| Natural Celebration in Word and Music |
Theatre Event |
| In Chapters , Rhys Stage Dynevor Llandeilo , July 1, 2012 |
In Chapters is a performance group led by author John Williams and musician Richard James. For Literature Wales’ inaugural Dinefwr weekend festival they have compiled a one-hour show of word, music, and word and music combined. The connecting link is Nature. This season is supposed to be remembered for celebration, the Jubilee and Olympics. As of now 2012 seems set to go down as a time of flood and fraud. Down in the valley, the Towy is at an unseasonable high. Up on the green plateau, that houses Dynevor, high winds have played havoc with the organisers’ schedules. The erection of marquees has been delayed and crafts people have had to move to the shelter of Newton House. Nonetheless, in spite of storm and squall twelve hundred visitors have come for the Saturday. Sunday may be a lesser number but the marquee for In Chapter’s nine-part show is well-filled. The location is appropriate for the theme. The baaa of a sheep can be heard and the harlequin canvas of the tent ripples constantly in the wind. Euros Childs is here to sing two numbers, the second delayed as a gust sends his music flying from its stand. “That’s nature” comments one of the band. Then a trio, violin, acoustic and electric guitars, perform a lovely song “It’s just your nature.” Richard James sings a meltingly beautiful harmony with Georgia Ruth. Jon Gower’s tribute to nature has three parts to it. To a guitar backing he recites the names of Welsh birds, then names from Chesapeake Bay where he once went to an Island Called Smith. There is an awe to these names in themselves, which have sounds like sun-spongers and silky dogwood, milky river worm and lunar dog shell. Gower ends with his description of the sunset return of ten thousand starlings to their place of nightly rest on the spindly ironwork of Aberystwyth’s pier. The birds, known as a murmuration, “wheel and whirl, twist and bank as one, now towards the National Library, then stringing out towards the marina, each individual a swiftly moving feather’s length from the next.” Jim Perrin’s is an older voice, with a touch of a soft, lived-in growl to it. He reads a piece he wrote for Radio in 1995, although “read” is not the true word for the mesmeric, incantatory treatment of his prose. His subject is the Great Depression migration from rural Wales to the city. In a farm ruin as little memory “remains as the crushed fragments of shells in the rough lime mortar of the walls.” The destination could equally have been Slough or Liverpool but in the case of his grandfather it was “Salford by the ooze and stench of the Irwell.” No-one has walked Wales in the way that Jim Perrin has; perhaps only his admired predecessor George Borrow is his equal. “In Cwm Brynog and Cwm Caseg, in Nanmor and the Nant Pasgan, in Cwm Pennant and Bugeilyn and Cwm Yr Allt Llwyd you find these former homes, always the same, with the moss and the sheep-dung and the ash-trees, spleenwort and herb Robert growing from the walls…” Perrin’s voice is distinctive one that shows that the sharpest of observation and lyricism need not be qualities at odds with each other. He ends: “A ninnau boed byw/ Yn ymyl gwisg Duw/Yn y grug, yn y grug”- “Let us live too/ At the hem of God’s garment/ In the heather, in the heather.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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