a virus but it felt more like I'd had a mini-stroke or a mega-accident with brain injury - I couldn’t seem to find a way to get back into me... So, in short, my week was simply cancelled.

I'll leave you with this nice quote from Philip Pullman in the Journal of the Society of Authors: 
"Politicians talk about 'the basics', by which they mean the ability to spell correctly and write grammatically. But that's not basic at all. You can correct that sort of thing at the last minute. What is truly basic is the attitude to language from the way you're brought into it. .... Picture books do more than anything else to help this happen - if we let them."