The 14th Tale

This time last year, poet, writer and performer Inua Ellams was at the Bristol Old Vic with his one-man show Black T-Shirt Collection (reviewed here). And now he’s returned, stepping out of sequence to bring us his very first play, The 14^th Tale (from 2009).

But this disregard for chronology makes perfect sense, as The 14^th Tale is an autobiographical piece about Inua’s teenage years, taking him from his Nigerian birth place to London and then to Dublin. The hour-long piece is bracketed by scenes of Inua in a hospital waiting room, anxious for news… and then we flash back to the scenes that led him to the waiting room.

The set is minimal – a cloth map hangs along the back wall of the Old Vic’s Basement space, and Inua is equipped with only a simple chair and a torch. His costume is a pair of trousers and a t-shirt, with what appear to be blood stains on them. And these are all the clues we have to go on, all the pieces we have to help us follow Inua on his teenage journey to the hospital waiting room.

What drives the narrative is Inua’s longing for a close relationship with his father, and of Inua’s desire to fit in with his peers in the culture shock of England. While these might not be new topics to uncover, Inua’s background as a poet clearly inspires his beautiful use of language. He expertly delivers lyrical monologues with an effortless but passionate drive, never once slipping up or faltering in his performance.

The 14^th Tale is part of Fuel Fest at Bristol Old Vic, which is a series of three shows running until March 23. Click here for more information. 

WOW, what a weekend!

As I write this on a freezing Tuesday morning, I’m still basking in the toasty afterglow of a fabulously feminist few days.

On Saturday morning, I was up with the fairies to catch the Megatrain to London, where I spent a zinging weekend at the Women Of the World Festival (WOW) at the Southbank Centre. On the train up I was reading a review copy of the forthcoming Virago anthology Fifty Shades of Feminism, which had only arrived the day before, and in the evening I watched Made In Dagenham in my mini B&B room. I was Not Doing Feminism By Halves. No, siree.

Being at WOW was a wonderful experience. 2013 marked the third WOW festival but the first that I’d attended, and my reason for going was that the women’s comedy event I run, WhatThe Frock! Comedy, had been invited to put on a show in the Royal Festival Hall’s ballroom on the Sunday afternoon. That wasn’t an opportunity I was going to say ‘no’ to. Putting on a show (only our sixth ever) to 500+ people in the UK’s biggest arts centre? Err, yes please.

I headed up a day early to make the most of the festival and to see as much as possible. I lived in London for most of my 20s and still feel very fond of the place, so it’s always nice to have an excuse to go back. The Southbank Centre was somewhere I spent a lot of time in my London years as I both lived and worked nearby, plus I love the heritage of the place and the reasons why it was created in the first place.

To see the buildings (Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall) filled to the rafters with women-friendly stalls and events promoting women in business, women in comedy, women in fashion, women in charities… was brilliant. The buzz in the whole centre was electric, and the atmosphere was nothing but warm, welcoming and inclusive.

I saw several talks over the two days, but with up to 10 events happening simultaneously, I inevitably also missed a great deal. But I did catch a brilliant session celebrating women who don’t have children (whether by choice or by circumstance); debating the outcome of the Levenson Report into how the media continues to view women; the brilliance of Jane Austen. I saw Ruby Wax’s soloshow Losing It, in which she talks frankly and hilariously about her very real mental breakdown and ongoing problems with depression. And it was great to finally see Michael Kaufman talk, having interviewed him a few years previously for his book A Guy’s Guide To Feminism – and he didn’t disappoint.

All three pictures, copyright Southbank Centre

Of course, my main focus was putting on the What The Frock! Comedy show on the Sunday afternoon. With a one-hour timeslot, I’d booked Rosie Wilby as MC, and Shazia Mirza and Danielle Ward for 20-minute slots. It seemed a tough call – the ballroom turned out to be not a ‘room’ but a huge sunken space within the main foyer, meaning there was a lot of background noise and distractions. But it also meant that as well as filling our 500 seats, we gained about 200 extra audience members who were standing around the edges, sitting on the floor at the front, and pulling up chairs to peer over the balcony to watch. It was fabulous. And where else was I going to put on a show where our ‘warm-up act’ was Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray (who had done a piece on What The Frock! earlier in the week), and where we were succeeded by Sandi Toksvig?

The tweets and messages I’ve since received from people in the audience, who previously didn’t know about What The Frock! but who had a wonderful time, and who also discovered one or two comedians they didn’t previously know, has made it all so worthwhile. Putting on any show is never a piece of cake – there are contracts to sign, money to be negotiated, publicity to garner, and inevitably technical hitches on the day. But the buzz of the day and the resulting feedback is what always makes it worthwhile. Even as I sat squashed into an uncomfortable corner of a bumpy coach for three hours going home, I was still basking in the glow of a weekend where the women deservedly won.

So, thank you to everyone at WOW and the Royal Festival Hall for inviting What The Frock! along and for taking a punt on an up and coming comedy event. I had a ball, and whether or not What The Frock! comes back for WOW 2014, I’ll certainly be there, come hell or high water.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This is the kind of thing the Bristol Old Vic excels at. The contemporary retelling of a Shakespearean play that combines traditional theatre with modern manners in a seamless way.

Directed by Bristol Old Vic Artistic Director Tom Morris, A Midsummer Night’s Dream fuses puppetry from the Handspring Puppet Company with live performance in an effortless interpretation that perfectly captures the famous comic story’s themes of love, fairy tale, reality, magic and danger.

But in this latest incarnation, puppets are not simply wooden marionettes or creatures operated by string… here they take on a new life, and in turn imbue new life in seemingly inanimate objects. In this case, planks of wood. Whenever a cast member isn’t primarily involved in a scene, they pick up a plank and animate it so that it becomes a fairy in a woodland scene, a musical instrument, the moving wind, and any number of other elements. For me, the music from the planks was particularly impressive.

I’m a recent convert to puppets after having seen Kneehigh’s A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings in Bristol Old Vic’s Studio last month. (A VERY recent convert, you’ll agree!). And the use of puppets between these two plays couldn’t be more contrasting. 

While Kneehigh’s use was fairly traditional, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the puppets encompass all manner of objects – whether these are the planks mentioned above, or beautiful Grecian masks, or the naughty Puck created from an oilcan, basket and saw (manipulated by three actors simultaneously). As these are interspersed with a healthy dose of human acting, the combined effect is one that keeps the audience on their toes. The wealth of imagination in Morris’ production is staggering, but at times it gets a little overwhelming.

There is some fine human acting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, too – most notably from Akiya Henry as Hermia, who is the funniest and most endearing character in this entire production. Another highlight is Miltos Yerolemou’s Bottom… which combines puppetry and human acting to create a donkey that quite clearly steals the show. I’m loathe to say too much in case I spoil it for anyone, but all I can say is that when you see Bottom, you will know exactly what I mean.

But for me, the ultimate highlight is the very finale of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when the giant puppets of Titania and Oberon come to life and dominate the whole stage – and this is a set that makes full use of the revitalised Old Vic’s deep, deep stage. Actors Saskia Portway and David Ricardo Pearce are both excellent in these roles.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed at Bristol Old Vic until May 4. Click here for furtherinformation and to book tickets.