William Sutton's Blog, page 31
May 22, 2016
Glastonwick & the Demon Bawler of West Sussex
Philip Jeays, demon bawler of West Sussex, singing his dismal threnodies at Glastonwick Festival at 7.40 Friday 3 June. I’m looking forward to accompanying him. His new album can be sneakily previews .
For the 21st consecutive year, and 10th in fabulous rural Coombes, this popular festival will bring sleepy Sussex to life in 2016.
The event is organised by the founders of Glastonwick – legendary punk poet Attila the Stockbroker and cask beer advocate Alex Hall. They promise a weekend of enormous quantities of delicious real ale, farmhouse cider, and quality entertainment. And us too. Here he is, lambasting those Idiots in Uniform:
Also not to be missed, at 6.55, performance poet The Speech Painter with his wonderful romp The Twat in the Flat.
Here’s the FRIDAY line-up:
10.00-11.30 THE KING BLUES
Reformed and unreformed! Uncompromising political punk and the best band of their generation.8.45-9.40 THE TUTS
Young, sharp, feisty all women punk band from Hayes.7.40-8.30 PHILIP JEAYS
England’s answer to Jacques Brel!6.55-7.25 THE SPEECH PAINTER
Performing The Prat In The Flat – a hilarious piece inspired by Dr Seuss…6.15-6.50 THE HUMDRUM EXPRESS
6 Music favourite from the Black Country. Bostin songs, a kind of solo West Midlands Half Man Half Biscuit.
Friday 6pm to midnight – £15
Saturday noon to midnight – £25
Sunday noon to 6pm – £10
Camping – £5 per night
(Friday and Saturday, also Sunday by arrangement when you get there)
That’s £60 for a full weekend with camping, or £50 without camping.
Church Farm, Coombes, West Sussex (North of Lancing College), BN15 0RS
Frequent trains to Shoreham from Brighton, Worthing (both only 10 minutes away by train) and other stations along the West Coastway Line. From there, jump on our special shuttle bus linking the festival with Shoreham Railway Station and The Duke of Wellington (plus one daily journey each way from Brighton – except Friday when the outward trip starts at Portslade to avoid rush hour traffic for timekeeping purposes).
Camping is offered on site for only £5 per night. Note you MUST book in advance for Friday and Saturday if you wish to camp on site.
May 19, 2016
Diving into the Wreck
15 May 8pm Tongues ‘n’ Grooves
17 Jun 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Square Tower PO1 2JE
“There’s a murderer in my head, and he wants me dead.”
Within five minutes of Diving into the Wreck, we understood: how easy it is to slip into addiction. I don’t I was the only one in the audience at Portsmouth’s Square Tower counting my blessings that I have been lucky enough to have the support of friends and family through the tough times that bring so many to such a state that they will try anything.
In the first of a series of filmed interviews, moving, funny and honest, one recovering addict told without melodrama, without self-pity or understatement, how he had fallen into addiction. Insecure from an early age, it was alcohol that first brought him relief, and the feeling that he could cope. Next came heroin – and he is careful to tell us how much effort is required to get hooked.
“It makes you vomit, but you don’t care. You don’t care about anything.”
Between and during the films, four people come onstage to tell their tales. They are quietly spoken, undemonstrative, eloquent. There is no attempt to turn them into actors – and there is no need to, because their words are so vivid and the testament on film is so vibrant.
The films are interspersed with stark white titles, which came to life as the interviews unfurled the lives of the recovering addicts. “Mad as a box of frogs.” Every so often, one of their colourful phrases comes to life onscreen, as when the two recovering addicts are remembering what one used to drink:
“It was strong lager.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“No, you’re right. It was lager on pay day, then cider the rest of the week.”
“Cider? Arsehole Diesel!”
A cheap plastic bottle of cider sits on a park bench, uncompromisingly labelled Arsehole Diesel.
Most of the tales reveal the depths of addiction. There are images that will stay with me, of the man who was so ill he continually lost control of his bowels; of the woman who used to fall asleep on her sofa, or on the floor, and one morning woke to find herself covered in blood having fallen down the stairs; of the mum battling to save her son from addiction when the rest of the family had given up on him.
A couple of songs intersperse the talk: Mary Gauthier’s I Drink and a Johnny Cash style Hurt (Nine Inch Nails song). Brilliant. The rhythm of the show is beautifully controlled, and all the work of poet Maggie Sawkins and director Mark C Hewitt is so effective that it is invisible, allowing us to think and listen and try to understand a world that we may not have understood, to wonder how.
At the end, all four performers come together to remember moments from their lives, moments of loss and love and theft and coming up and coming down.
A superb show, heart-breaking and warm-hearted at the same time.
Go and see it on June 17. Go and see it twice. (Portsmouth Festivities should be inundated with demands that they extend the show’s run.)
You can read more about The Recovery Cafe and the work it does on hyperlocal newssite Star and Crescent.
“A group production evoking the secret world of addiction: its craziness, nastiness, predictable routines, and dark humour.” Tickets £5 www.portsmouthfestivities.co.uk
“I went to see this in May when it was performed. It’s a brilliant event and will guarantee to make you laugh, cry and all things in between. It really shouldn’t be missed. I will probably go again and take my daughter with me. Such an important piece of work.” Christine Lawrence
May 18, 2016
London Launch: Forbidden Flowers
Lawless & the Flowers of Sin (London)
Celebrate the launch of Lawless & the #FlowersofSin at Forbidden Planet, Shaftsbury Avenue.
Welcome to the Swinging 1860s.
It’s Victorian London: of course perfection can be bought.
Twirl your moustachios, wax your mutton chops, tug on your cover-me-properlies, your Victorian velvet, crinoline, taffeta & lace, your stampers, your fumbles, your steampunk corsetry, and come along to toast my second Victorian Mystery with Titan Books.
No ticket necessary, just present your sense of ennui at the door. Bring along fellow sleuth-hounds and erotobibliomaniacs, socialites full of ennui, socialists full of enmity, proteges, prodigies, protesters, and proto-sensation fiction writers. Expect musical nonsense, a cacophony of character cabaret, and platefuls of sinful biscuitry.
6pm. Join us for
Sinful biscuitry
Songs by the Dirty Little Sinners
Welcome/Victorian treats.
Readings: Exploitation, Exploitation, Exploitation.
Character Cabaret: unctuous urchins, seductive sylphs, dour detective, philosophical pornographer, foul-mouthed doxies, nighthouse shenanigans
Chorus
Map designed by Rebecca Lea Williams
7pm. Carriages. Before the ennui strikes again, debauchees may remove to the pub – the Royal George Charing Cross Road – for victuals and neck-oil.
Titan Books
f/williamgeorgeq
t @WilliamGeorgeQ
Book Launch, 12 July, Lawless & the Flowers of Sin (Portsmouth)
Celebrate the launch of my second Victorian mystery, Lawless & the #FlowersofSin, with Titan Books.
Invite readers, erotobibliomaniacs, socialites full of ennui, socialists full of enmity, protesters, and proto-crime-writers to Blackwell’s in Portsmouth, Cambridge Road, Portsmouth PO1 2EF, and Le Cafe Parisien (map below).
5pm for 5.30, 12 July 2016. Music, bookish japes, and sinful biscuitry at Blackwell’s till 6.15ish.
No ticket needed, though you can tell us you’re coming on Facebook.
Post-launch buffet (£5 per head) Le Cafe Parisien, from 6.15ish until the ennui bites us.
Welcome to the swinging 1860s: “It’s Victorian London. Of course perfection can be bought.”
Dress code: moustachios, mutton chops welcome. Tug on your cover-me-properlies, your velvet, lace, crinoline or taffeta, your stampers, your fumbles, your Victorian corsetry, and share:
Victorian nibbles
Songs from the Dirty Little Sinners
Readings: Music, Murder; Exploitation, Exploitation, Exploitation.
Cabaret of characters, featuring unctuous urchins, seductive Skittles, dogged detective, philosophical pornographer, foul-mouthed fallen women, nighthouse shenanigans
Q & A
Concluding chorus
Members of Portsmouth Writers’ Hub know William Sutton, author, musician & classics teacher living in Southsea.
Please come along, with friends, and turn a jogtrot Tuesday evening into a night of Victorian revelry.
Titan Books
f/williamgeorgeq
t @WilliamGeorgeQ
Pictures: Pinterest.com/wgq42
Trailers/interviews: Soundcloud.com/william-george-sutton
A few of the thefts involved in this most heinously criminal and debauched book.
Talking to tenacious thriller writer JS Law at Blackwell’s
April 30, 2016
Polyglottomania
– one language really well, or
– six languages pretty ropily
Did I succeed? Did I hell. But at least by the time I reached 35, I could speak a couple quite well; I’ve mysteriously improved in two I’d previously floundered with; and I’m okay in understanding cognates of two of my good languages. So six and two halves, ropily, I’ve now got.
“Matthew Youlden speaks nine languages fluently and understands more than a dozen more. We work in the same office in Berlin so I constantly hear him using his skills, switching from language to language like a chameleon changing colors. In fact, for the longest time I didn’t even know he was British.”
And my favourite thing I learned from this YouTube is that the Irish for Portuguese is Portaingéalach (sounds like Portan-Gaelish). Or am I mishearing? Those Gauls/Gaels/Gallic folk get around.
#earworm #polyglot #languages
April 26, 2016
Ken
Ken Campbell was memorable. I find myself remembering his quips and musings often. Only a couple of days ago, I was recalling one of his comic directorial diatribes as I watched a theatre production.
“Most theatre,” he said, “is so boring, you’d rather be watching traffic.” He went on to complain that most plays feel four times as long as they are, an effect intentionally striven for in Germany (he claimed) thus maximising their arts funding.
But Terry Johnson’s play (or, perhaps, slice of memoir) KEN at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs flew by. I found myself flung out in the Swiss Cottage night clinging on to the magical sense of paradigms shifted.
“What I wanted to do was take people back,” says Terry. And as the play draws to a close, we see Ken watching the video of the 1970s Warp transfixed, remembering it as “a time when I still had hope.”
KEN certainly takes us back. I was perched on the side of the stage, dangling in a hanging basket seat, and when Jeremy Stockwell turned his Ken eyebrows upon my (“like nodding yaks”), I was back in 1997-1998, rehearsing at Fatty Towers and in Epping Forest, performing at Three Mills Island, Hoxton Hall and the Deptford Albany.
Rehearsing with Ken & Alan Cox in Epping Forest 1997. I’m playing Eveline, one of the founders of the Findhorn Community. Hence the wigs.
Terry takes us on a ride through his experiences with this unforgettable man. People have called Ken Campbell a maverick, comedic innovator, an inspiration, a towering figure in the underculture of British theatre. Certainly true, and graduates of his alternative drama world include Jim Broadbent, Bill Nighy, Bill Drummond, Bob Hoskins, Sylvester McCoy, and Terry Johnson himself, and later Nina Conti, Alan Cox, Dallas Campbell and Eliot Levey.
But Ken was also goading, irascible and demanding. A key moment in the play – and in Johnson’s life – was Ken tapping his sternum and saying, “You’ve got a switch, and it’s off.”
I could understand; rather like Terry, I was a writer bamboozled by the stellar talents around me in the late 1990s production of The Warp (though I couldn’t plumb a toilet). I’d retreated to the band (along with a couple of walk-on parts); Terry stuck it out long enough to suffer as Zaphod’s second head in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, then struck out to pursue his writing.
It was a tough school, and we all suffered from the wrath of Ken:
“Rubbish! Go away and come back when you’re better.”
Jeremy Stockwell captures Ken uncannily. His rasping voice and impish gestures transported me back in time. While the wild directorial japes reduced the audience to giggles, I found myself close to tears. It brought it all back: the anecdotes about poet Neil Oram in a 2cv garage, the substance appreciation, the paradigm shifts and diaphanous costumes, Shutters defiant; and a glorious evocation of the 24-hour marathon play, with Russell Denton, Alan Cox, Oliver Senton and the other souls brave enough to take on the main part, Phil Masters.
We Who Have Been Through The Warp salute you, Terry Johnson. And thanks for the third act – a mischievous mystical treat.
“Just 2 weeks left @Hamps_Theatre A delight & an honour to play Ken Campbell with Terry Johnson. Book if you can xJ” Jeremy Stockwell on Twitter
Broadbent and Co.
Dallas Campbell, Elliot Levey and more Seekers.
More impish pics at: hampsteadtheatre.com/news/2016/april/ken-campbell-a-career-in-pictures/
April 23, 2016
Shakespeare: monster, icon, monument; poet, neologist, magician
To grasp Shakespeare’s neologistic hold on us, see Bernard Levin’s battery of Shakespearean phrases.
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me”, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise – why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then – to give the devil his due – if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then – by Jove! O Lord! Tut, tut! for goodness’ sake! what the dickens! but me no buts – it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
(Bernard Levin. From The Story of English. Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking: 1986).
The Story of English (McCrum, MacNeil, Cran), which I saw on telly in the 1980s and read in my 20s, is eloquent on the bard.
“Shakespeare is credited with “coining”-or inventing-as many as 1500 words, most of which are still in use. He did this by adapting words (i.e. turning an existing noun into a verb, adding syllables to existing words, or creating compound words) or creating entirely new ones. In many cases, Shakespeare may have heard a word elsewhere, but since he was the first to use it print, he is credited with coining it.
Anyone can coin a new word, or neologism. As our culture evolves, so does the language. Words like “mallrats” and “email”, expressions like “date rape” and “road rage”, and slang words like “wack” and “homey” haven’t been around forever. Many take the complexity and flexibility of the English language as an opportunity for fun. Comedian Rich Hall and his friends devised Sniglets, popularized in a series of humor books between 1984 and 1989. Hall defined a sniglet as “Any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary but should.” Modern board games like Balderdash and game shows like National Public Radio’s Says You also capitalize on making up words that sound real but aren’t, even or especially when they are put alongside real, obscure words.”
I also recommend Anthony Burgess’s broadcast, 23 April 1964, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.
“400 years have served to turn Shakespeare into a monster, an icon, a monument, a venerable image but hardly a human being. We do great wrong to him by this awed by rather bored veneration. He wrote to make money. The best way to make money was to give pleasure.”
Now I’m off to see the Merry Wives of Windsor in Ravelin Park in the marvellous Much Ado About Portsmouth Festival.
April 15, 2016
Southsea Speakeasy
“I’m a serial beginner.”
Southsea Speakeasy kicked off their activities with The Story Party South last night at the redoubtable King’s Theatre. There is something magical about people talking about their lives, sharing pivotal moments in a way that helps us, and them, understand ourselves.
Inspired by Beverley Glick‘s Story Party events in London, Clare Brown and Helen Thompson-Whiteside assembled a remarkable group of storytellers, experienced and first-timers among them, to entertain us in the top bar of the elegant old theatre. It was an evening of warmth, compassionate humour and quiet inspiration, and I hope there will be further Southsea Speakeasy events.
The Storytellers
Helen’s inaugural address explained how she has been tempted by the lure of speaking in public.
Beverley Glick herself kicked off the evening with a tale of how she transformed from humble secretary by day into Betty Page, muso-journalist, by night (who coined the term New Romantic).
Stand-up comedian and speaking coach, James Evans, told us winningly how he is no longer ashamed of being a “serial beginner”.
Clare Seek inspired us with the ever-growing consequences of trying to work out how her household produced so much rubbish and how they could stop. Plastic, be gone.
Wendy May Jacobs elicited the evening’s loudest laugh, retelling how her job as prison librarian was summarily terminated due to a rude phrase in a Tracy Emin art book; if she tells that story once she’s ordained as a priest, she may shock the congregation.
But it was the communal gasp at the crux moment of her extraordinary tale that showed how a true story can move us. It’s not about slick delivery, it’s about honesty.
Christine Lawrence’s Chamber of Horrors brought to life her first day as a psychiatric nurse on a female locked ward at Knowle Hospital in 1973, a story you find explored further in her superb debut novel Caught in the Web.
Irina Shigidina also told about fresh beginnings, the consequence of a man on a bench telling her she wasn’t really living.
Dr Matthew Crisp’s story of the Weymouth and District Hospital (known fondly as the Weymouth and Risk It) made us all clench our orifices in discomfort.
Encore.
April 13, 2016
A good agent
“I think a good agent the best investment in the world. The point is that an agent can fight for your stuff as you cannot possibly fight yourself. I would never have the nerve to refuse a fairly good offer in the hope of getting more elsewhere, but an agent will.”
PG Wodehouse, Performing Flea
(Plum’s witty and inspiring letters to his writer friend Bill Townend)
I concur, not solely because Phil Patterson secured me a deal with Titan Books but also because he knows such interesting curry houses.
March 25, 2016
Map making, Lawless & the Flowers of Sin
Thank you to artist and designer, Rebecca Lea Williams,
remarkable, talented and patient,
for taking my scribbles and ramblings
and bringing map for Lawless & the Flowers of Sin into reality. @TitanBooks
