TOM :The Story of Tom Jones

The Muni at Pontypridd was packed on Saturday night. He wasn't the real Tom Jones, but by the reception that the show had, he could almost have been. Kit Orton as Tom sang all the great numbers, thrust his pelvis (perhaps a little too often), but had the audience singing their hearts out. Phylip Harries was a great narrator, the musicians playing the Senators were superb. The show is pacy, with a great set design by Sean Crowley, and atmospheric lighting by Ceri James. If you're a fan, don't miss it. It's on tour til May 3 2014. www.theatr-nanog.co.uk

'Theatr na nÓg and their partners RCT Theatres and NPT Theatres are producing a story of Tom
 Jones; born Tommy Woodward; otherwise known as Tommy Scott and The Senators.

This play with live music tells the story of Tom in the early years, before his mega- fame and follows the blossoming talent of the valleys boy who sang in pubs and working men’s clubs up and down the valleys of South Wales. Then came his big break with his first number one hit on St David’s Day in 1965...Its Not Unusual!

Jam-packed with rock n roll hits of the era, played live on stage with a full band, TOM is a show that celebrates an ordinary man with an extraordinary talent.

Written by Mike James, this inspirational tale of incredible self-belief and determination will thrill audiences throughout Wales and beyond. (taken from the website www.theatr-nanog.co.uk)

RETURN OF THE LIGHT

It is Imbolc, the Celtic festival celebrating the day that the land reawakens after winter and the sun and light returns to Earth. But in this year, two thousand and fourteen Mother Earth, Gaia, is under siege. Her death by water torture is her imminent punishment for the sins of her people. At the time of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day, the rain started and it rained continuously for forty days and forty nights as predicted long long ago.

But the builders wouldn't listen. They built on Barrow Mump and on the flood plains of Arthurian legend. They turned their backs on reason and built their dreams on sand. But sand can turn to mud and mud can silt rivers, and rivers can rise, and river water will always find a way of reaching the great seas and oceans. The builders were consumed by their passion for making gold, but were wise enough to build their own homes on higher ground. And fill them with good things to eat and drink.

The skies filled with sadness, seeing the world was nearing its end. They spilt their tears over Gaia, crying over her demise. Branches of birch held their tears at the end of their spindles until they became so heavy that they drooped and could no longer hold on. The tears plopped onto the ground and formed channels of grief. The channels trickled into the streams, and the streams poured into the rivers. In the South and the West the rivers rose. Parrett and Tone, Severn and Thames rose up in angst high above their banks, and looking for ways to escape, they divided, again and again,flowing fast and furious over anything standing in their wake. Kelpies, spirits of water horses, lured people to ride on their backs, tricking them,they drowned their riders and ate them up.

So the flooding and the devastation began. But the builders and their leaders still wouldn't listen or see. They were blind to the suffering of their people, deaf to the distress calls of robins and blackbirds, oblivious to the drowning of otters and foxes, ignored the flooding of fields and forests, the demise of horses and cows, but still they continued to count their gold in coffers on high ridges. But the mountains could no longer hold the glaciers. Gaia was angry and she could no longer hold the world safely in her hands. As the glaciers slipped from her grasp, they melted and joined the rivers in their race for the ocean. The oceans swelled, and their seas grew fuller and fiercer, forming tsunamis. And the tsunamis joined the torment of the torrents backlashing over Mother Earth until there was only salt and acid water, and total misery in our world.

And finally the builders and their leaders listened to the silence of the stillness and saw the devastation and the damage. And they looked into their own torn souls but could find no use for their gold to redeem themselves. So they emptied their pockets and threw their coins up high into the northern skies. And the coins were caught by dancing Fir Chlis, who threw the golden coins across the sky in a streak of dazzling green light to Aurora, the Goddess of the Dawn. And Aurora changing form from crone to maiden mounted the sun and began her journey to return the light back to Mother Earth for the forthcoming Festival of Imbolc. And so the proverb was born, 'What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul?'

Janet Daniel

February 1^st, Imbolc 2014

KINDERTRANSPORT

This play written by Diane Samuels was first performed on stage in 1993. Her aim was 'to probe the inner life where memory is shaped by trauma, history meets story, in order to gain psychological and emotional insight into how a damaged psyche can survive, possibly recover, and whether there might ever be an opportunity to thrive.'
     She tells the story of a child who is sent to Britain for safe keeping by her Jewish parents the year before the second world war started, and before the start of mass genocide. Over 10,000 children were transported abroad. Many never saw their parents again.
     In Samuel's play the child, Eva, adapts to her new family who embrace her. With no news from her parents for years they assume they have been killed, and Eva settles into life in Manchester. She has nightmares about the Rat catcher, a children's story about the Pied Piper of Hamlin, abducting children.
       Eight years later, Efa's mother turns up having survived the holocaust. But Efa doesn't want to go with her to start a new life in the States. The mother leaves devastated. This for me was the most moving part of the play. Imagine the dilemma of sending your child away in the belief that they will be safe. The child feels punished for being sent away. She would have preferred to have died in a concentration camp than be wrenched from her parents.  In dreams, she sees the Rat catcher in her mother's eyes. Her mother longs to be reunited with her daughter but time and circumstances have changed the daughter's attachment. Her British adoptive mother is now the primary attachment figure.
     Against this story is the story of  Efa's current relationship with her own daughter who is on the verge of leaving home, and their attachment and loss issues, so much influenced by Efa's traumatic childhood.
      The play is very good but this production is disappointing. It feels very clunky, and that may be due to the direction. The set also doesn't really do the play justice. There's lots of scope for a more inventive and atmospheric set, lighting and sound. Perhaps this is why it played to a half empty auditorium at the New Theatre in Cardiff.
It's currently on tour throughout Britain until March 2014.

CIPHERS

'A young woman is found dead. Her sister sets out to find out what happened and stumbles into a world of secrets and subterfuge that makes her ask the question,'How well can you ever know someone who lies for a living?'
We saw this play while it was on at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. It is an Out of Joint production directed by Blanche McIntyre-the company was founded originally by Max Stafford-Clark. It is on tour nationally and well worth seeing. The script by Dawn King is pacey and provocative with a bit of a surprise ending.  The performances are very good although doubling up roles doesn't always work. Characters don't look sufficiently different with an added scarf or coat. The staging creates tension-sliding panels give the feeling of not knowing quite what might be on the other side. The only downside of this is seeing the performers' shuffling feet!
 Contact 'Out of Joint' for touring schedule.

1984

1984, George Orwell's seminal work about State power, control, and persecution seems as fresh and relevant now as when it was published in 1949, when the world was fragmenting into huge power blocs- USSR,USA & Europe. This production of Headlong Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse adapted and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, seeks to revive Orwell's ideas that Big Brother is watching us and that the Thought Police know what is going on in our heads. 'It explores the world inside Winston Smith's head, and the world without, and catches the euphoria and bliss buried deep beneath the cold face of Big Brother.'

Playing to a packed audience at the Sherman Theatre, the play sets out to be very provocative and challenging. The torture scene on stage was especially gruesome. Winston tries to become a member of the Brotherhood, opposing Big Brother, but it is all a scam. Winston is tortured and eventually can take no more. He demands that the guards should torture his forbidden lover, anyone but him. 

The set design by Chloe Lamford was outstanding invoking a chilling and unpredictable atmosphere. The use of technology, projection and good lighting all helped create anxiety and fear.

The first half is somewhat slow and wordy, but it really picks up into a tense and powerful piece. Well worth watching. On at Sherman Theatre til the 9th of November 2013.

 BRAMBLY HEDGE

 

‘He placed the forefinger of his left hand under the ‘fly,’ and with the same finger of his right hand, he gave her a squeeze on the back of the chest.’* He peered through cracked spectacles at her beauty- the fine features of the ‘White Admirable’, (Limenitis Camilla) kaleidoscoped through shards of light. The species is sometimes called, ‘The Glider’ for the effortless way she moves in lightly shaded woodland.

        He’d been chasing her for some time, studying her from different angles. She was quite unaware of this of course, although they’d been a moment in late May when she almost caught a glimpse of him. The Bramble was blossoming, a wedding dress of cream and pink.  From the darker side of the hedge he admired her secretly, her whole body focused on the sensuous task of imbibing nectar. He’d had that funny feeling in his groin that reminded him of a childhood memory. Whilst out looking for butterflies in the woods, he’d come upon a couple embracing passionately. He’d hidden behind the Bramble hedge to watch; the man’s bottom, coal-grubby cupped in tight trousers; the women’s breasts tumbling out of her dress, like new-born Labradors.

    He turned her over on the bench, took the pin, one he’d made especially for the purpose in his lab, and ran it in one smooth incision from her neck, through her body.  Her chest parted, exposing a heart still beating and lungs pulsating. His breath grew shallower. He plunged his right hand inside her and pulled out her organs, slopping them into a kidney dish. Then he took a needle and threaded it with fishing line, and meticulously sewed her up, as if he was embroidering a cushion cover. He took out a luggage label, wrote down her name ‘Camilla,’ and tied it loosely round her ankle, placing her in a glass cabinet, next to the rest of his collection.

 

Janet Daniel

*Quotation from Wilkes, The Admirable Butterfly, 1742.

SOLD

'SOLD,' is a Theatre Versus Oppression production, created by Jennifer S.Hartley. |I saw it at Chapter Arts Centre on Saturday. 'It was written after a period of consultation and counselling of trafficking victims. It tells the story of 6 individuals who have suffered at the hands of traffickers. . . their stories collide at a bus stop in Bute Town, Cardiff.' The subject matter is particularly relevant with the recent discovery of  enslaved people found on a farm outside Newport, working as forced labour.
    You would expect to be moved  by these stories of human misery but overall I wasn't emotionally involved. The problem with the play for me is that there no deep communication and engagement between the individual characters. It is a collection of stories rather than a study of relationships. There is no dialectic to provide tension and different views other than these victims.  Although there were some good performances I'm not sure that the faux Eastern European accents worked well.  The only hope for change was the baby born to an abandoned trafficked victim. The audience was left with the characters' despair and no hints of how change might or could happen. Given that TvO is a charity, 'dedicated to using Applied Theatre to bring about positive change and development,' I left Chapter feeling un-empowered to do something positive,  just thinking, 'Isn't it terrible?'  I think this play would work much better as a starting point for work-shopping and as a piece of theatre in education.
The play is touring Wales til the 9th of November 2013. For further info www.theatreversusoppression.co.uk

CHIMERICA

Last week in London, I saw a 'not-to-be missed' moving play, called Chimerica by Lucy Kirwood and directed by Lyndsey Turner.  The starting point is the photograph by Jeff Widener of the unnamed hero who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square in Beijing to stop further killing of students protesting against the regime. The play questions how meaning in imagery can be skewed or used according to an individual or organisation's own agenda, and the complexity of heroism. Set in Beijing and New York, in a rotating set that gives pace to the piece, a photo- journalist sets out to find 'Tank Man'. He eventually does find his hero but in his search, he falls in love, and finds that there is another Tank Man, ignored by the Western press.
   Chimerica is on at The Harold Pinter Theatre;  Headlong& Almeida Theatre co-production. www.atgtickets.com

WRITING INTHE MUSEUM & BEES AT CHAPTER

Summer's over.  It's been a wonderful enriching time for which I'm really grateful. I didn't plan to do so much air travel, but both our children have moved abroad and alternatives were so expensive and unfeasable. In the past few months we've been lucky enough to visit Portugal, Switzerland and Singapore.
       Now it's autumn, the 'season' has started. I've enrolled on a new writing course-'Writing at the Museum,' using artefacts from the National Museum of Wales. This term's theme is the use of colour in bugs and butterflies. Science meets art. It's made me think about the nature of collecting. Seeing rows of royal blue tropical butterflies in glass cases, pinned with fading labels; caught, killed, classified and named after Victorian Lepidopterists or Taxonomists. Now these species are probably very rare. Their enthusiasm to share species from exotic lands with the British public could never have foreseen that their activity contributed in some small way to the extinction of the species. Now, the rapid destruction of rainforest by man for commerce and profit, climate change, changes in farming practice, etc, etc, have fast-forwarded the extinction of such beautiful creatures.
      Sue Richardson, Eco-Poet is organising an evening of poetry devoted to Bees- some species are dying breeds. Proceeds will go to Friends of the Earth. The evening starting at 7pm is on Friday 25th October at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. All welcome.

SINGAPORE WILDERNESS

I stood over her, curious. She was large and yellow, crouched in a corner behind the swimming pool; the first ‘wild’ creature I’d seen in the city since arriving.

      Later, I sat on the lit balcony of the 11^th floor apartment my daughter and her partner are renting. The air was humid after monsoon rain. I scanned the landscape-a mixture of Gotham City and a Cubist painting -mountains of high-rise flats and futuristic office blocks.    Something was missing and it wasn’t Batman.

       I listened and looked up at the balcony light. No flying cockroaches, no whining mosquitos, no killer bees or Kamikazi moths. This was tropical Asia. I didn’t get it. Yet the part of me that didn’t want to be bitten or stung, rather liked this new experience-for a while.

     ‘They spray everything here,’ my daughter told me as we sipped our G & T.  ‘They’re afraid of Denge fever.  Last week, they injected clouds with chemicals so it would rain before the Grand Prix-they can’t afford to chance it during the event- it would be a financial disaster.’  

      ‘How do you cope with it?’ I asked. ‘It’s challenging,’ she said. ‘But, there’s a new development, ‘Gardens in the Bay,’ we haven’t seen ourselves. Do you fancy it?’

       We took the boat down the cleaned-up Singapore River, past the statue of Raffles, the First Governor of the Island, a wild-life enthusiast.  A plant that only flowers once a year, the ‘Rafflesia’ was named after him. On we floated towards the modern development of Marina Bay, with its metallic arts complex and Eden-type project with cool houses.  Against the backdrop of the financial quarter stand ‘Super trees’- huge metal constructions towering over the gardens. Climbing plants threaded into the artificial ‘trunks.’ While in close-by Indonesian Kalimantan, I thought, deforestation marches on, raping the rainforest.

       ‘Where does interfering with nature stop?’ I asked. ‘Man-made rain, man-made trees, gassed insects. When will they start making artificial insects, beetles and bees that will replace the natural species they are so keen to destroy?’

      ‘Perhaps ‘they’ already have,’ my daughter said.

       Back at the apartment block, I looked again at the large yellow Cricket by the pool.

      ‘How did you survive?’ I asked her.  There was a deafening sound. ‘They’ were testing the sirens in case of a nuclear war.  But she stayed perfectly still and kept her escape plans to herself.