A Stardust night and days of Spring sunshine

I've been wanting to see Bristol's award-winning Wardrobe Ensemble since this young company moved to their classy  new venue in the Old Market and, as I remember 1972 as extremely enjoyable, their current production seemed ideal. 1972: The Future of Sex focuses on three couples and one loner on the night Ziggy Stardust first invaded the nation's living rooms.  It's a time of redefining boundaries but exciting new freedoms bring kickbacks too, and hints of darker times ahead: homophobia, prevalence of porn, rifts in the sisterhood, continuing troubles for transgendered... the show is determined not to be naïve and there are several interesting interjections along the permissive way, like a brief history of porn from paleolithic times, and equality struggles since Mary Wollstoncraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Every romp is counterposed by reminders that new freedoms were scary and demanded new responses from both sexes - and men too have a right to say no to cunilingus or yes to cross-dressing.

But this is theatre not a thesis,  and what works brilliantly is the high-energy cleverly-choreographed physical comedy (especially the orgasms), fabulous live soundtrack (Tom Crosley-Thorne), a great cast (James Newton outstanding both as transgendered Anton and as 'not cool' Michael bombarded by space hoppers). As social commentary it's astute on many points - definitely with the scenario of 'History Man'-style Sociology lecturer and ardent student - but looking back, though conceding confusion and general randiness, I 'd say the media manipulation came later on, like Thatcher, and we were more self-aware than the kids in the Wardrobe give us credit for... But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Devised by directors Tom Brennan and Jesse Jones together with the cast, 1972: The Future of Sex goes on national tour after its sell-out run in Bristol as part of Tobacco Factory Theatres Beyond.  I was lucky to squeeze a ticket (or rather a hand-stamp, this is pub theatre after all) on Thursday which turned out a popular night for theatre directors: in my row also were BOV's Tom Morris and Tobacco Factory's Ali Roberts, who's about to make an our-loss/their-gain move to become Artistic Director at Kneehigh Theatre.

Roots Session at the Grain Bar this week featured We Used To Make Things, a classy London band who always get a great welcome in Frome, superbly supported by Kirsty Clinch.

The Black Swan Arts Young Open competition was judged on Saturday in three ages-groups between 8 and 19, and showed an exciting range and creativity of subject, interpretation, and medium.  Imaginative strong images jostled with charmingly colourful 3-D pieces in a dazzling display ~ congratulations to everyone involved, including the gallery curators.

Also on the subject of art appreciation, our Frome ekphrastic poetry group Words at the Black Swan has, like the Wardrobe ensemble & hopefully similarly successfully, moved to new premises in Cordero Lounge in the precinct. Frome Word Gallery, as we are now, will run monthly art-inspired workshops but no longer tied in with the Sunday market and responding to different exhibitions in the town.  Rebecca Brewin led the first session around the in-house art, with some fascinating responses.  

And to end this post, here's Max Moody soundtracking the Barefoot Boogie at the Bennett Centre on Saturday night.

And so to London.. and Shanklin... by ferry, bus, and train.

Shanklin in February has a quaint 1950s charm but the wind along the front last weekend was razor-sharp ~ that stuff on the beach is froth whipped up by swirling waves. But The Grange has a wood fire & constant supplies of coffee and biscuits, and my amazing writing group were wonderfully focussed and delightfully inventive in every challenge.
London on Tuesday after the Isle of Wight seemed like time-travel, the city so changed from the place I grew up in.
By bus to Trafalgar Square to revisit the Fourth Plinth where I recited poetry for an hour during the 2009 One and Other project, to revisit my favourite painting in the National Gallery ~ Seurat's Bathers at Asnières ~ then meander via cheesy Covent Garden & vibrant Gerrard Street to Soho Theatre for Luke Wright's one-man show What I Learned from Johnny Bevan. It's a compelling piece powerfully performed, a harshly truthful survey of a lifetime landscape both political and personal, and Luke deservedly won awards for both his 'poetic, pulsating' writing and his 'hurricane of a performance'.  And it's now nominated for an Off West End award too.
 I was sleep-overing with Hazel Carey, whose extraordinary memoir I've been privileged to be involved with. Hazel has been inspirational through her work in communities & holistic centres like Skyros, and was a major spokesperson for the South African artistic heritage: her story, compiled through many voices, is fascinating. The Monti Wa Marumo event in Brixton thirty years ago was her initiative, and this passion for integration and creativity she identifies as Ubuntu - a way of living through other people. She quotes Taggore: “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.” 

Before it was time to head home, Hazel

showed me round her stamping ground of Hampstead including a visit to Keats House where you can see the poet's personal copy of Paradise Lost as well as portraits of Fanny and his friends, watch a film of his life, and try on costumes of his era... here's me doing a bit of swashbuckling and Hazel as a maid. Suitable roles for both of us, Hazel said, I hope ironically.
Back home to a slight dusting of snow that had Frome folk excitedly posting murky orange night shots of gardens and car roofs on facebook but by the weekend all was calm and the Catherine Hill Street Party on Sunday enjoyed blue skies and sunshine.
This was a pop-up event to replace the usual Independent Market (organisers are currently victims of their own success as the last event was gridlocked) and the idea worked really well - artists, writers, and performers up and down the hill, with space in between to move, meet friends, and talk. Here's three of my favourite acts: Al O'Kane, Bonne Nouvelle, and marvellous Captain Cactus with his band and a couple of his Screaming Harlots, and a small boy on trombone.

Right here, 'Right Now' - February fusion of art, music, and drama.

It was the Frome Tattoo Convention last weekend and Cheese & Grain was filled with ink artists and their human canvasses, all demonstrating the dedication and skill as well as the creativity of their craft. Here's Ghis Melou at work, and Dean Oatley showing the developing work of tattoo artist Jerry Burchill from True Gent Tattoos. Fascinating to watch, and a great group of friendly people.

Hunting Raven Books opened its doors on Monday night for the Frome launch of Debby Holt's 'wickedly funny' new novel The Soulmate.  Debby is always a class act at these events ~ theatrical experience as well as seven novels now ~ and we were entertained by quotes from JB Priestley and Shakespeare as well as wit, anecdotes, and a short reading. I look forward to a longer one now.

Right Now is the first of a French-Canadian season at the Ustinov Studio theatre in Bath, a surreal dark comedy from Catherine-Anne Toupin translated by Chris Campbell. By turns hilarious, erotic, macabre, scary, and sad, it's the tale of a couple who find they've got neighbours like some flats get mice. After an opening glimpse of their struggling relationship, this bizarre trio bursts into their lives led by Juliette - Maureen Beattie awesome in a role that makes TV's predatory Dorien seem a girl guide. Together with her seductively genial partner Gilles (Guy Williams) and their enigmatic son Francoise (Dyfan Dwfor, shape-shifting from gauche to dominating) they upend the lives of Ben and Alice - Sean Biggerstaff and Lindsey Campbell hugely empathetic as the hapless couple hooked into psychological games. An outrageous play directed with dazzling precision by Michael Boyd, with great set & lighting from designers Madelaine Girling and Oliver Fenwick enhancing the capriciously changeable moods. Highly recommended, on till 19th March. (Oh, and you'll never, ever, guess what happens right at the end....)

Every week is live music week in Frome: on Sunday we had bluesy duo Nobody's Business at the Archangel in the afternoon, and the vibrantly funky Flash Harry at the Cornerhouse in the evening.

Roots Grain Bar on Wednesday had two great acts - Irish rock-bluesy solos for  Ian O'Regan and 'darkly sensuous' duo Bonne Nouvelle. And River House Cafe offered something a little different from their usual cocktails on Thursday - an entire supper based on vodka. How did that turn out then? Under the care of 'Tender Loving Kitchen's Jo Harrington, the Vodka Infusions pop-up supper club was a great success: superb food and great ambience, and vodka shots between every course.


I'm off to the Isle of Wight now for a weekend talking about writing at Skyros Holistic Holidays close-to-home retreat The Grange.  The programme notes for that excellent play Right Now identified the perfect situation for a writer as resentment and resilience, defensiveness and defiance but sometimes a break is good too. Weather forecast promises sun..

What a piece of work....

It's been quite a week for the written word.  Monday's Love Night at the Frome Poetry Cafe smouldered & sizzled as Stephen Payne was supported by 17 open mic poets and by an attentive audience who squatted on steps and stood in the doorway when we ran out of chairs. Stephen was sharing from his new collection Pattern Beyond Chance, small poems full of tender visual glimpses. Other readings ranged in mood from the sensual delicacy of Rosie Jackson to the wicked wit of John Christopher Wood, with a sublime evocation to universal connection from Lynne Christine Ridden. Josephine Corcoran was awarded the anthology donated by Hunting Raven for her wry honeymoon recollections, and Stina Falle chronicled the poets in deft sketches. (Pencil sketches, but with word jottings too...)

Over in Bristol, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory has begun their new season with the big one, and a better production of Hamlet I have not yet seen. In a starkly simple setting ~ SATTF productions are designed to be performed 'in the round' ~ with the absolute minimum of props, the familiar story comes to life in an extraordinarily dynamic way: no portentous showcasing or defamiliarising tricks with well-known speeches, this drama of family conflict becomes a totally comprehensible story. Great direction from Andrew Hilton and a strong performance by Alan Mahon in the title role are both crucial for this. The prince here is no self-dramatising emo but a young man recently bereaved and now confronted by a supernatural visitation he finds not only traumatic but also untrustworthy ~ perhaps a devil in disguise, a common interpretation of ghosts at that time. No wonder he delays and, as friends turn into spies, no wonder he becomes desperate as to who to trust. The outcome is a totally gripping production with huge energy, especially from the younger characters ~ Fortinbras (Laurence Varda) Rosencranz & Guildenstern (Joel Macey & Craig Fuller) and Ophelia (Isabella Marshall). Costumes are sumptuous and the climatic fight scene, directed by John Sandeman from the stylistic conventions of the era, is absolutely fantastic. On till 30th April.

The other major Bristol production is PINK MIST at Bristol Old Vic, first staged last year and revived for the BOV 250th anniversary celebrations. Owen Sheers wrote this tale of three soldiers coming home to Bristol from Afghanistan after interviewing returned servicemen and if you know anyone still trusting the value of war, this is one to take them to. Owen Sheers is a poet and this is not really a play, more a long poem with movement, or maybe a dance with words, set in the city of Banksy and dockland clubs but also that timeless world of young men ardent for some desperate glory. There are no plot surprises, the only 'reveal' is how, and the lyrical narration & lithe movements create poignant contrast to the graphic details.  And it  wasn't 'the old lie' of patriotism that inspired this trio: what's most striking is the soldiers' total disconnection with any sense of purpose in their conflict. As ringleader Arthur says at the start, they were 'hungry for change' and this was not about where they were going but what they were leaving; as Taff says, he loved the basic training ~ 'everything we were meant to hate - the PT, drill sergeant shouting in your face, being woken at three to go on guard, the route march, the beastings - I loved it, I did. The writer's programme notes pose the question: How might we satisfy these hungers at home, within our societies, rather than away from them engaged in violence? Perhaps we can't, but that's no reason not to try, telling their stories not via the anonymising narratives of politics and the media but through the nuance and human detail of theatre. On till March 5, also recommended.

'To Lyme they were to go..'

Like Captain Wentworth's party of pals in Persuasion, Rosie and I were 'wild to see Lyme' on our writing trip last weekend, and Lyme was wild to see us, too. We arrived as storm Imogen was dancing like a tiger along the Cobb, rattling the pebbles and slapping the sand into a new beach. We watched entranced from our sea-front window, then I set off to get provisions from the shop at the top of the hill, agreeing with Jane Austen that 'A very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.'  That was when the sky join the sea in a combined assault. Rain instantly made the road a waterfall, indeed rain was making the air a waterfall, soaking me literally to the skin in moments, my boots transformed into rain-barrells. It was wildly exciting though red wine & chocolate were required for full recovery.
Next morning all was calm in blue-skied sunshine. The Cobb looked distinctly hungover but must have yielded great beach-combing for the fossilists - as Lyme's superb museum calls its collectors. Fossils are to Lyme Regis as books are to Hay-on-Wye, I discovered, and as much a feature as its Jane Austen and French Lieutenant's Woman connections. The museum has everything you could want to know about all these aspects of the town's story, plus other artistic connections like Beatrix Potter and the painter Whistler, and a fascinating chronicle of the town's rebellious history. One of the few anti-royalist southern towns in the Civil War, they resisted Prince Maurice's contemptuous boast that taking Lyme would be 'a breakfast time job' and survived their long siege successfully ~ with women playing a significant role in all the action.
And as we were there to research Lyme Regis now, as well as then, a visit to the gorgeous Alexandra Hotel gardens for coffee in the conservatory was essential. So now we've found the settings and the inspiration all we have to do is create the play! Simples...

Back in Frome, it's been another great week for music. Grain Bar Roots Session featured the The Spoonful, 'from toe-tappin' rootsy blues to mellow' - I loved their creamy name-song - and on Saturday the marvellous Captain Cactus and the Screaming Harlots played a superb session in the Artisan. No pig-head this time but still charmingly random and highly energetic, with audience participation of yogic chants and dancing...


And on sunny, chilly, Sunday it was great to walk to Nunney for the monthly Acoustic Cafe ~ this one featuring the awesome talent of Darren Hodge. Darren was just 15 when he gigged with the legendary Tommy Emmanuel, and four years on he still looks 15, but his self-taught skill on the guitar is phenomenal: take a listen to Cannonball Rag which he played in his set today.

Black Swan Arts had two new exhibitions this week so I should be reminding writers about Words at the Black Swan on the first Sunday of the month, but sadly the Independent Market on March 6th is cancelled which means the gallery won't be open either for the poetry workshop.  Hopefully we'll be running again in April, and in the meantime there's the Poetry Cafe Love Night at the Garden Cafe and Maggie Sawkins at the Merlin with  Zones of Avoidance which won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. Yup, Frome still rocks.

Imbolc... a boondoggle of a holiday

Imbolc is the pagan term for these very early days of spring, and its goddess Brigid is associated with poetry, fire, and fertility: she's also been adopted by the catholic church, which may be why I found when I googled Imbolc I found that  for many reasons, Imbolc is a boondoggle of a holiday.  I took that to mean a bit of a mishmash, like the last meal at the end of a camping trip, but further googling yielded: boondoggle: an unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent project.  Which really doesn't seem appropriate for last week in Frome.

Saturday saw a few hundred people making their way to the Silk Mill for 'One day to make a difference' ~ for the refugees in Calais ~ to donate warm clothes and cash, shop at the stalls, bring and buy cakes, and listen to the stonking songs of the Wochynskis. At the end of the event, the 'Bruton, Frome & Glastonbury group of Aid & Solidarity with Refugees' reported that the total raised topped £1366, and the cash and clothes are now already on their way out to Calais and to Syria.

Another great week for music in Frome ~  maybe we should change our motto from the vaguely aspirational 'It's a wonderful place' to 'The town where free gigs abound'?  After Bonne Nouvelle rocking the Archangel on Sunday afternoon, we had Ben Cipolla at the always-excellent Roots Grain Bar session on Wednesday.


Moving to things literary: Frome Writers Collective monthly meeting on Monday featured a book quiz from demon question-setter Brenda Bannister, here on the right looking innocent as the winner beams and rest of us hide our sheets of shame. All good fun, though. And novelist Debbie Holt, who is a proxy Frome writer because she's been in one of our (smaller) writing group for twelve years, has a new book out on Thursday. The Soulmate is published by Accent Press and Debbie will be talking about it in Hunting Raven Books on February 22.

The amazing Mark Bruce Company premiered their epic (literally) new production at Frome's Merlin Theatre: The Odyssey is a dance-drama retelling of that legendary ten-year journey by the Greek hero Odysseu after ten years of war returning home to his loyal wife Penelope.

The details of Homer's story are all there ~ Medusa's snakes, Circe's swine, the lotus eaters, the unravelled weaving that keeps Penelope's suitors at bay, and much more ~ but Mark as choreographer & director is interested more in 'what it means to us individually.' Myths, he says 'hold a mirror to us all at different times in our lives.'  With barely a word throughout (none from the cast but a few from Frank Sinatra) this is terrific story-telling, Odysseus on his 'hero's journey' sometimes a timeless icon of masculinity and sometimes, as he lit another cigarette or embarked on another romance, more like James Bond. The dancing is stunningly good: I loved all the characters, especially the cheeky Immortal Man and twerking Circe, and the way the team enacted every role from the sacrificial lamb to the ship's figurehead. And no-one can have left without exclaiming over the set (is it a boat? a wooden horse? a portal to Hades?) the lighting, the costumes, and the music. Absorbing, entrancing, and exhilarating, all of it. Mark Bruce is a long-time Associate Artist of the Merlin Theatre, which makes me extremely chuffed to be one too. 

There's very little I can reveal about the comedy-thriller Death Trap at Salisbury Playhouse because it's got more twists than a corkscrew so almost any comment would be a spoiler. Suffice to say that if you know the theatrical theory of Chekhov's gun ~ that if a weapon is shown in the opening act, it must be used before the end of the play ~ then you'll be quivering at the armoury on the walls of blocked playwright Sidney Bruhl, and you'll be right to tremble. Ira Levin, who was also responsible for sinister films like Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives, wrote this as a stage play in 1978: the current Salisbury Playhouse production is sharp, stylish, superbly set & lit, and brilliantly acted ~ especially by the thriller writers (Kim Wall and Sam Phillips) and their uncannily psychic neighbour Beverley Klein. On till 27th February, much more fun than murder on the telly.

That's it for this week. Rosie and I are off to Lyme Regis now, for a writerly weekend planning our next Nevertheless production so - watch this space! Well you do, anyway, don't you...?

Really? one month already?

Last Sunday was Burns Night, as significant around the world to expat Scots as St Patricks night to exiled Irish, and we had a great session at Emily's dining on (veggie) haggis with neaps and tatties, whisky for the spirited and Rioja for the less so, and many poems.
My contribution was Elvis McGonagall's spine-tingling Operation Undying Conflict ~ though of course it sounds better from a shouty Scotsman (this link is from the Stop The War rally in London 2011, where I first heard it). Marian, the oldest and most authentic Scot in our party, gave the authentic recital for the slashing of the haggis: "Great chieftain o the puddin'-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place... His knife see rustic Labour dight, An cut you up wi ready slight."

Moving seamlessly from words to visual art ~ easy online, as everything's either words or pictures ~ Trowbridge Town Hall has a wax installation upstairs in the waiting room until 27th February. The artwork is called The Waiting Room, because as the artist's note explains the object and the room are integral to each other.  I went with David and while we were pondering this mutual integrity a lady came in and said 'I thought they said there was some art in here?' and went away. The silent room has become a place of transition, the notes explain. Eventually it will cease to exist. Which is of course true for everything. Except maybe cockroaches, and plastic.

Back in Frome there's always music. Superb sessions here are like prophylactics at a festival: well-advertised and free to both the committed and the merely curious. The regular Roots Session at the Grain Bar on Wednesday featured the extraordinary Blues virtuosity of Eddie Martin, and the newly introduced Sunday afternoon music slot at the Archangel featured the luscious retro-style of Bonne Nouvelle.  Live music too at the Silk Mill, on the Day to Make a Difference for the Calais refugees in the Jungle ~  collection of requested winter-wear and donations, with stalls, soup, cakes, and songs from the Wochynskis.

Writerly things are bubbling too, of course, but I think I'll leave you with a magical dialogue chanced upon on a facebook page (thanks Morgan.) It's a contemporised view of Norse mythology and explains the origin of sentient life on earth.
Odin gestures to As and Embla.
Odin:     I have made Mankind.
Frigga:  You fucked a couple of perfectly good trees is what you did. Look at it, it's got anxiety.

Happy February, y'all.

So is it spring yet?

This was the week we had winter, a day of it anyway, with sub-zero temperatures that took me & my geraniums by surprise, but the return of milder weather in this part of the world has led to a flurry of snowdrops and birds twittering around the trees in a nesting kind of manner. I hope we're not all under-thinking this...
For me this has been a week of mostly planning events ahead, though with the usual excellent live music ~  Feral Beryl with Steve Loudoun at the Grain Bar Roots Session,  Nikki & Griff with Vicki Burke at the Archangel.  And River House laid on an unforgettable Bowie tribute dance night.

Rosie and I spent Sunday morning at Frome FM radio station with Chapter&Verse host John Walton, recording Toxic Cocktails for a new programme, Theatre On The Air, broadcast monthly and also online. We're going to be joining John to consider submissions for this one-hour show through another innovation - the Frome FM Writers Room. Anyone have any short radio plays to submit?

Looking ahead,  seems that February will be fizzing with words events. There's the Poetry Cafe 'Love Night' at the Garden Cafe on 15th, with Frome Festival Poet Laureate Stephen Payne guesting, as well as open mic for poems on any aspect of love ~ lusty or lost, recalled or forgotten... Hunting Raven Books have donated a beautiful hardback collection of love poems for one lucky reader.
And a poem is the inspiration for the new production by the award-winning Mark Bruce Company, whose 'kill for a ticket' Dracula performed to sellout audiences across the country.  The Odyssey is a dance-theatre retelling of Homer's 3000-year old epic tale of a heroic ten-year journey and it will premiere at Frome's Merlin Theatre on February 4th ~ a terrific chance to see a spectacular new production in its home base before it goes to London.

Final footnote for anyone who has an interest in Raymond Carver, script-writing, or just enjoys movies with superlative acting, direction, lighting design and music: I don't know how I missed Birdman when it was released in 2014 but Emily and I watched the DVD last night and it is utterly fantastic. I've now bought a copy to watch it again, and so should you if you haven't yet. Seriously superb.