The Siren Call of the Sea By Fanny Charles

June

PREVIEW

Rising Dance Stars

BRIDPORT BALLET Central returns to Bridport Arts Centre on Saturday 11th Jun at 7.30pm, as part of the company’s 2022 tour, with a new cast of rising stars of the dance scene.

They will perform a mixture of new pieces from distinguished choreographers Ashley Page OBE, Mthuthuzeli November, and Mikaela Polley, alongside a re-staging of Cathy Martson’s 2020 piece Moving, Still.

Mikaela Polley’s new piece is a celebration of the dynamism of the ensemble featuring classical ballet and contemporary dance. New choreography by Ashley Page is set to music by composer John Adams. Ballet Black’s Mthuthuzeli November has created a new piece which demonstrates his distinctive choreographic voice.

A Renaissance and Baroque tapestry

DORCHESTER MUSIC from the Renaissance and Baroque periods are woven into a fascinating musical tapestry in Historical Fiction, at Dorchester’s St Mary’s Church on Sunday 12th June at 7pm.

Making a welcome return to Dorchester Arts, saxophonist Christian Forshaw is joined by soprano Grace Davidson and Libby Burgess, organ.

The programme includes Handel’s Eternal Source of Light Divine and Gibbons’ The Silver Swan. Davidson’s soprano voice intertwines with Forshaw’s saxophone over the majestic backdrop of the organ, to create a performance which travels through dramatic grandeur and spacious serenity.

Christian Forshaw last visited Dorchester with Tenebrae for their magnificent Drop, Drop Slow Tears concert, and this beautiful programme of voice, saxophone and organ makes an ideal follow-up to that memorable evening of music.

Jazz Jurassica

LYME REGIS IF you want a change from the platinum jubilee diet of street parties, royal puddings and regal tributes, the first weekend of June at Lyme Regis sees the return of Jazz Jurassica with a dazzling line-up to suit all tastes from Thursday 2nd to

June

PREVIEW

Sunday 5th June. The opening night brings Ashton Jones’ Legends of Funk to the stage of the Marine Theatre, followed on Friday by Neil Maya’s Cartoon Jazz on Friday at 11.30am, blues singer Elles Bailey at 4.30pm and the James Taylor Quartet at 7.30.

On Saturday at 11.30am, ex-Communards singer Sarah Jane Morris celebrates the music of the late John Martyn, followed by the Matt Carter Septet at 4.30 and the Dockside Latin Orchestra in the evening slot.

Sunday’s double bill features Veronica and Max in an Americana programme of acoustic blues, ragtime, vaudeville and jug band music at 11.30am, and the great boogie-woogie pianist Tom Seals bringing the weekend to a rousing close at 4.30.

Folk Fest is back

SOUTH PETHERTON AFTER a two-year Covid-related absence, the Petherton Folk Fest is back this year on Saturday 18th June, with a packed programme of folk song, music and dancing—all completely free, as always.

Folk musicians will perform in the Market Square, the David Hall, The Brewer’s Arms, Blake Hall and in St Peter and St Paul’s Church and its grounds. There will also be stalls and other attractions in and around Market Square.

The day will start at 10am with a parade by Morris dancers into the Square, where there will be music and dancing all day until 6.30pm.

Anquebus, a local contemporary folk trio, will launch events on the stage in the Square and the duo, Mitchell & Vincent, are scheduled to begin a whole day of entertainment in the David Hall. The popular Dambuskers return to bring everything to a rousing finale with a gig in The Brewers Arms at 9pm.

Attractions for children include Punch & Judy in the church grounds and entertainment by Tor Theatre and The BearCat Collective in The Blake Hall—as well as workshops for adults, given by Morris dancers. The day will also feature some of South Petherton’s traditional events, such as The Ceremony of the Glove and Clipping the Church. For full details visit www.pethertonfolkfest.org.uk

The voice of a generation

BRIDPORT REGINALD D Hunter returns to the Electric Palace at Bridport on Friday 18th June at 7.30pm, heading a line-up of stand-up comedy.

Unafraid to tackle head on the subjects the rest of us skirt around, Reginald is the voice of his generation—searingly honest, brutally funny and uniquely placed to commentate on the unfolding meltdown of life as we know it.

More than 20 years since moving to the UK from the US, the three-time Perrier Award nominee has forged a reputation for his brilliant comedy and powerful delivery. His TV appearances include Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News for You and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and he won audience and critical acclaim for his two BBC series, Reginald D Hunter’s Songs of the South and Reginald D Hunter’s Songs of the Border.

Visit the Electric Palace website www.electricpalace.org.uk for the full line-up.

Songs and stores of the sea

LYME REGIS TIDAL Tales Collective comes to the Marine at Lyme Regis on Wednesday 1st June at 2pm with a new show that is ideally suited to the theatre on the sea shore.

Kesty Morrison’s Stars and Sails is an exploration of the sea through songs, sights and stories. Listen to worldwide folk tales, music and history. Join the global quest to protect our beautiful oceans.

With local sea shanties, ancient world music and seafarers across the centuries and from all over the world, this innovative show blends live singing, beatbox, puppetry and storytelling with a set, costumes and props created from marine detritus.

New crime writing festival

LYME REGIS A FORMER Home Secretary and one of the country’s leading forensic scientists will be among the speakers at a new literary festival, Lyme Crime, at Lyme Regis from 23rd to 25th June. A prolific memoirist, former Home Secretary

Charlotte Philby coming to Lyme Regis Alan Johnson will be talking about his first foray into crime writing, a contemporary thriller called The Last Train to Gypsy Hill.

Angela Gallop, a practising forensic scientist for more than 45 years, who personally oversaw the cases of Rachel Nickell, Damilola Taylor, Roberto Calvi and Stephen Lawrence, will be discussing her latest book, How To Solve A Crime, which reveals the ways in which criminals, however skilled, always leave a trace.

Angela joins an impressive line-up of crime writers at the festival at the Marine Theatre. Panellists include Nicci French, Erin Kelly, Fiona Cummins, Heidi Perks, Laura ShepherdRobinson, Harriet Tyce, Antonia Hodgson, Abir Mukherjee and Laurence Anholt.

Charlotte Philby will be talking about her new novel, Edith and Kim, which looks at the relationship between her double-agent grandfather Kim and Soviet spy, Edith Tudor-Hart.

Tim Horton recital

CONCERTS IN THE WEST BRILLIANT pianist Tim Horton makes a welcome return to the Concerts in the West programme with three recitals at Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne on 17th and 18th June.

Horton is one of the UK’s leading pianists, equally at home in solo and chamber repertoire. He is a founder member of both the Leonore Piano Trio and Ensemble 360 and has been a regular guest pianist with the Nash Ensemble.

He made his solo debut at Wigmore Hall in 2016. Between 2011 and 2015 he presented a complete Beethoven Sonata cycle at Sheffield’s Crucible Studio for Music in the Round, where he returned for a cycle of Schubert Sonatas in 2017-2019, and is currently undertaking a Chopin cycle.

As a soloist he has performed with the City of Birmingham Symphony orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, the RLPO, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.

The programme for the coffee concert at Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 17th at 11.30am, at Ilminster Arts Centre on Friday at 7.30pm and Crewkerne Dance House on Saturday at 7.30pm will include sonatas by Schumann, and nocturnes, mazurkas and sonatas by Chopin.

Goodbye to the blues

BRIDPORT BYE-BYE blues—the great Blues Band, with the charismatic Paul Jones as always on harmonica and vocals, is playing its farewell tour, coming to Bridport’s Electric Palace on Thursday 9th June at 8pm.

After 42 years, more than 30 albums and 4,000 gigs, The Blues Band is finally saying goodbye. When they got together, the five experienced musicians were already big names from the pop charts of the 60s and 70s, with pedigrees that included playing with some of the great names in blues—including Howlin’ Wolf and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Bucking the trends of disco or punk they went back to their roots in the blues.

The line-up was harmonica hero Paul Jones, already famous as front man of Manfred Mann, fellow Manfred Tom McGuinness, with drummer Hughie Flint (the other half of McGuinness-Flint), slide guitar virtuoso Dave Kelly (singer with the John Dummer Blues Band and brother of renowned blues singer Jo Ann Kelly) and the talented young bass player Gary Fletcher.

Hughie Flint, who had played with John Mayall alongside Eric Clapton, left the line-up in 1982 to be replaced by another legend, Rob Townsend, ex

The Siren Call of the Sea

Andrew Rattenbury talks community plays with Fanny Charles

Andrew Rattenbury

Jack Rattenbury was a famous smuggler along the Jurassic coast of Dorset and Devon. He went to sea at the age of nine, and a few years before he died at the age of 65 recounted his life in Memoirs of a Smuggler, written with the help of a Unitarian minister—perhaps he repented of his sins. He was known as ‘the Rob Roy of the West’ so there were probably many who saw him as a Robin Hood figure—seafaring communities often benefitted from the activities of the ‘gentlemen’ who dealt in contraband.

Villain or hero, Jack is just one of the characters in the new Lyme Regis community play, Lyme And The Sea, which will be staged outside the Marine Theatre from 15th to 18th June—and his story will be told by his descendant, Andy Rattenbury, who has written the three previous Lyme community plays.

It was ‘quite a struggle to find a theme that worked well enough to span a whole evening, and was specific to Lyme,’ says Andy.

The eventual chosen theme for the play, which was delayed by the pandemic and lockdowns, is a celebration of the thousand-plus year relationship of Lyme Regis and the sea. It tells stories of trading and fishing, of the notorious and notable people who lived in or passed through the town, the writers, the scientists, the fossil-hunters and the beach-combers, and of the way the sea dominates everything.

The characters range from the Duke of Monmouth, landing in Lyme to launch his doomed campaign against King James II, and the mother of paleontology, Mary Anning, to Dr Richard Russell, who in 1750 published A Dissertation on the Use of Seawater in the Diseases of the Glands, Particularly, the Scurvy, Jaundice, King’s Evil, Leprosy and the Glandular Consumption. This is credited with encouraging the 18th century interest in seawater bathing. The stories, linked with narration by various real people, including the late John Fowles, are told with sea shanties, folk songs and new music, sung by members of the 60-strong company, accompanied by a live band, under the musical direction of Declan Duffy.

‘I want it to feel like a ceilidh,’ says Andy, whose previous successful community plays were Tempest of Lyme, Monmouth: A West Country Rebellion and Are you Going to the Marine?, to mark the theatre’s 125th anniversary.

The Rattenbury roots are deep in Lyme—two of Andy’s brothers will be in the play, along with two of his nieces and a sister-in-law. With great-great-great-great.... grandfather Jack on stage, it will be something of a family affair!

While two of his brothers still live in Lyme, Andy lives in London, where his ‘day job’ has for years been script-writing for some of British television’s most popular dramas and soaps, including Holby City, Teachers, Peak Practice, Monarch of the Glen, Torchwood, The Golden Hour (which he created), Hollyoaks, Casualty, Eastenders and Doc Martin, an episode for the new and final series.

Andy trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. As an actor he worked for both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. He made his first successful venture into writing, winning the Bristol Old Vic/HTV prize.

His play Soundings, which was set in Lyme, won a new play-writing award at the Old Red Lion in Islington. Other early theatre projects were adaptations of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Hardy’s The Return of the Native.

A friend got him into writing for television, where he started on The Bill. Writing for the soaps has to be very fast, he says: ‘You learn to deliver at pace.’

Lyme Regis has a long history with community plays, dating back to 1978 when Ann Jellicoe wrote and directed the first play, produced by the then Colway Theatre Trust (now Claque Theatre), The Reckoning.

Ann Jellicoe, who lived in Dorset for many years, and whose best known play is The Knack, came to see Andy’s play about Monmouth before she died, in 2017, at the age of 90.

Although he lives away from the town, Andy loves Lyme Regis, returns frequently and has been a patron of the Marine Theatre for 15 years. ‘I love writing community plays,’ he says. ‘I love being involved.’