Reviews
What we said about Clayhidon Parish Hall shows Cheesy geniuses are a stomping success
Fromage en Feu might have seemed a strange choice of band for Clayhidon, but their brilliant individual playing and their high-tempo Eastern European music proved hugely popular.
A packed parish hall greeted their first number with whoops and cheers and everything they played after that drew a similar response from an audience that bobbed, clapped and danced throughout a memorable evening (January 26).
Fronted by virtuoso accordionist Jan van de Gouda (alias Murray Benjamin), the other “cheeses” were equally talented. They were: Babs Wesleydale (Rachel Llewelyn-Jones), clarinet; Eloise Comtesse de Camembert (Seona Pritchard), Jimi Caerphilly (Thom Thomas-Watkins), guitar; and Louis Parmegiano (Alex Pearson), double bass.
Mr Van de Gouda soon gave up the pretence that they were anything other than Brits, but he and the others couldn’t hide the fact that they were all gifted and highly trained musicians having great fun together. They played a beguiling mixture of Russian, Baltic, Gypsy and Gypsy Jewish, with a couple of French numbers thrown in for luck. It was all highly entertaining.
Hall committee members and other helpers prepared a generous supper for 57 of the nearly 90 people who booked, and with the help of a licensed bar the evening made a profit for hall funds of over £1,000 – Gareth Weekes,
>See the Clayhidon gig on YouTube
December 2018
Wyndham Singers and Wellington School Brass
Magic moments from the harmonious gentlemen of KentisbeareNobody could remember the last time a male voice choir sang in Clayhidon Parish Hall, which might mean it never happened, but no-one is ever going to forget the wonderful Wyndham Singers’ concert on December 14..
Their jolly director, Charles West, introduced them as a bunch of old farts, which seemed to delight them as much as it did the Christmas concert audience. We can be sure we will never hear old farts more glorious than these 16 harmonious gentlemen from Kentisbeare.
The audience loved the blend of voices, from beautiful sonorous basses right through the range to an astonishingly high tenor section. They loved the acoustic of the old hall, which perplexes some visiting bands, but which we now realise is perfect for choirs and brass bands. They loved that these were amateurs performing to professional standards.
They loved Charles West’s banter and the choice and variety of songs, which covered 15 composers from Ray Davies of The Kinks to Guiseppe Verdi and Billy Joel. Their barbershop quartet, The Strops, sang All I have to do is dream and similar songs with exquisite precision.
Appearing with the Wyndham Singers was a brass septet from Wellington School, consisting of three teachers, led by Luke Gilbert, and four pupils, playing three trombones, a French horn, a euphonium and two trumpets. They too sounded wonderful and provided a gorgeous accompaniment to communal carol singing, which was loud and lusty.
No-one who knows about the school’s music department would have been surprised by the high standard of their playing, and the hall committee is grateful to Andrew Trewhella, the school’s head of music, who lives in Clayhidon, for making this happen at the busiest time of the school’s musical year.
The hall team served hot mince pies and mulled wine, and the event raised cash for hall improvements and the Exeter Leukaemia Fund.- Gareth Weekes
Shameless Angel: Wit, wisdom and wonderful lyrics
It was a dark and foggy night in the Blackdowns when 50 brave souls rocked up at Clayhidon Parish Hall to watch Charlie Bicknell, not really knowing what they were in for.
What they got was a slinky, sexy nightclub singer who sang a series of provocative, contentious, extremely funny songs, engaged in dangerous acrobatics and persuaded men from the audience to do daft things.
If I didn’t have you I’d probably have somebody else, a Tim Minchin number debunking the notion that we all have only one possible partner in life, set the tone for an evening of wit and wisdom.
All notions of political correctness were ditched as she launched into a jolly song about suicide. She sang The Good Book, another Tim Minchin piece mocking religious devotion to the holy word. “I know the Good
Book’s good because the Good Book says it’s good”. It could have mightily offended a different audience but this one seemed to love it.
Her musical interpretations of orgasms – from Handel’s Hallelujah to Stockhausen’s painful squeaks – caused much quiet amusement. Fascinating Aida’s song, Suddenly New Zealand doesn’t seem so boring, listed the stresses of life in Britain.
It wasn’t all played for laughs. Kit and the Widow’s verses about pollution, The Swan, written years ago but more relevant today than ever, listed the rubbish you find washed up on a beach: “Fairy Liquid squeezies, and dismembered brollies, Coca Cola cans and rusting shopping trollies.”
Charlie Bicknell is a superb cabaret singer, and she was helped by a flawless performance on keyboard by David Harrod. She is also a daring acrobat who apparently enjoyed being flung around Clayhidon’s tiny stage by Jez Brodie, who had been her postman until she recognised his talent for ”chucking old bags over his shoulder” and recruited him.
The show, Shameless
Angel, was promoted by Villages in Action and Carn to Cove, the rural touring agencies for Devon and Cornwall. It was a great night out – on our doorsteps – for £9. Amazing! – Gareth Weekes.
October 2018
April 2018
What do you get when you cross a former Cambridge music scholar and conductor of the Scottish Opera with an ex-bricklayer with a voice like Mario Lanza?
Answer: A pain in the jaw from laughing so much, according to one man who watched the Opera Dudes at Clayhidon Parish Hall on 14 April.
Tim Lole and Neil Allen are a top-drawer double act with a unique musical comedy show, switching between sublime music and hilarity. It was funnier than
anything seen here for five years, when they last paid a visit.
Stand-out moments were Neil impersonating Michael Crawford as Frank Spencer singing Phantom of the Opera, Tim playing a Rachmaninov Prelude on the piano keyboard (wow!), both singing the Pearl Fishers duet (wow again) and an old Dean Martin cover, That’s Amore.
They had a wonderful straight man/funny man routine, reminiscent of Morecambe and Wise. Perhaps their finest achievement of the evening was persuading their highly appreciative audience not merely to sing, but to squeeze their buttocks and rise from their seats at the same time. Unbelievable!
They made a recurring joke about the hall’s artists’ changing room, which is a garden shed behind the stage. Before the evening was over they had posted a video about our shed on Facebook. See it on this link. – Gareth Weekes
Blues Night turns into full-on rock and roll
The Moosehead Blues Band were first up. Two fine guitarists and an excellent drummer had got together a year ago and this was only their third gig. It soon emerged that this wasn’t just going to be a Blues Night as advertised, as they slipped into classic rock and roll covers and some lovely numbers of their own composition.
After the supper break 11th Hour, two guitarists, a drummer and a keyboard player, who have been together for 13 years, entertained us for an hour. They too sensed the audience favoured rock over blues and they took us through their well crafted collection of adored oldies, from Ain’t No Sunshine to Johnny Be Good and You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound dog. 11th Hour are a terrific band and Clayhidon rocked.
The evening was much enhanced by the sight of two members of the audience, Steve and Jane Beard, dancing in front of the stage giving everyone a beautiful display of jiving.
The hall committee organised a raffle, supper and a licensed bar and made a profit of more than £400.
They played a mixture of their own compositions and those of the legendary Dave Brubeck and his band from the 50s and 60s. They varied the
pace, tone and mood. They freshened up some of Brubeck’s wonderful old chestnuts, like Take Five and Blue Rondo a la Turk, and played lesser known masterpieces, like Strange Meadowlark and Kathy’s Waltz.
Totnes-based Neil formed the band 14 years ago and various musicians have passed through it since then, but the current line-up is superb. The young pianist Matt Carter, still only a first-year student at the Royal Academy of Music, was simply stunning at times and clearly has an exciting future, but it’s unfair to pick him out because all four are excellent musicians whose individual sounds blended brilliantly in the hall’s jazz-friendly acoustic.
Kevin Sanders’ double bass was dark and rich and he and the drummer Gary Evans gave a thrilling punch to some fantastically odd rhythms, while Neil
himself on saxophones was magnificently mellifluous. What came over strongly to me was how deeply thoughtful and serious this music is, and how philosophical it is, from Neil’s own Ode to a Shed to Brubeck’s tribute to his wife of 70 years (!), In Your Own Secret Way.
An audience of nearly 60 enjoyed this concert, which was staged with the help of the Cornish tour promoters Carn to Cove, in cooperation with Devon’s formerly moribund Villages in Action, which is being revived. There was a supper, licensed bar and raffle, as usual, and the event made around £450 profit for the hall. – Gareth Weekes
Actor David Mynne, in his one-man production of A Christmas Carol, played the grumpy old miser to a T, not to mention a host of memorable Dickens characters.
One moment he was evil Ebenezer, refusing to give to the poor, the next he was his overworked and underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, trying to calm his sick son, and then a moment later he was the ghost of his business partner and fellow miser, Jacob Marley.
David Mynne is not only a fine actor (and veteran of Cornwall’s famous Kneehigh Theatre) he’s also a wonderful story teller and a mime artist, who almost managed to convince us that his knitted scarf really was poor Tiny Tim and it really was talking to him.
It was the kind of show not seen in the hall for a long time, and over 40 people turned out to sit at candlelit tables, with supper and drinks, to enjoy a dramatic tour de force. And though Charles Dickens’ story of our failure to care for the poor is 174 years old this production made it seem as relevant today as it was then.
You don’t often hear the phrase “Clayhidon rocks” but we did on 3
November when the 3 Daft Monkeys drove up from west Cornwall and put on a
fabulous show at the parish hall.
And something else happened for the first time for years in Clayhidon – the audience gave them a standing ovation.
They are a spectacularly good band, wonderful to listen to, great to
watch and a delight to dance to.
The joint was jumping, to quote Fats Waller, and lots of people were
dancing. There was so much leaping about by the band on the tiny worm-eaten
stage I worried they would crash through the floor in a cloud of dust and
splinters.
Hubbadillia is the Cornish word describing the sound of a noisy party.
It’s also the name of one of their songs and it’s an apt description of how the
audience sounded in the interval. There were lots of new young faces in the
hall, as well as many familiar patrons, and everyone seemed to love the 3 Daft
Monkeys.
Athene Roberts played the fiddle
so sweetly and accurately while jumping up and down and singing all at the same
time. Tim Ashton sang their own songs, many with a flavour of the west country, especially Cornwall. He gave his 12-string guitar a right hammering to provide
thrilling rhythms. Occasionally he played penny whistle duos with Athene.
For much of the time drummer Rich Mulryne played a percussion kit with his hands, and was
wonderful to both listen to and watch. He left me feeling that drumming must be
the most
joyful job in the world.
The 3 Daft Monkeys have grown to four with the addition of a marvellous
bass guitarist, Jamie Graham. Together they make one of the finest bands in the
west country. No wonder they are repeatedly invited back to Glastonbury.
It’s impossible to categorise their style of music. One minute they are
playing a dreamy Celtic melody, and the next they sound like a Romanian gypsy
band or Viennese orchestra or an old-fashioned rock band. The variety made this a thoroughly enjoyable
evening.
Athene and Tim’s four-year-old son Arlo also made a big contribution to
the gig. In the very first number he whirled onto the dance floor with such
abandon that people in the audience flocked to join him, and the atmosphere in
the hall
immediately came alive.
Arlo read out the winning raffle tickets in the interval and then in the second
set put on his ear defenders and fell deeply asleep at the back of the stage,
blissfully unaware of the loudest hubbadillia Clayhidon has heard in a very
long time.
They went to a lot of trouble to get the sound balances right and their care paid off handsomely.
The event was a total sell-out and nearly £1,000 was added to hall funds
through ticket sales, the bar, raffle and suppers.
Gareth Weekes
It’s not often music makes the hairs rise on the back of the neck, but it happened to me and I suspect a few others at Clayhidon Parish Hall when Sarah Skinner picked up her soprano saxophone and played a piece called Daybreak.
It was something she and her husband Rob had written, and it was a highlight of the Red Dirt Skinners’ two sets here on 13 October. By the time they finished, to thunderous applause and foot stamping, we realised these people weren’t just good, they were very, very good.
“Best gig we’ve ever had,” said one lady, who has been coming to hall events for years, and another agreed.
Well, for a start, you’re unlikely to meet a pair of voices as closely matched and as beautifully harmonised as Rob and Sarah Skinner’s. Lisa Marie Presley (Elvis’s singer-songwriter daughter) recognised this when she heard them in a pub soon after they got together. She said they had “unbelievable talent” and urged them to stop singing solos and concentrate on duets, advice they have followed with increasing success.
Then there’s Rob’s guitar playing. It was skilful, energetic, diverse and always at the right level to accompany both their voices and Sarah’s sax playing without drowning them out. For some numbers they managed to create enough depth and volume to fool people into thinking they were using backing tapes, which they were not.
There was the homely chat between the songs, explaining them with touching anecdotes. Some stories were maybe a little long, but it didn’t matter because the audience were chilled out.
Then there were the songs themselves These included some terrific cover versions – notably David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb and Paul Simon’s Diamonds On The Soles of Her Shoes, a great number for a bit of audience participation.
The Skinners’ own compositions were strikingly original, clever and highly personal. Bad Apple was inspired by the man who conned guests out of their tips at an open mic evening. The idea for Home Sweet Home came from the shattering effect of being burgled, which in the end did them a favour. Daybreak was dedicated to a Canadian who had been kind to them. There was a song about a lonely lady they met in a pub, which could have been a Beatles classic, and Lay Me Down, a moving love song about comforting each other in troubled times. Girl in the Truck, which opened with something borrowed from Queen, was a thumping good country song motivated by the discovery that Canadian audiences love songs about trucks and girls.
And the final reason why this was one of the best gigs ever at Clayhidon was the sheer variety of the programme, which spanned a range of genres, from Blues to Roots, Country, Rock, Pop, and Folk.
This gig was the start of a 14-venue tour of the UK which takes them to the Isle of Sky and back to Gatwick in time to catch a plane home to Canada, where this English couple now live. I for one hope they will come back to Clayhidon, which they praised on Facebook later as “a wonderful community”. Gareth Weekes
Local singer/songwriter Alex Hart made a storming return to her home valley on 26 February, when she played to a capacity audience at Clayhidon Parish Hall. The gig raised about £850 for hall funds. Her parents and grandparents were among nearly 100 people who turned out to see the 25 year old and her three-man band, Paddy Blight (guitar), Josiah Manning (drums) and Jake Galvin (bass).
Villages in Action brought the folk duo Ninebarrow to Clayhidon on 9 November and once again proved their worth as talent spotters as well as rural arts promoters.
Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere treated a near-capacity crowd in the parish hall to an evening full of variety.
One minute they were giving us the purest traditional unaccompanied folk singing. Moments later they were sounding like a passionate foot stomping Seth Lakeman, and when that ended they had scarcely drawn breath before they were singing a gentle folk/rock ballad in the style of Simon and Garfunkel.
Exquisite harmonies, fine instrumental playing and beautifully crafted songs are Ninebarrow’s hallmark. They take their name from a hill near their Dorset home and many of their songs are inspired by the landscape and history of their beloved county.
Their subjects included the human stories behind a burial chamber on the Dorset Ridgeway, an execution on Hangman’s Hill, the Civil War siege
of Corfe Castle, and the wartime confiscation of the village of Tyneham by the Government.
It wasn’t all their own work. They sang a song by Jon’s folk singer dad, about a sailor on Magellan’s great voyage, and another based on the logbook of a whaler. Their rollicking version of the old ballad Bold Sir Rylas a Hunting Went
will stick in the memory. And they did a marvellous high-speed unaccompanied cover of the June Tabor classic, While Gamekeepers Lie Asleeping.
This proved to be a highly successful evening for the hall. Despite having to pay all the £566 in ticket sales to Villages in Action, the event made a £435 contribution to hall funds, through bar and food sales and the raffle.
It’s hard to categorise Dallahan, who played at Clayhidon Parish Hall on 13 April. They were much more than an Irish folk band. One moment they would be playing a traditional jig, then suddenly they would slide into a divine Hungarian gypsy tune, and then before you realised what had happened they were into jazz funk.
We have had some class acts at Clayhidon, courtesy of Villages in Action, and some fine folksy performers, but no-one to match Jim Causley for wit, local relevance and variety. A parish hall audience of 50 on 9 March gave him an enthusiastic reception.
Devon born and bred, Jim is distantly related to the great Cornish poet Charles Causley and relies on “Uncle Charlie’s” poems for some of his best lyrics. He mixes these into a pot pourri of his own excellent compositions, hilarious verses he picked up from an old lady in Chagford and suchlike, and various titbits from yesteryear and now.
He loves the traditional folk songs of Devon and Cornwall noted down for posterity by the Victorian parson and hymn writer, Rev Sabine Baring-Gould (of Onward Christian Soldiers fame). Some of these were too vulgar for delicate Victorian ears, so Baring-Gould cleaned them up. Jim kindly reinstated the naughty bits and gave us back the very enjoyable originals, stuffed with innuendos.
His subjects range from the daft to the profound. He sings about pets (“My grandfather’s ferret was a beast of little merit”), wayward lads (“a blitz of a boy was Timothy Winters”), scary ghosts, axed railway lines, Dartmoor tin mining, the “dyslexic alphabet” and the poignant story of a Honiton lace maker told in her own words.
He has a beautiful baritone voice, which he accompanies with accordion or piano or simply “unaccomplished” as he puts it. And he introduced this treasure trove of material with gentle Devon humour. It was a great evening out. Jim Causley is a genuine West Country star, and the audience loved him.
The Thunderbridge Bluegrass Band may not be from the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky, where this kind of music originates, but they sounded wonderful in the Blackdown Hills of Devon.
They played and sang a mixture of classics, covers and their own songs, mostly written by their lead singer and guitarist Nick Girone-Maddocks. He admitted that Bluegrass was mostly about miserable subjects like suffering and drugs, while in the reality of his day job he is a contented and respectable Wellington estate agent.
Lack of suffering doesn’t seem to have harmed the music. Two of Nick’s songs got the biggest cheer from an increasingly enthusiastic parish hall audience. One was a lovely mellow piece of a capella singing by the band, and the other a witty number designed to find words that rhyme with Texas (multiplexes, solar-plexus, text us, etc), and ending with an improbable outburst of yodelling.
They got the audience so warmed-up we roared several choruses of the suitably despairing line “Oh me, oh my, what’s going to become of me?”
Chairs were removed from the back of the hall to allow dancing, and as the evening wore on there was a lot of clumping and swaying and a good old fashioned country hoe-down started.
These are four fine musicians – Matt Gryspeerdt (fiddle), John Breese (banjo), Jules Bushell (double bass) plus Nick, and their instruments and voices were a perfect blend.
In their original incarnation as the Thunderbridge Bluegrass Boys (Nick and Jules plus two others), they came to Clayhidon in 2011, and they dedicated their 2016 show to the memory of the late Bee Hill, who first introduced them to a Clayhidon audience.
The evening raised around £440 for hall funds.
Packed hall warms to Blackheart
Rick was undismayed. He didn’t mind how small the audience was, he was sure we would have a good time and his advice to the hall committee was “Don’t panic”.
By the time the lights went up on 30 October, over 40 had been sold. The hall, with table and chairs laid out in café style, was packed. The band forsook the stage and played from the auditorium.
The atmosphere was warm and appreciative. And Rick was right. We did have a good time.
The duo’s music was billed as “a heavenly fusion of acoustic folk, intelligent pop and classical”. Well, there certainly were a few heavenly moments. Some of their songs are exquisite. One searing love song called “I’m yours”, has been chosen as the score for “Charlie and Me”, a film coming out in January. Apparently it reduced the film crew to tears.
They write all their own songs. The inspiration comes from strange places. One came from second-hand bookshop in the Lake District, where Rick found a book by the French playwright Jean Cocteau describing what it was like to take opium, an account vivid enough to put anyone off taking drugs. Chrissy admitted to being addicted to camomile tea.
Even Clayhidon Parish Hall triggered a song. It came to them while they were setting up their instruments and they had the confidence to give it a trial run in front of the audience. And it sounded good, apart from (in Rick’s words) “a wobbly bit in the middle”.
It was more “intelligent pop” than folk, played mostly on guitars and synthesizers, including one picked up for 25 dollars in a Tasmanian junk shop. It was acoustic, but with a heavy electronic input, and with Chrissy’s high soft notes soaring above everything. And classical? Well Rick did play an electric guitar with a bow, cello style, but the effect was pure rock and roll.
October 2015: Matt Harvey
So, no-one was going to turn up at the hall, right? Wrong. Actually 50 people forsook what turned out to be England’s night of horror and instead enjoyed 80 minutes of the cleverest, wittiest, funniest entertainment they are ever likely to see in a village hall or anywhere else for that matter.
Think funny poet and you think Pam Ayres, but even she plods besides the scintillating rhymes of Matt Harvey, the bard of Totnes.
Matt, a regular topical versifier on Radio 4’s Saturday Live, finds his inspiration in the unlikeliest of subjects, such as:
-
-
-
- Streakers ( “Jiggly jokery, giggley blokery”)
- Slugs (“easy oozer, slime exuder”)
-
- Potatoes (“no part of you’s inedible, though all of you’s inaudible, the taste of you’s incredible, the price of you’s affordable”).
-
His gentle, self deprecating style relaxed the audience so quickly that within five minutes he had us confessing our crimes of office pilfering.
And by half-time he was asking us to write our own poems, or rather single lines of a Clayhidon community poem on the audience’s chosen subject of micro-pigs. Jamie and
When he read it to us so many of the lines sounded like something he might have written himself that we realised how far his whimsical humour had insinuated itself into our heads.
This was a major departure from Clayhidon Parish Hall’s usual musical entertainment. Given its unfortunate timing it was a remarkable success, suggesting there may be an appetite for more off-beat shows.
Ticket, bar, supper and raffle sales added up to takings of more than £600 and a profit of nearly £200, and everyone seemed to agree it had been a brilliant evening. Sadly it was ruined when the audience arrived home to hear the rugby result.
Top left: Matt Harvey reads the poem written by his Clayhidon audience.
Below: Matt looks on while Casey and Jamie Blackmore stick lines of the poem together.
The Micro Pig.Lines suggested by Matt Harvey’s Clayhidon audience and put together by Jamie and Casey BlackmoreAt Clayhidon’s ‘Office Pillagers Anonymous’ meeting the micro pig walked in
Tiny trotters but enormous ambitionsMicro eyes, micro ears, micro snout, microwaveable?What a bloody stupid animal!I won a micropig in a raffle.PorcupineChipolatasDo not hurt the micropig. He isn’t very big.She snuffles for truffles in micro woodsOh little pig your heart is bigSmelly pork belly nudged my wellyMicro rashers streaky or smokyLittle feet and little nosesTrottery, pottery, off to UpotteryI recognised the micropig trotting down the street so gave him a micro waveSoaring through an azure skyThe micropig, he ate a fig, now he’s double the sizeHam,hock, bacon, pieThis little pig ain’t going to market! It’s staying home with meSniffly, snuffly round and fluffilyLost in the long grass, which wasn’t very longPressed in my pocket, podge endearing mighty micropig protector of my soul.My micropig it was so small, it was not really there at all.
He only had to pick up his guitar and play the opening bars of a classical Portuguese piece for us to realise that the hype was true. He really is a world class guitarist, and by some miracle he was here in our parish hall.
He was less than half-way through his first set before we realised this genius could play almost a thousand years of music in a single piece. Sliding seamlessly from a 14th century English madrigal to 21st century jazz, he left us shaking our heads, wondering “How did he do that?”
He rocked us with Mississippi Blues, soothed us with a Romanian waltz, woke us up again with an Irish jig, got us all shook up with Django Reinhardt, amused us with the Nokia ringtone then lulled us again with something beautiful from Catalonia.
He had last played Oregon, his own composition evoking the landscape of the American northwest, to an audience of 2,500 in Portland, USA and here he was playing it again to an audience of100 in deepest Devon. It was breath taking.
And just to prove his astonishing versatility, when someone asked him to play a Johnny Cash number he obliged with Big River and even sang along, which was perhaps not such a good idea.
Clive Carroll came to Clayhidon as part of a tour arranged by Villages in Action. Well done them!
Hannah James, Hazel Askew and Rowan Rheingans are Lady Maisery, who were brought to the Parish by Villages in Action and rewarded us with achingly beautiful renditions of old ballads and reworked folk songs.
They sang to their own backing of fiddle, banjo, harp and accordion and sometimes harmonised exquisitely with no backing at all. The words were often political, about the Aberfan disaster, unemployment and war, and also dire warnings to young maidens about the unreliability of men.
Many of their songs had no words at all unless you count “yattendy yattendy dooda” as words. Lady Maisery call this “tune singing” or “diddling”, reviving the lost art of making lovely sounds with no meaning at all.
All this went down a storm with the audience, but nothing brought the trio such roaring approval as Hannah’s clog dancing.
Clog dancing and diddling on the same night! We loved them – and they loved the warmth of Clayhidon’s response.
September 2014: howdenjones
We have heard some brilliant guitar playing at the hall in recent years – remember Leon Hunt? – but none as warm and mellifluous as these two talented performers.
Virtually every number in their two 45-minute sets was an original song by Paul, a Merseysider born and bred, whose name could justly be added to the Mersey Poets. The lyrics were poetic, based on closely observed details of life and sometimes bizarre local stories, and the tunes quite beautiful.
And between the songs Kate and Paul told amusing anecdotes. It all made for a gentle and thoroughly entertaining evening.
They lulled the Clayhidon audience into such a state of deep relaxation they even managed to get us to join some of the choruses, including an unforgettable, almost passionate communal rendering of the Elvis song I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You. Amazing!
March 2014: Educating Rita performed by the Uncommon Players
Is it always like this in Clayhidon?
Brian Lewis writes: On my first visit to Clayhidon Parish hall I was lucky to see this fantastic two hander which had the audience spellbound from the start. Teasingly, we had to wait for Rita’s explosive entrance, as frantic and repeated knocking and handle-turning were necessary to enter Frank’s world. So there she was – in.
Immediately we knew both these actors were in command of their roles; moreover their brilliant use of the small acting space added intensity to the piece. I say small space, but the number of books crammed in to Frank’s study was quite remarkable and gave him ample scope to apply his whisky bottle-hiding artistry, a trick handed down from father to son.
Well done Rita for those lightning costume changes which so added much to the gradual transformation from nervous and garrulous student to the “educated”, confident and more sophisticated Susan. And well done for the brilliant choice of music linking the many scenes.
With Rita as his student Eddie’s natural inclinations to look inwards, backwards and down the whisky bottle were profoundly disturbed as was the equilibrium of his whole world as Rita gradually found her feet and began to take added inspiration from fellow students, books outside the reading list, and even from theatre visits.
As Rita fought her crusade she became, increasingly, able to put Eddie right on many subjects, much to his discomfiture. It all made for much enjoyable and utterly fascinating cut and thrust – before, finally, she went for the ultimate cut . . . his hair.
Some stand out moments among many: Rita’s first entrance; our realisation that Frank has lots of whisky stashed behind those books; Rita rushing in from the salon having left a customer on highlights; Frank drunk, he’s lying down at the front edge of the stage; Rita talking posh; Frank admitting that he’s read and enjoyed Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown; Rita sitting at Frank’s desk…..wow!; Rita’s really elegant in her black coat and high heels.
The audience were totally swept along during this production, and showed it, with the end coming to rapturous and well deserved applause. Furthermore, even the interval catering was fantastic. Is it always like this in Clayhidon?
Diana Speiaght writes: What an entertaining evening! Having enjoyed the original version at The Piccadilly Theatre in 1981 with Julie Walters and Mark Kingston, we were looking forward to reviving our somewhat hazy memories of this excellent play. We were not disappointed.
The Uncommon Players produced an admirable performance full of humour and wit. Eddie Holden cut a sad figure as the erstwhile poet/lecturer, Frank, closeted in his musty book-filled study, propped up by his secret cache of spirits hidden behind his books and clearly not relishing the thought of actually teaching a student.
Mary Elliott played the bright and breezy, education-hungry Liverpudlian Rita very well and the ups and downs of their very different lives and gradual development of friendship captured the attention of the audience throughout the whole performance. If you get the chance to see them again, take it!
February 2014: Ben & Alfie
November 2013: Hickman & Cassidy ‘s great night out.
Bee Hill writes: We were treated to a very stylish performance from this talented duo who played a rich variety of music complemented by a commentary of amusing anecdotes and illuminating stories.
Their programme seemed to offer something for everyone – zingy jigs and reels, plaintive songs, lilting Irish airs, foot-tapping swing and a gorgeously romantic waltz that our favourite dancers, Jane & Steve, have decided is a “just-must-have” for their wedding celebration next year!
It’s always gratifying to sell out of tickets and even more so when the departing audience are so radiant with appreciative smiles and comments about both the show and the hospitality they received.
That event also made a profit for the Parish Hall of £700.
September 2013: Leon Hunt and the n’Tets
Gareth Weekes writes:They sing of prison, railroads and crimes of passion. They sound for all the world like a bunch of good ol’ boys singing their hearts out in the Appalachian Mountains.
But while the music is pure top-of-the-range bluegrass, in reality the Leon Hunt n-Tet are as English as Yorkshire pudding. Their sell-out concert at the hall on 27 September won a standing ovation.
Leon Hunt, banjo, has been here before, but this time he brought his “n-Tet” – Ben Somers, bass, Jason Titley, guitar, and Joe Hymas, mandolin. These four plucking geniuses add up to a band of stunning talent, and their presence in little Clayhidon is another of those mysteries that are hard to explain.
There were some great songs and plenty of humour, provided by Ben and Joe, who gave a convincing impression of a drunken hillbilly with Tourette syndrome but is actually a musical maestro from Basildon.
The show was also a financial success, making a profit of more than £700 for Parish Hall funds.
May 2013: The Uncommon Players in Talking Heads
Gareth Weekes writes:The title put a few people off. ‘Talking Heads’ hardly promises action. And the format – three plays, three monologues – sounds iffy. But the author’s name should have been enough to fill the last four seats in an almost packed Clayhidon Parish hall on 17 May.
Alan Bennett’s plays are sad, funny and wise, and the Northcott Theatre’s Uncommon Players fielded three remarkable actresses who made the very best of a wonderful script.
First Imogen Smith, as the alcoholic wife of a vicar, then Jenny Start, as the new widow cheated into penury by her own son, and finally Janet Hookway, as the little old lady determined to live to the end in her own home.
Each chattered away to herself, revealing great truths about their lives and ours. These plays, first written for television in 1988 and now classics on the English Literature syllabus, have proved a challenge to some of the finest performers of our age. I doubt if any of them could have held a Devon village audience more spellbound than the Uncommon Players.
Their next production is Educating Rita – and Clayhidon made it clear it wants them back.
Sarah Moule was not the only great discovery of the evening. Many of the songs were utterly unknown and utterly superb, with lyrics by the late Fran Landesman and music by Sarah’s husband Simon Wallace.
The Thunderbridge Bluegrass Boys were a thundering success. Not only were they excellent instrumentalists but they had also superb voices; their close harmony singing of both traditional bluegrass and their own compositions was really impressive. This was the second of our freelance gigs and was a sell-out earning £750 for funds – a big help when paying for the building work.
The demands for encores certainly indicated that the audience and those who had booked too late would like to see them return to Clayhidon. We have taken note!