In her professional debut, Morfydd Clark was upstaged by a lamb. She’d nabbed the title part in Blodeuwedd – “it’s the Welsh Juliet” – staged on a Snowdonian hillside in 2013. But as if elaborate Welsh-language poetry and swarms of midges weren’t challenging enough, one evening “this lamb came on – it was in July when they’re really not little and cute anymore – and baaa-ed loudly through the love scene.” Continue reading “The Observer rising stars of 2017: Morfydd Clark”
Tag: Wales
Talking pub politics with Charlotte Church
No-one would have predicted that the biggest hit at po-faced super-muso festival All Tomorrow’s Parties earlier this year would have been former “voice of an angel” Charlotte Church doing pop covers in a spangly leotard. But this is her latest project – her Late Night Pop Dungeon – and the Welsh singer absolutely smashed it: the crowd went wild for her band covering everything from En Vogue to Joy Division to Nine Inch Nails. Continue reading “Talking pub politics with Charlotte Church”
The great hippie hijack: how consumerism devoured the counterculture dream
Might 2015 be the year the hippies finally won? Five decades since the emergence of the flower-power counterculture, the hippie dream has at last gone mainstream. Admittedly, peace and love haven’t quite saved the world, but when it comes to lifestyle, we’ve never been more right on (man). Continue reading “The great hippie hijack: how consumerism devoured the counterculture dream”
150: recounting the story of how one area of South America became ‘Wales away from Wales’
It may be on the other side of the world, but one corner of Argentina is surprisingly, decidedly Welsh: in the Chubut Province in Patagonia, you’re as likely to hear “bore da” as “buenos dias”. Continue reading “150: recounting the story of how one area of South America became ‘Wales away from Wales’”