Monday 23 May 2011

Wham! Bam! Thank Ewhurst Am-Dram

It’s not often that LibraDoodle veers off into Terra Theatricalis, over-proximity to the flatulence of strangers, the prohibition on smoking and a remarkably short attention span being just three reasons. Another is that anything I might think or write about what I’ve seen has generally been better thought and more beautifully written by others before I’ve even got out of the stalls. It’s hard to follow such pithycisms as Walter Kerr’s ‘Me no Leica’ review of the 1951 Broadway production of “I am a Camera” and unless I’m much mistaken, the Swiss psychiatrist’s view on theatrical light comedy, “Live farce? Die! – Jung” is just too tough to match let alone beat and I do have some pride.

So when on Saturday two friends spoke the dread words “We’ve got you a ticket to join us at the local players production of Ayckbourn after supper,” my mind silently replied with “Oh what fresh hell is this?’” before playing a speed psycho Powerpoint demo featuring images of a fetid village hall scented by decades of Cub Scouts and bingo, creaking scenery and creakier performances and topped it off with a reminder that politesse would prevent early escape. And we’d been having such a lovely time, I thought.

I should not have worried. As it happens the Ewhurst Players (Ewhurst – pretty little village near Cranleigh in Surrey’s Rockbroken heartland) are a highly proficient band of performers. The production was Alan Ayckbourn’s “Improbable Fiction” in which a writers group convenes at the grand house of its chairman to discuss their authorial progress. A Sapphic smallholder confesses that she hasn’t written a word for fear of ruining the perfection of the novel in her head, an artistic children’s writer owns up to having spent six years only doing the drawings, a busybody who claims to be prolific has failed to bring anything with her while the geek who pens multi-layered sci-fi that proves to be overcomplicated, narcissistic escapism has and we wish he hadn’t. Then there is the ageing roué librettist with a weak bladder, no musical partner and only one finished verse leaving only the chairman host, a rather endearing “Tim, nice but dim” type whose artistic endeavours extend only as far as translating instruction manuals for household appliances. Add into this mix Ilsa, the exotic “girl from the village who does,” and we’re set for a nice meander through artistic aspirations that remind us of the old joke: Two writers meet in the pub. One says to the other, “I’m writing a new novel.” The other replies, “Neither am I."

Everything rumbles along nice and sedately until just before the interval when WHAM! - a huge peel of thunder blasts cast and audience alike and BAM! - the lights go out and we’re all thrown into pitch darkness… until the lights fade back up to reveal…

I shan’t spoil it in case you’ve not seen it either but what happens next shows that it really is a play of two halves and that all the carefully crafted intros not only have a purpose but are neatly and are hilariously referred to.

There proved to be some real talent on stage. Jason Butler’s wonderfully portrayed host and fulcrum for the whole production, Arnold Hassock rather than Tim, revealed an Alan Cummings-like style fused with David Tennant authenticity, Roland Butcher’s brilliantly OTT librettist, Brevis Winterton, was deliciously grumpy old mannish, Jane Biggins’ lesbian pseudo-Bronte, Jess Bales, was trouser-wettingly funny while Peter Barnett’s, whiny science fantasist Clem Pepp, was deftly drawn and played a point. Tricia Coopers’ blousy Grace Sims had some lovely Mrs Slocombe undertones, Wendy Davies cunningly underplayed the mouse-like Vivvi Dickens and Gaynor Arnold’s effortlessly sexy Ilsa deployed a fascinating range of accents which veered from Somerset to Scandinavia, often via Solihull and usually in the same sentence but with the red hot pants she was wearing I doubt anyone cared… or even noticed.

It was, I must confess, a bloody good laugh. Good people putting their hearts into their last night and pulling off a play that could easily have bested a less proficient and hard working group. What they in fact managed was to pay the dramatist the biggest compliment; show a proper understanding his text or as I’d put it “Am Dram Thanks Alan” (See para 1)

Yours ever,

LibraDoodle


(Nb: some quotes and words may be freshly coined in this post and are available for rent or hire. Please contact for rates.)

Saturday 14 May 2011

All’s unfair in Stow-on-the-Wold Annual Gypsy Horse Fair


Stow-on-the-Wold, straddling the Roman Fosse Way in the heart of the Cotswolds, is considered by many to be a jewel of Gloucestershire charm; all honeyed stone, prissy cafes and quaint antique shops nestled next to vendors of high-priced posh tat: faux amusant cushions, £200 rubber boots and gnarly rural kit that looks as if it has purpose but bearing price tags that will forever consign it to ostentatious display in a second homers weekend cottage. Mind you, not everyone is suckered by Stow’s outward charm, A.A Gill, the deliciously acerbic restaurant reviewer and penner of bon mots described it as "catastrophically ghastly" and "the worst place in the world,” in his excellent book The Angry Island (2005) and in doing so incurred the tepid ire of the town’s mayor.

Architecturally it is undeniably beautiful with many of the buildings dating (and often predating) the Civil War in which Stow was a Royalist stronghold and the locale for many battles. There are mullion windows aplenty, little alleyways that tempt you to explore ever onwards and the sharp eyed visitor will notice names and dates carved into lintels and stonework, defacement so old and of such quality of ‘penmanship’ that there ought to be an entirely separate name for such antique graffitos.

Being stuck on top of an 800-foot hill, the eponymous ‘wold’, affords it glorious views of the surrounding arable land and woods and doubtless made it a highly defensible position when the Cromwellian Roundheads came a-calling. But these days, although the enemy comes in a different form, the town behaves as history has taught it, locking and shuttering doors and windows, literally shutting up shop and repelling all-comers. And never more than when the annual horse fair comes to town.

Stow has a history of fairs. In 1330, Edward III set up an annual market in August. Edward IV replaced this in 1476 with two 5-day fairs and yet another in October on the feast of St Edward the Confessor (the saint associated with the town). The aim of these was to establish Stow as a place of commerce and to level out the unpredictability of passing trade.

As the fairs grew, the town became more prosperous. While traders who had dealt solely in livestock started to deal in other goods it was the wool trade that underpinned the town’s income, 20,000 sheep changing hands at one 19th century fair. The aforementioned alleyways, known as "tures," that run between the buildings of Stow into the market square, used to herd sheep from surrounding holding pens and fields into the square to be sold.

As the wool trade declined, people began to trade in horses, a practice which continues today and which reveals the lurking fear and ugliness that seeps through the place.

Twice a year in field just 5 minutes walk from the main square a gathering of clans occurs. Travellers, Roma - I am loathe to write ‘Gypsies’ having been taught by a true Roma that that word is the equivalent of the N-word in such circles – gather for two main reasons, to trade bloodstock and to present their marriageable children to each other in the hope that good matches may be made. The huge field becomes alive with a multi-generational conclave of folk from all parts of the UK. Some have traditional caravans, beautifully painted wooden-wheeled, horse drawn affairs with immaculate interiors revealing wood-burning, pot-bellied stoves and intricately painted ceilings like mobile Michelangelo’s. Some have state-of-the-art trucks and cars that haul chromed and honed modern mobile homes with interiors that would shame many a suburban drawing room. The comfortingly atavistic smell of wood smoke wafts across the place. Fires everywhere are straddled by great iron tripods from which blackened stew pots and kettles are suspended on chains, steaming away with a meal or a brew. Small children skittle around, the girls like little meringues in layers of white or cream netting with twists of ribbon at their throats or laced through their hair, the boys smartly elegant in mini tweed jackets and trews, shined boots and with errant hair lines cow-licked into place. The teens favour more defiant dress, young women this year in a uniform of tight jeans, lycra micro skirts and day-glo, fluorescent pink or lime green crop tops; tanned midriffs, arms and shoulders bared to maximum effect and with the most spectacular two-tone suede boots, gravity testing stilleto-ed shoes blinged to the max with sparkling rhinestones or, when the new shoes hurt, bare feet. Teen lads move around in packs, effortlessly James Dean cool in tight t-shirts (often even with a cigarette packet tucked in the sleeve), tighter jeans and yet tighter muscles testifying to a life spent working with horses, bareknuckle fighting and just, well, just being cool.

Parents and grandparents have the look of those who have lived lives on the outside, in all senses. Weathered and well fed, the men have hands that look as if manually wrenching a living from a recalcitrant life has been their lot while the women veer from exuding a wiry energy to extruding from clothing two sizes shy of flattering. They all are cautious and guarded, perhaps used to insults and rejection, but friendly. A cheery “good morning’ is reciprocated here, a question is politely answered there. A request to take a photo is met with a smiling “Go on help yourself’ or ‘Of course you can fella.” There is no sense of threat, no background radiation of suppressed or impending violence, none of the angst that the good burghers of Stow had warned me about. Just hard-working, hard-living people gathered for trade and exchange, graciously putting up with the hordes of rubbernecking tourists, here to take pictures, buy souvenirs and absorb a little of a lifestyle largely gone and increasing vilified.

Mind you this isn’t all bucolic rural charm. The caged cocks with the huge, vicious-looking spurs weren’t there for food. The dogs tied up around the perimeter, guarding the caravans and possessions, weren’t called Muffy and certainly weren’t over-fed, over-pampered pooches. Doubtless after the sun goes down and the drinking starts, things warm up. My guide told me tales of knife fights and mortal stabbings. The police presence in the town was as overt as in a Trafalgar Square university fee demo. To be fair, the stabbing had been some years ago and the constabulary was charm personified but you take the point.

And therein lies the rub. Given that Stow-on-the-Wold’s fame and fortune is historically based on such fairs, you might imagine that the residents would welcome those who attract coach loads of incomers into their curio shops and cafes, hostels and hostelries; that Stow would know which side its bread is buttered on. Sadly not. The general air when the fair’s in town is that ‘people from off’ are coming and it’s time to shut up shop. One of the big hotels in the square literally barricades its doors. Many small businesses clear the stock from view and close for the duration. An unattractive haughtiness descends upon some of the permanent residents. There is sneering at some of the dress sense on display, a general unfriendliness, an overt snobbery directed at the descendents of the very folk who helped make Stow what it is today by those who are living on the fat that previous generations of those ‘people from off’ helped to create.

I was told a story that a former Lord of the Manor was so against the whole affair he prevented it from happening at all in Stow’s domain during his tenure. I heard also that while the very field in which the fair takes place is owned outright by the travelers, bought by them to protect their right to convene in the face of fierce local opposition, they are oddly – and unfairly – prevented from actually setting up there, on their own land, until immediately beforehand, thereby forcing them to make do in the verges of local lanes until the appointed hour when they can gain access.

Of course there is bound to be partisanship in such situations, but it strikes this correspondent that when so much legislation is created to ensure parity, fairness and equality in a nation that historically prides itself on diversity and offering a warm welcome to the oppressed, dispossessed and downtrodden, there is a small corner of our national psyche that is blind to that which is before eyes, a band of folk who choose an alternative lifestyle that brings colour, heritage and a tang of smokey authenticity and that stems our relentless fall into a homogenised blandness.

There is an unattributed couplet “Stow on the Wold where the wind blows cold and the cooks can’t roast their dinners.” It could easily describe the welcome the town offers and may come from a rhyme about Brill in Buckinghamshire that runs:

At Brill on the hill


The wind blows shrill


The cooks no meat can dress


At Stow-in-the-Wold


The wind blows cold


I know no more than this.

I know that that Stow’s cutesy charm hides a darker, unattractive streak and that - as my Grandmother used to say in another context - it is “all fur coat and no knickers.’ Not much good when the wind’s even colder than the welcome then.