Wondermentalist

I’ve had chronic computer trouble and I’m writing this from the Apple store in Exeter’s Princesshay while a Genius (sic) does an erase and install on my iBook. That’s why I’m slow off the mark writing up our night at the Phoenix. But Liv Torc just phoned and told me that the Express and Echo have beaten me to it and given us a cracking review. When you read it you’ll see why she was happy about it…

I’ll cut and paste it below for those who are, quite rightly, suspicious of embedded links. While I’m at it I’ll chip in, for the record, that Beryl the Feral, Bill Greenwell and Nomad Shuffle were brilliant too.

INSPIRATIONAL PHOENIX NIGHT

11:40 - 09 July 2008

“I have enough, I do enough, I am enough,” were the stark words of Exeter performance poet Liv Torc giving the two fingers to modern life at the humorous cabaret Wondermentalist.Her set was one of the highlights of the poetry, comedy and music night hosted by Devon-based Radio 4 poet Matt Harvey in conjunction with Exeter College.Torc’s ‘Living TV’ celebrates the lives of the enviable ‘have-enoughs’, such as size-14 Beverly who unapologetically eats saturated fat and caravan owner George who prefers buying Frank Zappa albums to a proper house. They were just two of the evening’s funniest and most endearing characters created and brought to life by some of the county’s brightest poetic talent.Making a hilarious appearance was Harvey’s famous superhero alter ego ‘Empath Man’ who “took part in a drugs trial that went horribly wrong - it was for an anti-pessimism drug, called Optiagra, for middle-aged men who find it difficult to get their hopes up.”

Harvey could have been describing one of the evening’s funniest performers, Jerri Hart, who is “single by choice, but not his choice”. Probably better-known to Exeter residents as a jazz busker in Princesshay, Hart had the audience laughing incredulously at his weird but hilarious jazz knitting and just plain silly origami scat.

Exeter College lecturers passionately championed their favourite writers in the Dead Poets Slam, cheered on encouragingly by English literature students in the crowd. Finally the audience participation poem pushed the people of Exeter to reach deep into their creative vegetable juices - each writing a line to describe their feelings on aubergines. A hilarious, moving, inspiring night.

It was our last Seven Stars outing till October and what a wonderful and ever so very pleasant evening it was. Isn’t Jude Simpson a star? She is. If I had a pound for everyone who’s come up to me since the show to tell me how much they enjoyed her set – well, I’d have enough to go absolutely bonkers wild at a car boot sale, I can tell you.

For the introductory poem I put myself entirely in the hands of Dan, drummer of Nomad Shuffle, whose job it was to throw first a sugar-free biscuit then a packet of crisps from the wings directly into my outstretched hand. In such a way that I could catch it. Whilst not making it look easy. He did this, as if not making it look easy was easy. Which it’s not. Nor is it easy in the first place. Not for any of us.

The unusually talented John Elliott was next to stand up and be counted and he assured us, musically and lyrically, that ‘everybody’s different’ – in way that left me nursing the suspicion that some are more different an others. He was followed by Jackie Juno – without husband Brian Abbott, with whom she assures us she has a very special chemistry – nevertheless she achieved a winning musical-comedy intimacy with deceptively cherubic George Cooper. You may wish to confirm this for yourself on Traydio.

The Dead Poets’ Slam was one of the best in memory with Bill Greenwell, Surabhi Forest, Tony Gee, Jude Simpson, Jackie Juno and John Elliott treating us to ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Rumi, Anonymous, AA Milne, Vivekananda and Emily Dickinson respectively. Emily Dickinson won, by a one point, from Rumi, who was one point clear of AA Milne. It’s lovely to see late poets getting into the spirit of things. Her prize – a copy of Jude Simpson’s Secret Rapper – was collected on her behalf by John Elliott. What would Jude have received if AA Milne had won? It’s hard to say, because he didn’t. Not yet.

Jerri Hart was last up before the interval and like Ms Juno was accompanied by the engaging Mr Cooper, whose first name had stepped sideways to Jorges. Together they performed a rousing version of Sheikh of Araby that shall live long on the memory for the acts of wanton violence perpetrated by Mr Hart upon the dogged and persevering Jorges, and also for Mr Hart’s splendid trumpet playing which was in danger of being forgotten alongside his assaults on his accompanist, which fell somewhere in that happy middle place between slapstick and attempted manslaughter.

It was, as ever, a magnificent interval, with multiple contributions to the audience poem, this month on the chosen theme of ‘putty’. The poem, put together by Liv Torc, can be found in the next or next but one post on this very blog.

A prize was awarded and the poem was read out, to gasps of wonder, recognition and dismay. There had been talk of the audience poem being placed in the Totnes Times. Hmmmm, not this month maybe. However close to our various edges the putty poem took us, it was all a good introduction to episode six in the continuing adventures of Empath Man. I won’t tell you more than that the two muggers who attempted to rob him that night got more than they bargained for. One of them discovered a gift for rap and rhyme while the other, articulate beyond his aspirations, discovered a different form of self-expression. Please visit traydio. Subscribe to the podcast, if you can.

(By the way, everything I’ve said here is utterly butterly true - don’t you agree??)

It just remained for Jude to charm our pants off and win a deserved encore for her funny and moving poems and songs, before Jerri and I put the everyone into and then quickly out of their post-Jude misery with a beautifully moving and argumentative Shorelines of your Mind.

This is my review of the night.

The performers did us proud. They were all so very, very good.

Jerri Hart couldn’t be there. He’d lost his voice. Really lost it. We missed him, and the audience chanted his name. Then, at my request ‘just the women’ – I felt it’s what he’d have wanted. A warm and generous audience, as Dean and I were to prove (in the sense of ‘test’) at the end.

Leonie and Asha from Rae were wonderful, I hope we’ll have them back before too long. They reminded me of why I love Radio 3’s Late Junction. They’ll now be lending Traydio that warm, eclectic, exotic Late Junction feel. Next up was Liv Torc, brilliant winner of the Vibraphonic Slam in Exeter, with her personal superhero, Anxiety Girl, and she was followed by what I think was the best Dead Poets’ Slam so far, won by Dean Parkin reading Kenneth Koch’s To Kidding Around.

The audience poem was fantastic, again, and you must read it. They chose the theme of eggs. Eggs – what are you like?  [Read it here.] And Empath Man, without the promised theme tune (get well soon, Jerri) managed to get very cross with a crowd of people before being lured up the ladder and into the basket of Scorpio Rising’s hot air balloon.

Nomad Shuffle, still expanding, with percussionist Dan adding texture and zest, did a beautiful moving self-penned number dedicated to a friend. Then Beryl the Feral, who’d put together the Eggs poem in the interval, stepped up to deliver an utterly delightful short set that removed any possible traces of cynicism that may have been lurking in the room.

Dean Parkin delivered a delightful set, including the best audience participation cheek popping I’ve ever heard – then stepped into the breach, the unfillable Jerri Hart-shaped space, performing Shingles of your Mind with me, Matt, at the end, on a blue guitar purchased that afternoon. He played the Bobby Shaftoe version and, as debacles go, it was one of the most enjoyable and best received I’ve ever been part of.

But this is all just my opinion, and I’m about as biased as you can be. Where you there? Tell us what you think. How was it for you…?