And finally... culmination of all those weeks of planning. Mascara has opened at Alma Tavern Theatre. Ann Stiddard's set looked brilliant under Luke Murray's lighting design, the audience laughed at the meant-to-be funny bits and applauded wildly at the end, and Olivia Dennis & Oliver Millingham were simply fabulous.
I'm so proud of the whole team, including of course my intuitive and inventive director Steve Hennessy, who's also artistic director of Stepping Out Theatre Company. Phew... can't wait to see if feedback is as good as it was for the Frome preview - it should be!

If you'd been too busy for telly for two weeks and suddenly got a free day, what would you first watch On Demand? For me it's two comedies, both previously unknown and now, in their second series, suddenly recognised as writing genius. Episodes and Grandma's House are both superbly acted, full of wry social observation on the painful absurdity of relationships, and both about creative struggles ~ specifically with dramatic scripts. The Episodes couple (played by wonderful Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) are finding Hollywood about as dreamy as a bull-invaded china-shop; Simon Amstell's hell-is-other-people experience comes from his family, who would be truly monstrous if they weren't so appallingly funny. Even Grandma can't bear to watch and goes off to count her shoes when Simon's hopes of production are crushed by the train-crash of his relations in the final episode of series 2. Will there be another? Personally I hope they quit while they're ahead - both of them - rather than go the way of some of my other favourites like Being Human, subverting initial energy into clone characters and convoluted plot twists. I'd rather mourn them as classics.


May is simmering to an end, June is poised to burst out all over, must be time to promote the next Frome Poetry Cafe. We have three terrific guests: Carrie Etter and Alasdair Paterson are joined by newcomer Robbie Vane ~ should be an amazing night at Frome's Garden Cafe on June 13th!

Two weeks of intense rehearsals, two frantic days of final arrangements, and we're open for business. Friday and Saturday were the Mascara previews at The Cornerhouse in Frome, both blisteringly hot evenings on which full-house audiences deserved applause themselves for remaining raptly attentive. I'm going to let a medley of comments from our feedback forms tell the good news.

I was totally riveted throughout from the opening line to the ending. Wonderful. Kept me totally enthralled throughout. Thankyou for bringing this to Frome. An immensely subtle and powerful play, passionately performed, about a very complex subject. Much food for thought. Will keep me reflecting, and talking, for a long time. Excellent play – moving, clever and poignant, extremely well acted and very disturbing. What a performance - absolutely superb, we were totally absorbed... Tremendous – varied, thought-provoking, amusing and shocking.... very convincing and mature acting... brilliant... powerful, funny , very thought-provoking. Wow! Extremely powerful play! ... talented writer... acted with sensitivity and power... both actors v. good, especially Leonie... particularly liked the music + set... props/sound/lighting effects meant the quality of acting/writing really showed through... the end was dramatic and shocking, the club scene was great too... Well crafted play that raised thought-provoking issues. I particularly liked the way the story of the kidnapped girl was woken into the couples’ relationship... Engaging, challenging, thought-provoking – great night out... very well portrayed and sympathetically explored... believable and real and it made me ‘feel’... beyond amazing... awesome... emotionally hard-hitting... Wow !!
A stunning play which carried incredible intensity in every moment. We are privileged here in Frome. Brilliant acting by both performers. Pub Theatre at its very best.

After "thought-provoking", the most repeated words were "congratulations" and "thanks". So my congratulations and thanks too, to the whole team, and to Rosie for holding my nervous hand ~ almost literally ~ at these opening nights. Opening in Bristol at the Alma Tavern Theatre on Tuesday.
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This week started with a blistering row - between my characters, that is - and discussions on music & costume... then the first part of the set arrives... full setup in hectic get-in at The Cornerhouse and looks amazing. I'm loving being involved with all this but no spoilers before our opening TONIGHT!

Between rehearsals for MASCARA and promoting the show I haven't managed to do much else this week but happily I did get to Toppings in Bath for the launch of Liz Brownlee's amazing book Animal Magic. This is the most extraordinary poetry book you'll ever read: Liz's meltingly beautiful words about some of the world's most fascinating creatures are interspersed with careful research telling simply the facts of their endangered lives. It's published by Iron Press, whose editor Peter Mortimer always gives so much support to aspiring writers ~ as I know from personal experience, as some years ago I sent him a story which he liked but declined to publish as he said it should have been a play. I rewrote it as a radio script, and it was subsequently broadcast. Peter had travelled all the way from North Shields to tell the crowded bookshop that 'of all the books I've published, this is the one of which I've been most proud.' A due accolade and a lovely event.

And my footnote for this posting has distinct, if tenuous, connection with this final image from MASCARA rehearsals: I've been reading an interview with actor Samuel West in which he says his favourite line of Shakespeare is the opening of Richard II's soliloquy in prison as he reflects on life and loss, his body constrained but his mind roaming, finding new identity as he tries to forgive the people who have wronged him. Parallels with my imprisoned character/s aside, this speech was the internal soundtrack to my teenage years. I read it, and the deposition scene that precedes it, so many times I knew them by heart. Even these days, get me started on 'Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down' and you may have a wait a while before I stop reciting. So Richard II is an intensely personal play to me, but as Samuel West points out it's modern too in its honesty about society nominating people to be 'kings' & telling them they're semi-divine, only to kill them.

The current season of plays at the Alma is Directors' Cuts, the annual showcase for BOV Theatre School graduates. The Yalta Game by Brian Friel, the choice of Timothy Howe, begins as an apparently frothy seaside romance as dandy flâneur Dimitry, whiling his days away in inventive gossip, nets another lonely young woman with his 'game' of people watching. “These categories – public, private - authentic, deceptive – are never as separate as we think” Dmitry tells the audience, and deceptive simplicity in the script plays with notions of self-perception, lies and longings. The clever set supports this sense of unreliable narration: it's a giant postcard, which unpacks into furnishings to create the reality Dimitry and his lover inhabit. But did this brief encounter really become the love of his life? Did they meet in Moscow, and dance, and kiss..? by the end we don't know if anything is real, even the dog... Witty direction and crisp acting brought out every nuance in a delightful production.

Baroque, beautifully staged and performed, with stunning music: all the hallmarks of Mark Bruce Company productions are intensely present in Made in Heaven which opened at The Tobacco Factory this week. There's more of sea than sky about this story ~ billowing satin waves where a mermaid loses her tail to a knife, a nun loses her head to a shark ~ but for Mark who wrote, choreographed and directed the show, the connections are symbolic. “A lot of things come from my subconscious," he says: "Characters come from Paradise, then you take them away.” It's a filmic world too, with references ranging from the crazed robot cop in Westworld to Judy Garland-esque prairie girls. Music is equally eclectic: Debussy and Chopin, Cohen and Leadbelly, White Stripes and Sonic Youth. It's violent and vengeful as well as sublimely beautiful, and dream-imagery like the angel baby, the butchered mer-tail, and severed head hacked by hockeysticks, is unforgettable.

Despite the fact my personal cosmos recently seems to have shrunk to Bristol and the road to Bristol from Frome, I haven't forgotten there's a wider world out there, with more than a few problems. Like every grecophile, I'm waiting and watching, with hope as well sadness and concern, for some resolution to the current crisis. Skyros holidays organiser Yannis Andricopoulos, who has written a trilogy of books on the significance of Greece and Greek culture, is following events in his blog, where he also pledges "We’ll not cancel Skyros holidays, whatever happens either in Greece or in the world! So book with confidence - you’ll have a great time, and give the Greeks the support they need in their most testing times since the war."

Local writer Niamh Ferguson, back from India to the delight of her Frome friends, is paying tribute to the power of the daily journal: her 'morning pages' morphed into emails that tell the story of her fascinating journey ~ to be published next month under the title Love From India. Watch this space for launch details!

Currently my days are largely obsessed with the progress of MASCARA: we now have a publicity shot, thanks to Hen & Chickens beer garden and a sunny day. I'm still overwhelmed by how much as a writer I can learn from these rehearsals as each scene is tried out in different ways ~ tenderness/anger, fun/thoughtfulness, momentum/stillness ~ to vary the light & shade and find the shape. "Don't give too much away too soon - surprise the audience sometimes," is one directorial guideline. Actors paraphrase their script to find the subtext, intentions are discussed and lines tweaked with scalpel efficiency. It's a fascinating insight into the process of bringing a play off the page into performance, exhausting as well as exhilarating.

And turning elsewhere: Tim Clare brought his touring show How to be a Leader to the monthly Word of Mouth event in BOV Basement. There as six rules, apparently, from the satirically plausible to the sublimely ridiculous, all wittily expounded by Tim with ruthless certainty and powerpoint presentation. I especially liked the Margaret Thatcher rap ("Iron lay-dee? ~ do your own fucking ironing...")
Over in Bath, it was interesting for Rosie & I to see Alliance at the Rondo, since this set of 6 short plays were all penned by the Bath scriptwriting group, curated by David Lassman and directed by Hannah Drake. The quandary set was "co-operation in the 21st Century - is it possible?" and writers' responses ranged from competition between job interviewees to survival instincts afloat after a shipwreck. Some fantastically strong acting ~ step forward Oliver Millingham ~ provided plenty of laughs in several of the pieces and I especially enjoyed the story of the unstable Occupy undercover agent.

Terrific hiphop dancing in the Egg foyer before the night's performance of DNA. Hull Truck has Arts funding and writer Dennis Kelly has won awards, so I’m confident they'll easily withstand carping so.... for me the first few words (“Dead! uttered repeatedly like the opening expletive of Four Weddings & a Funeral) were the highlight of the show. It's a tale of school bullying off even the Daily Mail scale, resulting in an apparent murder and a complex evasion, provided by a morose and munching mute with a mind worthy of Miss Marple, which leads to The Cops fingering an innocent fat postman. The plot fails the first credibility test (ie what happens when suspect produces alibi and gives a description of the missing boy's associates who foistered the fake evidence on him), but more importantly the characters are neither credible nor empathetic, and the torrential banality of the dialogue made the Revenger's Tragedy seem like a haiku. Quite well performed, though, and striking set.

Still in Bath, something really good to end with: Sarah Ruhl's play In The Next Room, the third in director Laurence Boswell's American season at the Ustinov, is inspired by early medical treatment for female hysteria.It's aptly subtitled The Vibrator Play and the equipment in question may look like a primitive dental drill but it's capable, sometimes with human intervention too, of delivering sexual ecstasy on the scale of Barbarella's pleasure machine. Everyone in the story is in some state of yearning and denial, and all in differently comical ways find relief with this scientific equipment, sometimes in hilarious tableaux of suppressed emotions. Engaging characters and great dialogue, as well as deeper emotional and social strands in the narrative, ensure this is so much more than a sexy farce, and the ending is bold, beautiful, and surprisingly touching. It's fabulously well acted, superbly dressed, and the splendid double-decker set is simply inspired. Two and a half hours of sheer enjoyment: five stars, at least.

Ann Stiddard and Alison Comley who founded and lead Theatre West, launched their 2012/13 'new writing' project on a blustry Bank Holiday Monday at The Hen & Chickens with conviviality and pizza as well as complex instructions involving a big map of Bristol and much A-Z grid referencing. All the writers - there are thirty of us - drew random coordinates to find our dramatic locations and then dashed off in pairs to find inspiration and make videos of the area. I drew just off Portway next to the motorway, a largely-deserted street of unimpressive modern houses. And a rook, flapping low and slow over wet grass. "It can be anything from a specific siting to a feeling of emptiness" Alison says. Hm. I'm currently pondering outsiders... strangers... I'm-leaving-home-bye-bye.... Then a very jolly feedback session as everyone shared their impressions and pledged to get started on their script submission, due in just over a month... eek!

Rehearsals for Mascara are now underway and I'm absolutely delighted to watch as Ollie and Livi breathe life into my characters. "Possibly the best first read-through of any show I've ever been involved with," says director Steve. And from then on it just gets better.
Participating in rehearsals is an amazing learning process for any writer, so I'll be driving into Bristol as often as I can until we preview in Frome on May 25th before opening night at the Alma on Tuesday 29th!

Not a footnote but a grand finale for this week's posting: even though both performance and music are prime passions for me, I've never fancied going to an opera. And I wouldn't have seen one now if I hadn't been treated to the revival of Anthony Minghella's production of Madam Butterfly, a spectacularly sumptuous visual extravaganza immaculately performed by ENO. I say ENO in this casually familiar way but actually I was so unaware of the role of English National Opera that my initial response to the barman's logo was to think how nice that a posh place like this could let an ambient music fan wear his own teeshirt... But no-one, not even the most recalcitrant culture-vulture, could fail to be moved by how exquisitely the story is revealed, especially by the delicate creation of the child-puppet for the final scenes. The emotion lingers long after the final chords, and I woke next day with music in my head ~ not Puccini actually but Sonheim saying much the same thing: when love comes so strong, there is no right or wrong, your love is your life...
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Like the secret wardrobe entrance to Narnia or that elusive platform thirteen-and-a-half, somewhere between the glittering docks and the urban centre of Bristol there’s a sidestreet with a door to a magical world…. The Bierkeller is a fabulous space for theatrical extravagance, and Gentleman Jack Theatre Company has used every cranny to create the most dramatic experience you’ll have this year, possibly ever.
The Revenger’s Tragedy, first performed in 1606, is aptly titled: Vindice, embittered by pre-action murder of his lover, embraces a vigilante role in the corrupt court of Il Duce, and among unscrupulous intrigues and lascivious excesses a murder-fest unfolds… but not before the Duke’s party, where the audience are all guests! We’re talking real party here, ducal family & entourage at the bar with us, live music, poledancing, sweets on the tables, money ~ and notes arranging assignations ~ on the crimson silk cushions... everything creating an uneasy atmosphere of self-indulgence which spills suddenly into the action of the play. As events move around the palace, so do we, moving through the gothic Bierkeller surroundings as silent witnesses to the deathly consequences of rage, envy, ambition, and lust. Lots of lust.
It’s all OTT and zestfully black-comic, but Thomas Middleton's script is delivered for real, apart from the odd ‘Omigod'-style interjection, and this integrity, combined with intense audience involvement in the action (Lussurio's penchant for fondling comes to mind, pleasantly) is what makes this production much more than just a brilliant parody of Jacobean genre. The cast are all simply fabulous: Philip Perry in the title role ranges compellingly from vengeful grief to northern comedy, Jonathan Charles as the Duke’s heir is charismatic, and everyone is mesmeric in their moments. Director Justin Palmer is genius.

Just as installation art can send you home seeing lampposts as sculptures, a great evening of site-specific drama makes walking through Bristol at night feel like being part of street theatre ~ especially in Queen's Square, this week a scene of tented splendour as champagne flows at the Pop Up Tapas Bar.

Finally, a quick look towards warmer days: Happiness was the theme of Skyros story competition with first prize a free holiday on this beautiful Greek island. I had the privilege of judging the entries, so well done to all who entered and congratulations to winner Peter Wakefield ~ and special appreciation for entitling his story Happiness Is A Wardrobe Slowly Rising In The Air, thus enabling me somewhat bizarrely to both open and end this posting with a sentence containing the word wardrobe.

Bristol-based theatre company Living Spit is fulfilling its mission statement 'to make poorly researched historical comedy-drama shows about people that at least one of us vaguely looks like' with The Six Wives of Henry VIII, at Bristol Old Vic till May 12th. Howard Coggins looks uncannily like Henry VIII. Stu Mcloughlin doesn’t look like any of his wives, or anybody’s wife for that matter... Believe me when I say it’s not a problem. This comic duo sustained meta-theatrical, quasi-historical, belly-achingly funny absurdity for a two-hour animated lecture which rarely flagged for a moment from the hilarious start as they introduce themselves via a duff review from their previous show. Much of the mirth comes from blatant irrelevancies featuring the allegedly fractious relationship between the two performers, and from anachronisms like the brilliant Catherine Howard-and-the-lie-detector sequence, and Henry's mobile phone calls: "Popey! ... need an annulment, mate..." Nice use of exposition too, as when Jane Seymour, docilely embroidering a cushion with Battersea Power Station, consoles her spouse for his various “rash decisions notably involving decapitation and inventing your own spin-off religion”. Like all really successful comedies there are plaintive notes too, as we see Henry's father disdain him in childhood and torment him in dreams... a wonderful show which, as Howard repeatedly and grumpily points out, deserves a wider showing than the BOV Basement - but do catch it there while you can.

This is the draft flyer for Mascara (doesn't matter if you can't read the performance dates, that's the bit that needs tweaking) which I think looks great. Press copy from the director reads: A young journalist researches the notorious Natashcha Kampusch Austrian kidnap case. As her obsession grows, it reveals a frightening web of connections with her own life. A darkly comic, tender and shocking love story.“A powerful and haunting story beautifully told” said Sarah Dickenson, Senior Reader at the Soho Theatre.
It's all getting terribly exciting. I sat in on the set design meeting with Ann Stiddard and met lighting engineer Luke Murray, both with nerve-tingling ideas for the visuals. Ann is taking the kidnap scrapbook as a starting point for her concept, moving away from a literal room to a living space that evokes the differences of perception at the heart of the story... sounds fabulous. And now the team has come together, rehearsals start next week!

Perhaps I should have taken a look at Paul Durcan's poems before blithely buying a ticket to hear him read at the final event of the Bristol Poetry Festival. I've made some great discoveries that way - Don Paterson, George Szirtes for instance - but this time, apart from one quite nice poem to Seamus Heaney and a few startling phrases like days of slapstick loneliness I sat through 50 minutes of undiverting, sometimes sneeringly judgmental, anecodotal trivia. If this guy in the custard-coloured jumper had been holding forth to strangers in a bar I would have edged away till out of earshot, and his enthusiastic reception at the Arnolfini baffled me. Blimey, the performance poets last week were ten times as lyrical, witty, and poignant too. Memo to self: avoid national treasures.

People Skills is the latest production by Bootleg Theatre and follows their popular formula of four short monologues on a similar theme - in this case, obsession. I went along to the Salisbury venue with Alison Clink, writer of two of the obsessions: one the entertaining tale of passion for a local builder, and other a dark story of baby-snatching which was for me the most successful piece of the night.

Still on a thespian theme, Frome Drama Club's version of The Graduate played to full houses at the Merlin this week.
This glamorous & erotically-charged production recreated the 1960s ethos superbly with a fabulous sound track, evocative costumes, set and back projections, and impressive lighting which turned set-pieces into glossy magazine tableaux. Excellent acting, too, especially from Ben & his two lovers - and his dad (Laurie Parnell), who delivered the best line in the show when he spat out “Don’t talk to me about disillusion.” Claudia Pepler brought gorgeous and fragile lustre to Mrs Robinson, and her offhand admission of once being an art student showed poignantly the personal cost of the conventions of the era.
There's much to find funny in the social & sexual unease of an earlier generation, and this production played very successfully for laughs. But from the comical wetsuit in the opening scene onwards we somehow lose track of Ben's integrity: he becomes a spoiled rich boy and his existential angst is reduced to farce. Admittedly a very funny farce, but a little disappointing with a lead actor (Dan Gaisford) well able to handle a more complex character. And while I'm quibbling... nine scene changes? Great to use a single set to show the uniform culture that Ben's trapped within, but couldn't the actors themselves have turned over the cushions/coverlets as they began the scene? - no less unreal than a shadow army marching on, and easier to retain the essential suspended disbelief of great theatre.

Award-winning ceramic artist Hans Borgonjon decided he was spending too long in his studio and needed come out of his shell to get face to face with other people. So now he makes shells of other peoples' faces, for an amazing project called, erm, Facebook Frome. Fifty of us Fromies will be facing the world, ceramically, at the Silk Mill during Frome Festival.
Having a face cast is a strange process, a mix of sensory deprivation and deep meditation, and Hans was great at explaining what he was doing while I was shrouded behind towels, sightless and motionless. The silicone he uses allows him only 2 minutes, once mixed, before it hardens, and then plaster moulding bandages, to hold the shell, need similar skilled rapidity. After a brief blast from a hairdryer, Hans peeled off each layer and I was freed to marvel at the strange, inverted, truthfulness of my mask, and to wonder what it'll look like in porcelain...

Finally... Sunday night in Frome means the place to be is The Cornerhouse, which happens to be my local, and also the venue for Nevertheless Pub Theatre, where my play Mascara is previewing later this month before its Bristol run... and where on Sunday nights there's great live music, free. This week, it was the fabulous Pete Gage band kicking up a bluesy storm. Fantastic.

This week was, allegedly, Shakespeare's 448th birthday and Frome joined the dramatic celebrations with a slightly off-the-wall party at the Library for World Book Night, organised by ever-enterprising Wendy Miller-Williams. Around sixty people, chortling gratifyingly, viewed the screen projection of text-talk versions of Shakespeare plays as conceived by me and Alison Clink, followed by a gruelling "Bard or Not Bard?" quiz on Shakespeare quotes in common usage. Brenda Bannister won with an impressive 39 out of 60 correct.

Over in Bristol, production of my play Mascara at the Alma Tavern is now taxiing on the runway...
I sat in on the auditions on Tuesday, and was literally awed - it means respect & wonder inspired by authority, sublimity, & might - by the interpretations brought to their readings by all 8 of the actors under consideration. I'm absolutely delighted that the final choice was Oliver Millingham and Olivia Dennis, and am now avidly looking forward to watching them at rehearsal...

Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Tolstoy famously said, and Common Wealth took this principle to heart for their new devised show Our Glass House, ‘based on interviews with real-life women and men who have experienced domestic violence’. This is a site-specific piece and the venue, in the St George area of Bristol, is an ordinary house adapted to convey the theme and to contain six disparate stories of abuse. In a similar formula to Beyond, it’s impossible to see all aspects of the action taking place simultaneously in different rooms, and we're invited to witness "your own version". This means it’s quite hard to connect emotionally with all the disparate case studies, though there are several set-pieces to show the parallels between these trapped situations. There are some scenes of touching poignancy – the little boy’s shadow puppet theatre in his bedroom – some moments of troubling despair, and an imaginary court case to challenge current social norms, all of which worked really well in this brave and truthful production, but the sense of looking through glass at zoo animals is as disturbing as the events they relive and reimagine.

And to end this mainly theatrical posting, a wonderful night at Hip Yak Shack in Frome, the Archangel's upstairs room transformed by the magic of fairy lights & a funky sound system into a great venue for performance poetry. Liv Torc, Chris Redmond, Jonny Fluffypunk, and Anna Freeman all on fantastic form, and a great slam rightly won by Robbie Vane. Robbie's guesting at Frome Poetry Cafe on June 13th, so if you haven't heard her yet, don't miss out. If you have, you'll be there anyway.

If your idea of theatre is sitting comfortably in anonymous darkness watching the same kind of easy entertainment you’d see on telly but without the cup of tea – probably not or you wouldn’t be reading this blog – then you might feel a bit insecure at Beyond, a site-specific performance devised by Karla Shacklock and developed for Bristol Ferment. Karla and her team are energetically redefining theatre in dynamic terms: anarchic, intimate and unpredictable. At the showcase on Thursday we were escorted through wet streets to St Nicholas market where Karla, poised precariously on glass jars, welcomed us. Everything we see or hear, she explained, is real, and is stored in scores of glass jars. The experiences released to each audience will be chosen without preplanning by the five performers: "What you see will be right for you."
Karla, scattering garments, led us barefoot round the corner to an old pub now the venue for this 'symphony of experiences spilling from the nooks & crannies of the building and into your hearts & minds.' Like children excited by discovering a dressing-up box, the performers scramble for attention ~ "someone come in the Laughing Cupboard with me!" ~ "I'm going to do something in here, do you want to watch me?" and our taster of these brief, sometimes baffling, experiences included funny, touching, erotic, and violent. I especially liked the flower poem, and the 'breaking-fixing' dance in the strobe lighting room. We became part of the action as viewers, even when not drawn in to participate. It may not be always comfortable, but at a time when leaders in the field like Tim Crouch and Mark Rylance are working for a shift away from 'safe' scripts presented to audiences identically every night, Beyond offers an exploration of audience-led theatre that anyone with a real interest in theatre will find too exciting to miss. It's on 23rd-29th, try it.

Bristol Spring Poetry Festival is underway at the Arnolfini, with some of the best performance poets around. I went along to As Good As It Gets on Thursday because I knew the line-up – Rob Gee, Ben Mellor and Chris Redmond – would deliver what it said on the ticket. I’ve seen Rob several times – in fact he’s overspilled my non-giant-sized sofabed after a great gig in Frome some years ago – and was keen to see his current show Fruitcake but sadly Rob had to cancel due to illness. However, as organiser Colin Brown proudly pointed out, Bristol is a city that slews with supernova poets, and local slammer Anna Freeman stepped forward superbly. Ben Mellor specialises in wonderful innovative protest poetry: he fills the stage with dissenting voices in his response to ‘celebrations for the end of slavery’, and personifies Poetry itself (“he’s turned out to be a louche, Byronic, bisexual lush”) in his satiric objections to being used for corporate promotions. Chris Redmond has great, often hilarious, stage presence too, creating compelling rhythms and and coaxing roaring choruses from our sparse audience. Check out the poo in the eye incident, if you’re brave enough. Chris is coming to Frome’s Archangel on April 26th for Hip Yak Shack so be there or your Thursday night will be seriously depleted.

The last major Picasso exhibition at the Tate was in 1960 and I was one of over 500,000 entranced by the colour and energy of his painting as well as his immaculate draughtsmanship. In those days commentary focussed on challenge of cubism – it wasn’t that long since art critics wrote derisively of his work as “a collection of coloured geometrical figures gone mad.” But what struck me about the current Tate exhibition was how small a proportion of his work is controversial in any aesthetic way. What is plangent is the humanity ~ tenderness, wit, erotica, anger, all the real passions of life are here. What's interesting too is the inclusion of work by contemporaries inspired by either admiration (Duncan Grant, Graham Sutherland, David Hockney) or envy (Wynham Lewis) as well as social context from catalogues, cuttings, and photographs. My personal favourites, apart from revisiting the sheer beauty of his blue period, were the costumes & stage designs for Diaghilev’s production of The Three Cornered Hat. And realising the secret behind those doubled faces in his series Head of a Woman: the profile in his portraits of Marie-Thérèse is the artist himself, her clandestine lover, kissing her as he paints.

Where were you when you first heard Bob Marley? I was living in Edgware in 1977 when Jamming came on the charts show, and I stared at the radio on the worktop transfixed. I think that’s the only reason I remember that kitchen at all.
Marley, the powerful & moving new film from director Kevin Macdonald, picks on personal connections like that and enriches their colour & volume. It’s on general release next week but came to the Little Theatre (visited often by Haile Selassie in his exile years) on Sunday for a special premiere showing. There’s more than I needed about Bob Marley's final sad weeks, but most of the movie comprises convincing, compassionate, and appreciative tributes to his 36 years of vibrant living. We had a kind of bonus track too, a post-show discussion between Kevin, a journalist who remembered Bob from the '70s, and Benjamin Zephaniah who spoke passionately about the poetry of the songs. And the legacy of Bob Marley? All three knew their answer to that one: Roots reggae with a serious message has gone around the world, a unifying element to warring underclass communities. You don’t have to be a Rastafarian to connect with Marley ~ when the Tunisian greengrocer killed himself and started the Arab Spring, STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS was the message on the wall next day. As producer Lee "Scratch" Perry said in the movie, people like his music because "he has a story to tell and him tell it in a way you have to believe it ~ him tell it pity-full.”

You know the way when you decide to move you suddenly see For Sale/Rent signs everywhere? It’s an acausal connecting principle, Jung said, something to do with the space-time continuum and indestructible energy. And archetypes & the unconscious, naturally. It’s happening to me around my play Mascara, as the start of rehearsals approaches. The main theme in my play is the fine line between love & collusion, and one key question is about early experiences. Received wisdom is that we need the smoothest possible slide from the slipstream of childhood into the turbulent waters of adult life, and certainly we’d all prefer that for our loved ones. But I keep seeing & hearing memories which cut across that assumption. One of the most moving sequences in Marley is when Bob, considered a half-breed in his black neighbourhood, goes to find his white father and is brusquely rejected. He goes home and writes Cornerstone
The stone the builder refused
will be the head cornerstone.
And in a book of essays by Adam Phillips lent to me by Emily there’s another example of extreme resilience: Paul Steinberg, writing about Auschwitz in Speak You Also, speculates as to whether his unhappy childhood prepared him for his survival, posing the question: can a ‘good’ childhood prepare one for life?
I’m not arguing that Goethe’s maxim ~ if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you strong ~ should justify any & every kind of cruelty, obviously. But it does seem that some setbacks will feed creative determination. Mark Rylance, in a wonderful interview (on on BBC3), recalled being "the kid who didn’t speak”, unable to form consonants even with intervention from a speech therapist. It was a passion for private improvisation that got him through ~ he likes to think, he says, that being Captain Kirk and Spock was how he found his voice.
And that’s another synchronicity of thought, too, because Mark Rylance is patron of Stepping Out Theatre Company, whose director Mark has gone on record to call “one of the most inspirational theatre artists I have encountered in the last ten years… (he) does not shy away from the possibility that theatre is a transformative and healing activity which brings joy into people’s lives… “ And where the synchronicity comes in again is that ~ excitingly and luckily for me ~ Stepping Out is producing Mascara.

Finally, in this long posting: Thanks to Richard Carder for an excellent Poetry & a Pint night last night, where Rose Flint and I were guest poets. I forgot to take a photo so here's a picture of St James Wine Vaults. A good venue for boho atmosphere.

Another stonking night ~ that's in its original meaning of agreed excellent by all ~ at Frome Poetry Café on Wednesday when the Garden Café went On The Road with balladeer and guitarist Mo Robinson as main guest. Mo's own journey has taken him from Ireland to California and his songs are vivid road-movies from a much-travelled life. Plenty of poetry was also promised & delivered, to an impressive standard, by Tauton poet Paul Tobin whose new collection Blessed by Magpies is published by Lapwing Press, and by 15 open-mic spots. Fantastic event, thanks all!

BOV Studio too was crammed for the Pinter / Beckett double bill, heightening the sense of intimacy to near intrusion during both these quietly intense short plays. I’ve long been convinced you can’t love theatre and not be a fan of Pinter, but in this combo A Kind of Alaska was a mere dry sherry to the extraordinary feast of Krapp’s Last Tape. Simon Godwin, whose uncluttered direction is brilliant at letting the script speak, feels these two playwrights share the belief "that human beings cannot bear much stark reality." There are parallels too in the sense of lost lives ~ Deborah has dreamed away 29 years "nowhere" while Krapp searches his thoughts of 30 years ago, both rejecting real connections as too painful. Richard Bremmer, who also features as doctor to Pinter's recovering coma patient, is mesmerising in Beckett's monologue role as he listens, mystified & contemptuous, to the life experiences of his younger self: he inhabits the stage in his silences and even his absences. Excellent set, lighting, and sound as well.

Like London buses, Pinter plays arrive in triplicate after a dearth: a touring double bill by European Arts Company came to one of my favourite venues, Bath's Rondo, this weekend. It was the 'summer of love' when I last saw The Dumb Waiter and since then, as programme notes point out, this tense two-hander has influenced every hit-man movie from Pulp Fiction to In Bruges. This version introduced reciprocal elements with humour derived from television comedies and, less successfully, a set apparently inspired by CBeebies. The Lover, a gentler and more playful piece, explores roles in relationship, and John O'Connor & Rebecca Robson were entertaining in an evening of classic Pinter themes which, as the director says, 'contain more in their short acts than most full length plays.'
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