Last week, I got back from seven days in the delightful Mediterranean town of Sète in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of Southern France where I rented an apartment over-looking the Marina in this small port town which is punctuated with canals earning it the name of the French Venice. Here though, I was far away from the madding crowds of Venice because Sète, so far, has escaped the influx of tourist crowds even, apparently,  at the height of the summer.

In March, it was the perfect destination for an Englishman wanting to get away from it all for a week even if the sun doesn’t always shine. Actually it shone more than I deserved at this time of year and it only rained when it wanted to.

Standing on the top of Mont St Clair, the town’s very own  and very steep hill, I could work out some of the geographical complexities of this town which is very nearly an island with the Mediterranean on one side and the vast inland lagoon known as the Étang de Thau on the other.

Sète is a seaport but it is also a seaside resort with miles of sandy beaches which look like most of the Mediteranean coast must’ve looked in the days before the Med got, well, too popular for comfort.

I don’t know how long it will be before this charming place will escape internationalisation but, walking along that practically empty beach last week, I dared to hope that it won’t be any time soon.

I was in the white building in the centre of this picture, on the second floor with pleasant balcony that let me take in the views.

I was high enough up to get under-flown by the seagulls who looked as if they were reverting to their taste for fish rather than the contents of holiday makers’ picnic baskets or rubbish bins.

I was aware of their beady eyes scrutinising me as I sat there but they decided, obviously, that I wasn’t of much interest when there was a little fishing fleet offering much tastier pickings.

Fishing here, it seems, is often a family affair and it was good being able to watch the evening’s dinner being carried ashore every morning.

Just as welcome was the little late-night bar across the road which opened in the mornings to serve excellent espresso coffee allowing me to appreciate that, yes, I really was in France.

The people of Sète look decidedly French but with a touch of Italian.

Inside the bar, everything was pretty French too. The Au bout de la rue (‘the end of the road’) was just about perfect if you want to visit France as its most unpretentious and welcoming. After a few days I felt like I had lived here all my life.

I wasn’t working, of course, so I shouldn’t assume that everyone else was just enjoying themselves but the people of Sète give a good impression of knowing how to keep themselves entertained.

I was happy enough to wander round town between cups of coffee and others seemed content to saunter too in a place where the views are often surprising.

Life here, it seemed, doesn’t have to be a constant rush.

There was never very far to go between bars that let you sit either inside or out.

In fact, I could have got dangerously used to café-crawling.

I was truly charmed by the town’s unpretentious manners and I sincerely hope that it manages to stay that way.

Street level is special in a town where there are numerous tree-lined urban spaces and, of course, always somewhere to sit and to drink coffee.

No, I was in town to see my son Henry who has been living in the South of France since January – lucky man.

He tells me he is loving la vie francaise and he does appear to have fitted into the scene with ease.

Later that night, we went with some of his friends to a bar called  La mauvaise réputation (‘the bad reputation’)  just round the corner from the apartment. I liked the name  and felt it fitted the mood of the place but, at the time, I didn’t realise that it was named after a famous song written and performed by one of  Sète’s most famous sons.

Georges Brassens (1921 – 1981) was a singer-songwriter, a respected poet who grew up the tough way and who never quite gave up his anarchist instincts. It seemed entirely appropriate that he should’ve been born here in this delightfully independent-minded town.

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Yesterday I related the sorry tale of my dilemma – which of my sons’ new creative ventures should I visit. In the last blog I revealed that I decided to go North to Scarborough Yorkshire, for my second son’s new directing project. He is a theatre director and is currently working at the Stephen Joseph Theatre where, this month (1-30 August) he is responsible for a new production, World premiere even, called Screenplay. I had to miss my other son’s Indie Rock gig celebrating his band, Octopuses’ release of a new single, Cool Story Bro but, luckily I could see the video (yesterday’s blog). Theatre is more ephemeral so I decided to take up Henry’s invitation and to go to the new play’s press night.

Actually the production consists of four new plays by new writers celebrating nearly 80 years of the theatre building’s life as a cinema. The Stephen Joseph Theatre was once an Odeon cinema.

Now Henry can see his work up there in lights….in the theatre best known for its association with that most famous of all living playwrights, Alan Ayckbourn.

Henry has been working with Ackbourn for a year now and I suspect he has benefited a lot from the great man’s experience and encouragement. I very much enjoyed meeting him at the after show party and I was pleased to hear that there are still more Alan Ayckbourn plays to come.

In the end though Henry is on his own.  A theatre director has to take it all on his own shoulders – choosing the plays, casting the three actors who lay all the roles and, of course, having to decide how to make it all work.

The actors, Paul Ryan, Lara Stubbs and Charlotte Harwood did him proud  playing with real variety, three different roles each with very little time for costume and make-up changes. It doesn’t seem appropriate for me to write a review as i have a vested interest in Henry’s success but a success it was and I suppose I have to confess to some fatherly pride sitting there in the auditorium. I admired the work of the four writers, Claudine Toutoungi,  Isabel Wright, Jimmy Osborne and Kate Brower, took on the difficult job of writing to a precise brief and coming up with four very contrasted plays. It is problematic that by putting four plays by different writers together on the same bill that the audience is tempted to come up with their list of favourites. I enjoyed all four but, and I won’t identify which, but at least one of those talented young writers, I suspect, has the potential to be the next “big thing.”

If Henry sometimes looked a little stressed, then it’s no surprize – while Screenplay was playing, he was already worrying about his next directing job, another new play, Slipping, opens in October. Break a leg, Henry, as they say.

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It’s a problem having two talented sons if they just keep on putting on shows at the same time as each other. Over the last few of weeks, I’ve been travelling around the country here in the UK but I was delivered an impossible choice. Do I go to London for the launch of Cool Story Bro, the new single released by my elder son Adam Bell’s band, Octopuses or do I go to the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, Yorkshire where my second son, Henry Bell, had the press night for Screenplay, the latest play he’s directing? I had to go to one or the other – I suppose I could have avoided them both.

In the end, sorry Adam, I went to Scarborough – more about that tomorrow – because, as much as I would’ve loved to have been there for Adam, at least the single’s video, in all its 1980’s pastiche splendour, captures the mood of this moodily joyful and slightly crazy song and it is readily available for you all to watch – see below. I’m already hooked on it.

As with the song, so with the man – moodily joyful, well maybe, and slightly crazy – I wouldn’t have it any other way. Apparently the gig, at London’s The Old Blue Last club, was terrific. Heigh-ho, my sons’ need to check diaries in future.

And anyway, I haven’t missed that London gig, some nice guy, filmed it – here is that song again, live as it happened:

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My recent visit to Scarborough in North Yorkshire  introduced me to some magnificent  seaviews and grandiose and interesting buildings on hilltops.

There is Scarborough Castle, more about that next time, an atmospheric medieval ruin with a dramatic past involving a number of England’s most notorious monarchs.

On another hill, there’s the Grand Hotel, one of the World’s first super hotels, built in 1867,  with 365 bedrooms, 52 chimneys, 12 floors and 4 towers. The numbers were meant to symbolise time with the days, weeks, months and seasons of the year.  No one could tell me what they have got 7 of – maybe it was too rude for my ears. This too, like the castle, has seen better days. Once a luxury hotel, it is now what is called euphemistically a “budget hotel” and, at their prices and that view, who needs luxury or even comfort and what’s wrong with fried food.

With all those clifftops, the real luxury in Scarborough these days is the Cliff Lift which is really a cliff railway built in 1875 and the first of its kind in Britain.  The luxury is in avoiding all those steps.

 I’m determined to use those two words, Cliff Lift,  in a poem one day. Maybe I should write one about Scarborough. In the South Cliff area if you want to get down to the seaside, then the Cliff Lift is the most entertaining way of getting there.

If Scarborough’s ruins are Medieval and its hotels, Victorian, then the beaches are pure 1950s. Here, on a hot sunny day like the ones I experienced on my visit, you can have all the fun you want with beach balls, donkey rides, sandcastles and deckchairs. Just don’t encourage the seagulls who have got quite professional at stealing food from human hands and, on some occasions, mouths.

Scarborough is also a fishing port with a small fleet of fishing boats and, apparently, a lot of fish in the sea. So much so that you can fish off the quay side and, like some of the local children, you don’t have a rod, you can just dangle a bucket on a string for crabs.

The side of all those boats made me itch to get on the water so I made my way to the little harbour with its handsome lighthouse.

catch the good ship Coronia, a venerable vessel that was one of the fleet of fishing boats that helped the evacuation of Dunkirk in World War II.

I was in Scarborough visiting my close relative Henry Bell – he came on board the Coronia too.

We made a fine pair of sailors – well, we thought so anyway.

In Scarborough, especially after going out to sea, there really is only one thing to do and that is go for a fish meal. I ate well in Scarborough and nowhere better than the Golden Grid down by the harbour. Freshly-caught fish with a touch of imagination and a good view too. As they say in Yorkshire, that were grand.

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I was lucky to get tickets as the highly productive Ayckbourn’s new plays always sell out when they premier here in Scarborough.

Alan Ayckbourn’s best plays are a cunning mix of comedy and tragedy, of darkness and light, often put together in a highly imaginative and unconventional style that celebrates theatre’s potential without frightening away audiences that would never go near anything considered avant-garde.

Arrivals & Departures is one of his funniest and also one of his most emotionally challenging. All the action takes place on a railway concourse and, as usual with Ackbourn, there are many tricks in the presentation of time and space.

Alan Ayckbourn directs the production himself, as is his wont, and his cast more than rises to the challenge. There are terrific performances all round but the leads, Elizabeth Boag and Kim Wall deserve an especial cheer and not a few shed tears for their powerful and versatile performances. I don’t want to give the game away so I won’t go into details.

Here is a taster for the play –  it might become one of his classics so try to catch it before it finishes in October or if you miss that, look out for when it goes on tour.

It’s not just a really good theatre that made my visit a memorable one but Scarborough is very lucky to have the World’s most performed living playwright as a resident. Alan Ayckbourn too is lucky to have found an adoptive home of such warmth and beauty. I’ll show you some more Scarborough next time.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot those two Americans and Scarborough Fair. You’re probably already humming that song but here it is, in tune:

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I’m off to celebrate someone’s significant birthday today – it feels like I’ve known him for a very long time. It was worth it, I think. Happy Birthday, Henry!

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This was not just five actors standing and delivering the lines – the stage not only came alive with the energy on display but it almost disappeared as we were drawn closer into the action. If Charles Mnene, as The Fear dominated the proceedings with charm and emotion mixed with just the right amount of threat then his was the central voice. Michael Elkin, The Fight, was an earnestly believable policeman trying to bring understanding to the crazed world that he has to patrol by watching Natural History TV programmes but also showing that if cornered he could be very nasty indeed. Gabeen Khan was, possibly even more threatening as The Wolf, the charming historian and social-commentator whose ornithological observations in the park were pure social poison Gabeen Khan held plenty of venom in reserve only letting it out when we thought he’d lulled us away from imminent danger. Steven Elder, Silver Tongue,  was convincing too as everything we dislike about our current batch of PR politicians pushing our capacity for sympathy to an extreme when we were asked to feel sorry for this posh kid sent to boarding school an a very impresionable age.

Akiya Henry genuinely sparkled as The Sparkle, the lone female voice in this mostly masculine-voiced play. In many ways she had the most difficult role of all, vulnerable, sassy and funny, she also had to bring the most intense sense of fear to the proceedings and had to convince even when the play moved into its least convincing theme.  She tells us that her fear is limited by her sense that her life already feels dead. Here Archie Maddocks tried too hard to win it both ways when we felt that The Sparkle’s sparkle, in spite of her perceived frailty, would never willingly be snuffed out. Perhaps Mr Maddocks was too ready to make the only woman in the piece the most obvious victim but Akiya Henry’s charisma carried us over several awkward bumps in a script that is mostly weaved with inspired and golden threads.

The production was a huge success for all involved and it deserves a wide viewing so if there is any way that you can get to see it, book now – sadly it has, for the moment, only a week to run. For details of the Orange Tree Theatre look at my LINKS column on the right of this blog.

Mottled Lines by Archie W Maddocks
Directed by Henry Bell
10 – 14 July 2012
Orange Tree Theatre.

Photos © Mawgan Gyles

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I have to declare an interest here as Henry Bell is a relative, that doesn’t make him any the less talented as a theatre director and shouldn’t stop me writing about how much I enjoyed my visit to the Orange Tree Theatre on Saturday morning for his lively and entertaining production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a slimmed down but fully poetic realization of the play aimed at primary school children and a few discerning adults.

When it comes to Shakespeare, there’s no harm if we all search out our inner primary school kid and try to respond to his plays like children because the, mostly, young audience were enthralled and undaunted by this show without the production altering the text (apart from shortening it, of course)  or losing any of Shakespeare’s power or magic.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is extraordinarily receptive to highly visual and physical interpretations and it came up shining again on Saturday.

These Orange Tree Theatre education productions of Shakespeare have always been lively and responsive to the new world that belongs to this generation’s children and are thus devoid of any pomposity or grandiose pretensions and full of visual gags – Old Will would have approved.

With a cast of only four professional actors doubling up most of the principal roles, there were also acting opportunities for some of the smaller members of the audience who have a few important lines to deliver as some of the acting “mechanicals”  and fairies and whose participation was always hilarious as much for their incongruous casting as from their acting skills. I particularly liked the 8 year old King Theseus, cast minutes before “curtain up” complete with his very trendy spectacles and intensely serious expression.

The old pros, well they weren’t that old, had a very busy time. Demetrius, the hapless Athenian lover (Will Dickie) was also an athletically physical Oberon King of the Fairies and a wonderfully subtle Peter Quince, the pedantic, earnest but passionate “rude mechanical” responsible for bringing the play-within-a-play to performance in front of the King and Queen. Helena (Victoria Grove) was the “tall” and much put upon of the two Athenian women and was perfect for the part and equally perfectly contrasted by the  “short” Hermia of Kate Kordel. Their row, always a highlight in this play, couldn’t have been better cast.  In this show though, Helena was also a raunchy as well as a truly proud  Titania, Queen of the Fairies and Hermia, sweetly girly at first but then frantically confused made some rapid but also complete transformations into a mischievously enthusiastic Puck- the ultimate eight year old primary school kid. David Ajao was the romantic Athenian lover Lysander but also a very visceral Bottom who lived up to his name with these productions customarily childish joy in bodily functions whilst also keeping his preposterous dignity as an ass with a wonderfully exaggerated vocal performance and elongated over-acting when Bottom stars in the “play-within-a-play.”

The funniest extended gag also worked brilliantly in bringing over Shakespeare’s meaning when the two Athenian men’s affections are magically transformed. Here they wake up with canine attributes, hilariously sustained but also vivid illustrations of Shakespeare’s ambivalent opinion of blind passion.
I laughed a lot.

We were all required to be woodland effects, humming, hooting, or whispering when the court-scene changed to dream-like wood. Again a truly Shakespearean moment created by our mumbles, a stage tree and some fairy lights. Minimal forces and maximum imagination – the essence of Shakespeare in the round.

The production continues to tour schools in the Borough of Richmond until it returns for one more show at the Orange Tree Theatre on Saturday 23 June. Go find your inner kid.

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Hoping that you enjoy looking at this painting by Sir Joseph Paton, I’m rushing for a London train. The picture is a glorified theatrical crowd scene,  somewhat over-crowded perhaps, from William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I’m off to see my close relative and friend Henry Bell’s educational production at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.

He has reduced the cast to four actors who are more than doubling up – I think I shall enjoy his version more than Sir Joseph Paton’s, I hope so. To me at least, Shakespeare’s plays come up shining and inspiring no matter what you do to them – no matter what Henry does to them too.

Of course, if I hate it, I shall have to be nice to Henry because I’m celebrating his birthday too.

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