Review: Grist Salon, Huddersfield: 27 October 2021

It was very pleasant to re-connect with the Grist project at Huddersfield University, which has published my work in four separate books, including one full-length publication, Escape Kit, which has been adapted for radio.

I arrived while Steve Ely was reciting his poetry. He is a master of words, with a body of work founded in knowledge of his subject matter.

Michael Stewart then read some of his poems from a forthcoming collection about dogs. They were excellent.

The open mic left something to be desired. The poetry was fine, but it was not always obvious who was on next, and there was nowhere to put your stuff. No lectern.

It was great to be at a live event. I met John Newsham, an old Grist campaigner, and his partner. John is about to launch a novel. I hope to attend the launch in Holmfirth.

If you do spoken word in West Yorkshire, then you need to get to the next Grist Salon. There were at least 40 people there, and it looks likely to increase.

Review: Chelping at The Leeds Library, 07/10/2021: featuring Khadijah Ibrahiim and Haris Ahmed.

The open mic list was a bit light, and so I volunteered. I did ‘On this occasion’, a poem about being unemployed. It got a good reception.

The next open micer was 17 years old. She did two pieces, about marginalisation, and sexual exploitation. They were excellent pieces. She dealt with the material and showed technique that no older person could criticise. She held the stage. If she had had six more pieces, she could have headlined.

The last open micer was Yasmine. She did lyrical poetry about a South Asian/Urdu heritage. There may have been many references that I missed, but the effect on me was hypnotic. The sensual use of language was the thing that went into my ears.

Haris Ahmed came on, and he occupied the stage. He is 20 years old. I am not saying his performance was perfect, but I am saying that there is more than potential. He is already doing it. This chap knows how to use language. The tension he created between Leeds (the site of the performance) and his place of origin (Bradford) would have been brilliant, if Khadijah Ibrahiim had not gone on to run a coach and horses through it.

And so we came to the headliner, Khadijah Ibrahiim.
She said, Haris comes from Bradford. Well, someone has to. Her entire credentials fell to the floor, but that didn’t matter, because we were still listening to what she had to say.
She comes from Leeds, my home town. Her performance was preceded by a certain amount of pronouncement about Haris Ahmed’s performance. She is a teacher. Oh, boy – did she teach. She was using her authority in the best possible way. There are certain things that she knows about, and it is in our interest to listen to what she has to say.

We did listen.

What I heard was a contrast between the voice of Michael Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and this female voice. They all used the same vernacular, but there were two differences. This voice is a female voice, and this persona has two voices: Leeds, and Caribbean.

The word that the performance hinged on was “duppy”.
After the main performance had finished, I formed the orderly queue of fanboys. I said to Khadijah Ibrahiim, “Do you know how I know the meaning of the word ‘duppy’?”

The answer is that I bought an album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, in about 1980, called Burnin’. It had a track on it, called Duppy Conqueror. There was a footnote on the sleeve of the album, which said that duppy means ghost.

Review: Undermined by Danny Mellor, at Cluntergate Community Centre 03/10/2021

As soon as I heard that Red Ladder Theatre Company was putting on another play at Cluntergate Community Centre in Horbury, I ordered the tickets (GBP5 each). My only reservation was that the last Red Ladder play I saw at this venue was a very tough act to follow. This was balanced against the fact that the subject matter of Undermined is the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, a subject that I am even more interested in now than I was when the strike was taking place.

I sat in the front row. Cluntergate Community Centre has a stage (upon which I have performed) but previous Red Ladder productions at this venue have been done at the same level as the seating. This one used the stage. The set consisted of a chair, and a pint of beer in a glass. That’s it. The only other effects that were added were backing music, and lighting, mainly used to show the difference between day and night.

The play has four main characters: Dale (the protagonist), Billy, Tony, and Johnny. There are also various wives or partners, police officers, and politicians. These are all played by the same actor.

I can’t find any information on the Red Ladder website about who plays Dale (and all the other parts) and so I am guessing that it is Danny Mellor, the writer. The protagonist is a big bloke wearing a denim suit, with black and yellow badges that we now equate with “The Enemy Within”. He certainly looked like a miner.

Having prior knowledge of the history, I was completely in agreement with Dale’s cause, but it took at least 10 or 15 minutes for me to get to like him. You must forgive me: I come from a middle class background.

There was a lot of physicality in this play, and there needed to be, and it was excellently portrayed. One man, ***one man*** had to portray the Battle of Orgreave, and he did portray it, convincingly.

My main criticism is that the rhymed prologues to some scenes were nowhere near as good as the main dialogue, mainly because of multi-syllable rhymes, which make just about anything sound comic, when gravity was what was being sought. But I have just said “prologue to some scenes” with reference to a play that consists of one man, a chair, and a pint glass. I hope that gives you some idea of the bone-shakingly vivid experience this play provides.

The different regional accents, including Nottinghamshire, London, and South Wales, were superbly handled. The first dialogue in a Notty accent had the Wakefield audience in stitches because, let’s face it, they sound so ridiculous. As well as being scabs.

I never put spoilers in reviews. Among the grinding of the state machine, and the daily activities of the miners picketing and continuing the strike, there is in this play a plot twist which reduces the whole struggle to the most basic human level imaginable.

If you want to know how that is achieved, you are going to have to see the play.

Danny Mellor has written a stupendous play which encapsulates months of human struggle into one hour.

If, as I believe, Danny Mellor also acted it, then his use of physicality to depict vast tableaux on a small stage is genius.

I will leave you, not with a plot spoiler, but a dialogue spoiler. Dale says,

“They say behind every great man, there is a great woman. That’s not true. Our women stand next to us.”

If this play was on at Cluntergate for the next three days, I would go and see it, another three times.