Rose by Martin Sherman, on tour & at the Brewery this week, presents a searing critique of Jewish America and the effect it has had on modern Israel: “If that’s all gone isn’t that Hitler’s final victory?” asks Rose, finding her son and his stridently-converted wife consider the old Yiddish words embarrassing and allow them no place in their serious study of Hebrew. Rose is the flip side of the Jewish mother-in-law-joke coin, silenced by the certainties of the next generation. To her “There was always joy in not belonging – maybe God is a question like everything else.” Rose survived ghetto, prison camp and the 1947 Exodus, always longing for the promised land: now she questions Zionism, studies Buddha, and believes ‘knowledge is more important than pain’. Sadly, neither searing critique nor interesting characterisation arrive till Act 2, after an hour of hand-wringing bathos which precedes Rose’s arrival in America. But the packed audience, largely her contempories, were generous with their responses and clearly moved by the familiar saga of Jewish oppression. Despite the tragedies of Rose's multiple bereavements I found it hard to connect with the case-study approach of the first act: Only in the second act did this woman's loss of her dream homeland become suddenly real. Two hours is a lot of words for a monologue and it’s a rare actor who can not only memorise but also deliver so many lines as though afresh to each audience. Fiona York despite a rococo Jewish accent and as much arm movement as her static position would allow, didn’t quite manage that, and I whiled away long chunks of exposition musing on what could have been done to improve the set (removing it, I decided). Next time Red Kettle Theatre choose to explore oppression through theatre, I hope they choose a play from their native Ireland.

The Tempest was Shakespeare’s last play, written when Queen Elizabeth, patron & fan of his earthy dramas, had been succeeded by a king who adored the magic, music and myth of Italian masques. Shakespeare added emotion to this mix, and created his marvellous allegory of rage and resolution through the power of love. This Theatre Royal Bath production thrills with every element. From the moment Prospero conjures elemental chaos as catalyst for his own inner storm, to his final violent abdication of power, this suberb production charms, entertains, and terrifies by turn. Tim Piggott-Smith is awesome as Prospero, making every familiar word seem a fresh thought, and the passion between Iris Roberts’ irresistible Miranda and her Ferdinand (Mark Quartley) is convincing as well as delightful as they crawl like babes towards their shared love. There’s comedy to best stand-up standard from Mark Hadfield’s Trinculo and his drinking companions, and a feast of spectacle: Ariel, looking like a Swinging Sixties postcard model and straddling his every scene whether on stilts or winged like a monstrous angel, Caliban a reptilian Prodigy, the sprites bizarrely costumed like extras in Scrubs as they watch the action like road-crash rubber-neckers (and even more bizarrely as they put shoes on their fists and river-dance them) the exquisite puppet sequence as goddesses come to bless the Miranda’s future union… I could go on. Dazzling direction by Adrian Noble and a superb cast make this one of the best Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen.

Me and Iggy Pop at The Toolshed, Frome's new contemporary arts space. Stephen Haines trained initially as a waxwork artist and still makes meticulous measurements for his work. "I see Iggy as a sort of muse," he says: "When he goes on stage he's in another zone. That's what art is like. You become a sort of shaman. It's what life is about." I've been thinking quite a lot about art and life this week, and Alan Bennett's insight into his own process: “I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind.” I think this must be true for most artists ~ even when we aim to entertain, there's usually a journey of self-discovery.

And now summer has meandered into autumn almost imperceptibly, with walks & picnics and for me a big life change. You could call it ~ Oscar Wilde would ~ the triumph of hope over experience, but I'm choosing a less cynical quote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.” It's attributed to Mark Twain though online opinion is unconvinced (one commentator with the splendid sobriquet 'Dude the Obscure' insists Twain would have blenched at such psycho-babble) but it resonated for me, and I have and I did and I am.

You know summer's effectively over when TV autumn schedules kick in, but the return of great drama is a reasonable price to pay for these slowly, inevitably, darkening evenings. Jimmy McGovern's Accused series restarted with a powerful story of transvestite Tracie, brilliantly portrayed by Sean Bean who overcame the need for a melodrama to fit the title, and made this a hugely moving human story of loneliness and struggle to survive the tawdry world of intolerance.
And The Best of Men was a moving tribute to the 'father of the Paralympics', Dr Ludwig Guttmann, a German-Jewish neurologist who revolutionised treatment of spinal injuries during WWII and in 1948 initiated the Stoke Mandeville Games. Brilliant performances, especially from Eddie Marsan and Rob Brydon, and a script which though necessarily simplifying roles never fell into clichéd stereotypes, showing with relentless clarity the existing responses the doctor had to battle with: sentimental {"My job is to make them comfortable!") and dismissive ("Moribund incurables - need a wet-nurse, that's all") And as the men's lives change without sedation & with return to hope, their own fears became another opposition: "I'll throw myself under a bloody bus" threatens Wynne at the thought of losing his refuge of institutionalised care. "I knew that upper-body strength would come in useful," twinkles the doctor, whose message is never about happy endings, only about reclaiming health ~ "You will have problems. We all do." He scythes through opposition by winning hearts and treading on toes with equal vigour -
- hugely apt timing for the start of 2012 Paralympics, and I'm hoping this inspiring true story will do for the disabled what Danny Boyle did for the NHS, and make it harder for those who control our community to ignore insistent demands for intelligent compassion.

Back in Frome, our local writers are winning gold everywhere: Alison Clink, who's had a busy summer collecting cuttings of her pieces in national magazines and newspapers, submitted her text version of Macbeth to Flash Fiction 500 and promptly won a prize - you can read her script here, and Rosie Finnegan's short play The Girl with the Blue Hair is being revived for the Bradford on Avon Fringe Festival And we're looking ahead to more pub theatre in Frome, and poetry at the Merlin... autumn is shaping up well already.
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Home again now, after a sublimely blissful week in Cortijo Romero, a haven of tranquility and creativity in the foothills of the Alpujarras. Take gorgeous gardens, shimmering turquoise pool, frequent supplies of fabulous food, and slow-roast gently in steady sunshine, then blend in a mix of fun & physical options like yoga, dance, song, collage, theatrework, & games, and you have a recipe for fourteen happy, fulfilled, participants. For me the creative highlights were two processes I'd never previously explored Playback Theatre superbly led by Amanda Brown, who is officially the goddess patron of empathy, and propreoceptive writing - a magical technique for locating and listening to your authentic inner voice: immense appreciation here to Diane Samuels, who is more than a bit magic herself, for leading our afternoon writing sessions. This isn't a 'Prisoner' paradise either - you can walk down to the local town of Orgiva, as I did most days, and mingle with locals who make no concessions to tourists, so fragmentary Spanish is a pleasing necessity.

Back in the UK, with the closing ceremony only inches away, there's a palpable and pervasive 'Olympics effect' around. It's not jingoistic patriotism, more a kind of surprised positivity, which began with shocked delight that the opening ceremony was so sublimely Britishly bonkers, soared as mad mod Wiggo not only made history on two wheels but tweeted pissed pix of his celebrations too, and crescendoed with the double gold that made Mo Farah the first athlete to launch a disco-dance move to rival the Village People. Or maybe those are just my highlights. But I offer them here, into the pot of general rejoicing. May your own Olympic memories go with you, these moments of awe are the only innocent religion we have.

Perhaps because the word hysterical is usually followed by laughter, probably also from the press image and the blurb ~ when surrealist painter Salvador Dali unexpectedly turns up, along with a young woman who finds it impossible to keep her clothes on, all hell breaks loose ~ I thought Hysteria at Bath Theatre Royal would be a farce. There were farcical moments, and belly-laughs too, but at the heart of the story is a serious issue: Sigmund Freud's change of heart after his research was reviled, and the consequences for the clients he may have betrayed and for the future of psychiatry.
Indira Varma is brilliant as the disrobing young woman, appearing in the analyst's life - or maybe his dream - in chameleon roles as student, subject, and super-ego-conscience to reproach him for re-condemning women he'd initially liberated by his 'talking cure', by labling them fantasists who longed for, and imagined, their abuse.
It's a fascinating play and a tour de force for the three men too - Antony Sher, David Horovitch, and especially Will Keen's Dali, blazing like a giraffe in sock-suspenders through the absurd surreality of Freud's mind-slip and speaking ego-eccentrically of himself in third person as "Dally". Set & lighting were impressive both as Freud's den and darkly-dreaming mind, and Terry Johnson directed superbly this 20-years on revival of his masterly script.

Ten hours after emerging from the theatre and by the miracle of modern Easyjet from Bristol I'm in Andalusia, soon to be dipping my toes in the cerulean pool of Cortijo Romero. Only day 2 of my week 'Being Here' with Amanda Brown, and already I'm blissed out by the place, the people, and the peace... A more coherent report may follow. Or just more pictures...
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Writing Magazine (which incidentally ~ and I hope coincidentally ~ has improved considerably since the days when I was a columnist and sometimes squirmed slightly at the house-style of cliched cosiness) has added its voice to many others in the publishing world who insist an author's place is on the Social Media map. You must venture online if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, and be present on at least one social network is the featured pull-out line of an article in the new issue.
As someone who doesn't need a literary excuse to roam happily in a virtual world, I don't really understand people who connect with family, friends & colleagues on email and do their banking & shopping online yet say, like a politician who won't inhale, "I do draw the line at Facebook!"
I start my day with Facebook. To think this means playing with imaginary farm animals or watching cute talking pets is comparable to assuming that anyone going in a bookshop must be heading for the press-me-and-I-squeak board-books. I browse national & international newspapers, journals and websites - some posted by like-minded friends, some direct from organisations I belong to. I've never been so politically informed in my life, and sharing posts initiates discussion & uncovers links to other publications, or online research, or Youtube evidence...
And then there's invitations to the rich creative life of the real, visceral, world - theatre, music, parties, festivals, fairs... It's like having flyers posted through your door daily, only much better because you can't tell a postman to filter out the stuff that wouldn't appeal to you, plus it's all stored tidily & chronologically in one readily accessible place. And then there's continuity of contact with friends & family through high moments shared in words and images.
As you can tell, I wouldn't willingly start my day any other way but next week I'll have to because there's no wifi in Cortijo Romero, which is where I'm off for a week of 30 degree sunshine. Apparently facebook is now an addictive disorder but even for a FADist you'll see there will be compensations...

Bold, bonkers, brilliant and British was Gary Lineker's take on the Olympic opening and despite all that carping on twitter about puerile BBC commentary, the overall verdict seems summed up in the Guardian: "It's been a terrific night, a glorious ceremony, a rousing history lesson and far and away the best film that Danny Boyle never made." Certainly fantastic spectacle - who could forget those glowing white cycle-birds and the towering cauldron - but for me what was inspired was the theatricality: drama with characters, storyline and heart. Well done Mr Branagh, stepping forth as both Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Caliban in an extraordinary sequence that apparently baffled the world. For me it had just about everything: our www lives, grime, disability, suffragettes, CND logo, fantastic big-up to the NHS, and overall an unmistakable political edge: Tory tweeters were apparently apoplectic at "the most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen!" ~ "Not even communist China were so brazen as to extol their nationalised stranglehold on their country so blatantly." (I got all this from the G too, in a piece that ends "But a stranglehold the nation loves is called a hug.") All that was missing was a sequence of policemen kettling protesters, which was on as a Fringe event outside.
Critical Mass, who tweeted the picture, praises Danny Boyle for "a ceremony "that bore a closer resemblance to the country we recognise than most of us had expected. We’d like to thank him for placing collective action, dissent, humour and – above all – our public services at the heart of his story... However... a peaceful mass cycle was met with police aggression, pepper spray, violence with truncheons, kettling and multiple arrests." Back to Dizzee Rascal & Gary L: Bonkers, and British.
(Full playlist here.)

Ferment is the Artist Development strand of Bristol Old Vic, run by Sharon Clark in her role as literary producer, and twice a year there's a showcase for the 'exciting and adventurous' new work which has been developed by workshops and dramaturgy. Rosie & I went along to their 70 minute programme of short plays Get Shorty, curious to compare this more professionally supported and funded event with our own highly-acclaimed Flaming Voices in Frome Festival. One exciting aspect was that these 5 plays were also directed by fabulous Emel Yilmaz, though the tiered seating of BOV studio made a big contrast to our intimate pub-theatre venue.
Short drama sounds easy but it's actually a difficult structure to master, as the characters need to make immediate connection if we're going to care about their challenge, with some kind of palpable change evident within the brief running time. The 10-minute limit was very loosely interpreted and, perhaps significantly, the longest piece was the least interesting. By far the best was Rainy Season by Chino Odimba, a brilliant confrontation between a child and a wounded soldier in a war-torn African country: lyrical, moving, and pitilessly unsentimental.
Script-in-hand performance continued after the interval with The Heat, a 60-minute play about four university friends remeeting on a sultry summer night in France. Immediately engrossing, with characters who were credible as well as fascinating, this was witty and touching as well as thought-provoking: if friends are the new family, is it impossible to avoid family-style feuds and jealousies? And if Mike Bartlett could write dialogue this good, then would Love Love Love be more than an over-rated parody of social mores? Writer George Gotts' new play about the tensions of loving intimacy made me want to see more of her work.

It's been a perfect week for a Leo ~ blue sky and dazzling sunshine from dawn till dusk ~ so I can't resist ending with a birthday image from our lunch party at Annabelle's, and a starry particle by PK Page from Dark Matter, the collection of 'poems of space' that Emily gave me:


The very stars are justified.
The galaxy
italicized
.
I have proofread
and proofread
the beautiful script
.
There are no
errors.

Jeremy Hooker is now Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Glamorgan but he used to live in Frome, and came back on Thursday for a conversation with still-local author Lindsay Clarke at Rook Lane Chapel. The event was entitled In the Household of Words and the words were mostly Jeremy’s own: a well-judged selection from poems spanning 60 years ~ lucent, sensual, and deeply interrogative, exploring the nature of nature itself:
From debris
of collapsing stars,
from gas and dust
where nothing is wasted
a stream of images
The conversation was a meeting of like-minded friends, reflecting on the role of a nature poet in a contemporary world. Lindsay quotes Brian Swimme: The universe is not a place, it’s an emerging event, and adds “The poet has a crucial role to play in this evolution ~ poets are a keystone species.” Their role, now as always, is simply and lucidly to remind us we are the earth and all that is on it. Since the 'Cosmic Walk' with Annabelle I've been more than ever aware of profound underlying connections, and that every destruction on earth is a depletion of ourselves. Whatever else we believe, we need to believe this or, like Tinkerbell, humanity will simply flicker out and die.

Dolphin Crossing at the Brewery is a tale from an earlier and more innocent time, an era when boys were brave lads and men were chaps who went off to fight for King and Country and every story ended with lashings of ginger beer. Blue Brook Productions took a brave step, in these post-Comic-Strip days, in adapting this Blyton-esque tale of daring-do by Jill Paton Walsh about two plucky boys joining the Dunkirk rescue team in their motorboat and coming home to a jolly good spread made by Mummy. It's a simple tale, both in narrative and moral values, but complicated to stage, and the two actors had to lug props around a lot to make both land- and sea- scapes. Characterisation was limited to their respective posh & gor-blimey accents, and 'memoir' links were provided by the sonorous & slightly parodic-sounding recorded voice of Tim Pigott Smith. Ironically, the Dunkirk miracle has since been proven to be an early example of media spin: The story of the small boats was soon enshrined in British popular consciousness, an example of a people coming to the rescue of their army. It was a very British story - the gallant loser escaping from disaster at the very last moment - and one that the public liked to be told. The audience seemed to like it, but for me it's not enough to tell the old lies with such high zest. Patriotic death ~ in any war ~ is not, and never was, sweet and fitting.

Holburne Museum gardens are worth a visit on a sunny Sunday afternoon anyway, and a site-specific happening evoking voices from the past was an added attraction. Ghosts in the Garden is the innovative idea of splash&ripple and features a 'special listening device' housed in a very smart casket and a great deal of painstaking research into Georgian history. Apparently these tranquil lawns were once as busy as Alton Towers, crammed with edifices from tea-rooms to castles and even a maze, and with entertainers from comedians to high-wire artistes. It's the story of some of these colourful characters that our magic box allows us to overhear, through time-slip techical sorcery, and we have a chance to alter the outcome by our responses as their disembodied voices gradually reveal their plots. For me there was too much plot and not enough sense of the actual lives of these people, but I like the idea of overhearing fragments from another reality and I wish I'd known from the start that the story was based on real characters. We were there on an early trial day but the tweaked version will be on August 5th so you can go along and hear for yourself.

When one is tired of London one is tired of life, Oscar Wilde famously quipped. Even as a Londoner I'm not convinced losing the will to live is so geographically specific, but you'd certainly have to be in a bad way to feel lethargic in that city with fantastic shows like Sweeney Todd at the Adelphi and - even more mindblowing - Richard III at the Globe. Sondheim's musical, featuring Michael Ball and glorious Imelda Staunton, is beautifully lit and staged as well as movingly performed. I loved the Tim Burton movie, but hadn't appreciated how powerful a really good stage version could be.
But nothing could surpass Mark Rylance as Shakespeare's most vicious and mendacious monarch. He inhabited the role to an extraordinary degree, as though his lines were not memorised but chosen in that moment, his eyes flicking around to seize any advantage, seducing us to laughter and pity with the wit of a standup comic and the pathos of a sad clown. As Al Pacino put it, 'he speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before.’ Strong performances too from his supporters and victims ~ most were both ~ especially Roger Lloyd-Pack, a long way from Dibley's parish council meetings. This was my first experience as a 'groundling' in the pit and I was lucky to grab a footage right next to the stage, where I could have reached out to pinch the king's ankle when he stepped forward ~ which was often, as the Globe's policy is to recreate the production values of Shakespeare's day, so women are played by men, scenary is minimal, and Richard gloats direct to the audience like a pantomime villain. He's duly hissed and heckled, too. Thrilling stuff ~ can't wait to go again.

Fun footnote: Frome Festival pictures are in the local paper now, and I'm delighted with this review from journalist Suzanne Norbury:
Four witty women wordsmiths wowed the crowd with their tasty poetic treats in a comedy send up of TV's food favourite Come Dine With Me.
Crysse Morrison, Alison Clink, Rosemary Dun and Muriel Lavender transformed into incredibly glamorous but equally catty and critical dinner party guests rating each other's feast of words as they competed for the chance to walk away with the title of Frome Festival Rhymster.
Oranges, wine, Ambrosia, aggressive male chefs, botox, men in glasses and the exciting possibilities life can hold for women no longer shackled by a wedding ring were all on offer as visitors to the Garden Cafe joined the ladies around the dinner table.
Armed with score cards, wicked words and cutting jibes the poetic princesses dissected each other's offerings then rated them out of ten.
Frome's Muriel Lavender was crowed the champion thanks to her witty ditties exploring the lives behind celebrity super injunctions, the appeal of strange men and what happens can happen when cookery recipes and erotic fiction collide in the kitchen.

Sunshine on Sunday made this the perfect day for a scamper round the Open Studios trail and marvel at the dazzling inventiveness and skill of Frome's artists. Two which stood out were the vibrant collective work at Circus stands out ~ I specially enjoyed the wall poem written in wire ~ and the theatrical pieces of John M Robinson, who creates narratives drawn from fact and fantasy for his characters: here's the corrupt tarot-reader but I was also fascinated by the notion of Albrecht Dürer's portal to the future leaving him trapped in 2011...

Music has been stonkingly high standard too: mindblowing two-hour sets from fantastic headliners like The Critters at Olive Tree and Pete Gage Band at the Cornerhouse... wow. I wish I could think of more superlatives but wow, wow, wow says it all really.

Against all odds we had a balmy night for The Importance of Being Earnest in the beautiful Merlin amphitheatre. Miracle Theatre have a great reputation for over-the-top open-air performances of well-loved classics, but I remain unconvinced that Oscar Wilde's wit needs any enhancement, or that playing sophisticated Jack Worthing as a buffoon and giving suave Algy's lines to his manservant are valid adornments to social satire. Ben Dyson, though brilliant as a neurotic butler, failed to create a formidable Aunt Augusta despite vicious umbrella-jabbing. Certainly not vintage Miracle ~ but the audience laughed and the weather was perfect.
Overall verdict on Frome festival: a fantastic, if exhausting, week crammed with brilliant experiences and performances. Especially the music.

And with all that going on I nearly missed The Hollow Crown: Richard II on BBC iplayer, which would have been a pity as it was visually beautiful with some superb filmic moments. This version played much with homo-erotic and quasi-religious overtones, even to the extent of rewriting Richard's murder to evoke a Judas-style betrayal and a crucifixion image. Ben Wishaw was compelling as the King raised to believe himself omnipotently above the rivalries and intrigues that swirled around his realm, and all the rest of the cast were excellent too though Bolingbroke did sometimes look disturbingly like Corrie's Tyrone.
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Due to a terminally-slow train which ground to a halt before reaching Frome, Brian Madigan was quite late starting his session at the Garden Cafe on Wednesday night. The small but cheerful gathering agreed to wait, and were rewarded with two 40-minute sets of Brian's quirky mix of personal passions: songs about family, politics and society all performed with great acoustic skill. I especially like his anti-war fervour: fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity... is like bombing for liberty...

Friday Night at the Cornerhouse was Flaming Voices, a presentation of short scripts from Frome Scriptwriters, the group Rosie and I set up in January. Incredibly, since then no less than seven members each wrote & edited an excellent script, performed script-in-hand in a totally crammed 'pub theatre' room Upstairs at the Cornerhouse. Stepping Out Theatre from Bristol, which has for two years now supported our production company Nevertheless in bringing quality new writing to Frome at affordable prices, provided a cast of 5 superb actors ~ Gerard Cooke, Livi Dennis, Danann McAleer, Christine West and Simon Winker ~ and a wonderful director in Emel Yilmaz who steered the chaos with a light touch and huge good humour to a resoundingly successful outcome. Cosmic congratulations to all the team and especially to writers Tighe O'Connor, Morgan Rivers, Eddie Young, Simon Williams, Brenda Bannister, Paul Ralston, and Rosie Finnegan.

In the words of some of the enthusiastic audience posting late Monday night on facebook, Come Rhyme With Me at the Garden Cafe was "Fabulous... LOADS of fun... Really enjoyed - A culinary delight... a buzz for all in the melee and audience... a wonderfully fun event" and in case this sounds like all we did was make 'em laugh inordinately all night, "The themes of the competitors were unique, yet convergent. Synergy was the order of the evening. It is wonderful to see a respect for the power of poetry."
Huge thanks to wonderful Rosemary Dun, Alison Clink, and Muriel Lavender for embracing so whole-heartedly this quirkiest poetry competition ever, and mega congratulations to our stunning and popular winner Muriel!

And on to the Cornerhouse, for Griff's fabulous band The Dempseys, "jazzy blues with loadsasoul" and a bit of a dance.

Cornerhouse again on Tuesday, to see Brenton versus Brenton, "David Tristram's madcap spoof of American soaps ~ a crazy roller coaster of family feuding, legal chicanery and inept hit-men. Late slot nightly laughter from Frome Drama Club." I hired a hitman to kill my wife and my daughter was his payment! roars advertising executive Deke Brenton, adding reflectively I guess that doesn't make me much of a family man, thus summing up the plot & characterisation style of a farce which in its best moments delivered wonderfully ridiculous Airplane!-ish word-play. Dan Gaisford as the brother-in-law attorney shone in this interestingly traverse-staged revival.

"This was the year of the car-crash." says Alison Clink. She's giving the lowdown on entries to the Festival Short Story Contest, which she organises annually, to the writers crowded into the Library children's section on Sunday Morning. Old Peoples' Homes are an overly-used theme too, and this year's obligatory anthropomorphic viewpoint was that of a motorway. Intriguing... and a very successful event too, with helpful winning tips from both senior judges. Maria McCann in her excellent short talk spoke of the importance of language, and avoiding both the'forced epiphany' at the end and the 'fossilised title' at the start. Crime writer Peter Lovesey needs to feel in safe hands, which is something that happens when the story is compelling enough for him to forget about style altogether. After useful & encouraging information from the experts, three of the winning stories were read aloud so we could all reflect on Maria's reminder that "ultimately it's all down to personal choice" and then go & enjoy a salad buffet in Divas.

Then on, via Green Fair in the Cheese&Grain, passing fabulous strains of Elgar in rehearsal at St John's, to Jazz in the Park - Victoria park, where there's enough sunshine for picnics and children racing round the bandstand as us oldies hummed along to Night and Day....

Mark Thomas brought his new one-man show Bravo Figaro to Merlin en route to Edinburgh. I'd seen, and raved about, Mark's previous show Extreme Rambling, about his walk along the Palestine border which he dubbed '723 kilometers of national self-delusion', so I wasn't sure what to expect from this 'work in progress' about his relationship with his opera-loving father. It was simply brilliant. With all the passion, insight, and stand-up-comedy skills of his more overtly political piece, Mark told an amazingly personal story "not of redemption or forgiveness - the story of a gift." The vastly enlarged photograph of his father, looking uncannily like Mark in a joke-shop beard, gazes across the auditorium as Mark describes this family despot ~ "there was no greater bigot" ~ who sang Figarofigarofigaro across the rooftops of South London although 'he can't sing and he doesn't know the language or the words." The complex feelings of a left-wing activist whose father combines addiction to opera with extreme and violent intolerance are in themselves a fascinating story which touches profoundly on the difficult nature of family itself, but the heart of this piece is an extraordinary reunion. When his father was debilitated with palsy and dementia, Mark had the chance to stage a concert in his home to try, finally, to connect with him. We hear the actual words as Mark's father speaks, laconic but lucid, about this event. And that's really all we need. "My dad and I are never going to 'make it up', we're never going to heal the wounds. I wanted to say goodbye."