The airline said the Academy Award was safely in its care in Frankfurt and was arranging its return.
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Four years on from his acclaimed grime musical The Making Of A Monster, former Children’s Laureate for Wales Connor Allen brings its sequel, Forgiveness Of A Monster, to the stage. Hari Berrow talks to the Newport performer, musician and writer about the show.
Set more than 10 years after its predecessor, Forgiveness Of A Monster covers Connor Allen’s journey to reconnecting with his father and learning to accept the complexities of their relationship. “It is another rap musical, but there’s more of a maturity now, I think,’’ Allen says.
“In The Making Of A Monster, you know, it was about that teenage angst of being in school and we got a rap battle going on our hands. Whereas now it’s like, how can I use that energy and that bravado of grime and marry it with therapy? You’ve got the vulnerability of therapy, but the bravado of grime, and there’s something really interesting in the dichotomy of the two.”
Sequels are very unusual on the Welsh stage, but Allen planned the Monster series to be a trilogy. “I always had this idea of a three-part story. The Making Of A Monster was about my mum, and that relationship when I was a teenager. The second part was always going to be about my father in some complicated way. It just so happened that I hit a point in my life where we finally sat down and hashed it out and I gave him forgiveness.
“I couldn’t have hit that, like, six years ago, because I was still that angry kid, you know? Whereas now, and [after] lots of therapy and lots of living life, it got me to that place where I could finally sit down and have empathy for him. So the complete story is different. If I was planning out this trilogy 10 years ago, it would be a very different compared to me planning it out now.”
Allen – who held the role of Children’s Laureate Wales when The Making Of A Monster was first staged in 2022 – hopes that the work will spark conversations about complicated emotions among young men, but doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. “Schools and teachers, especially, are looking for those positive male role models to showcase to young men – like, you know, ‘this is what you can be’ or ‘these are the people you can look up to’ or take guidance from. As opposed to the manosphere, the Andrew Tates of the world.
“I’m still human, you know? I make mistakes; we’re multifaceted. And I think [Forgiveness Of A Monster] is showcasing that to young men, and being, like, it’s OK to be happy, it’s OK to be sad, to be angry, cheeky. These things are human and we should feel these things.”
Allen hopes that this new show, more than anything, will inspire empathy in audiences. “I can share my story, and you can take away from that what you will. I can give you my honesty and be like, ‘It’s difficult being a young man today. I didn’t have all this social media when I was young and it was hard for me, so it must be hard for you.’ But at the same time, it’s a collective approach. It’s going to take a village, not one person, to change things.
“All I’m saying is like, ‘come on, come with me, walk a mile in my shoes. You’ll understand this next chapter of my story, and hopefully it’ll resonate with you.’ I feel like empathy is what we need right now in the world. We have so much noise – so much war and so much, just, negativity – going on, and we need empathy. Empathise with the road someone’s travelling and what they’re going through, and hopefully we can just be kinder.”
Forgiveness Of A Monster, Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, Fri 8-Sat 23 May.
Tickets: £7-£24. Info: here
words HARI BERROW
SUPER FURRY ANIMALS
Pre-Creation Percolation (Strangetown)
No parental advisory sticker on this (“warning: contents may contain Rhys Ifans”), but on all other counts Pre-Creation Percolation satisfies with its slew of unreleased and early Super Furry Animals material. Across thirty-flipping-one tracks (on the full digital edition), you will hear their two 1995 Ankst EPs reissued freshly, and still a pretty great mix of enthusiasm and stoned japery – plus demos, primitive versions of hits, experiments and wigouts.
The section with Ifans in the vocal role is their Weimar period, fascinating but doomed, but thankfully leads to better treasure: the 1993 demo of The Man Don’t Give A Fuck, smashing noises over the Steely Dan sample and nowt else; beautifully woozy lost song Bulletproof in two stages of progress; a version of Don’t Be A Fool, Billy with lots of seashore noises for some reason. Tetrachromacy ends things with six minutes of acid house squelch, time capsule thrills complete.
words WILL STEEN
Birds of America by John James Audubon goes on the display in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
AT THE GATES
The Ghost Of A Future Dead (Century Media)
The new album by Swedish melodic death metal pioneers At The Gates is tinged with melancholy, having been released after the passing of vocalist Tomas Lindberg. In typical ATG style, though, The Ghost Of A Future Dead is full of paranoia, existential dread, death and destruction.
The album begins as it means to go on, with the pounding drums and bass of its single Fever Mask. Lindberg’s unclean vocals blend so well they almost become another instrument; all tracks save for Det Oerhörda are sung in English, though the lyrics are hard enough to decipher that I may not have noticed. And don’t let the sweet track intros fool you – there’s nothing else delicate about this album – but there are some incredible melodic guitar riffs and solos, and I found myself waiting for those.
The album’s calmest moment comes in the penultimate Förgängligheten, a moving acoustic instrumental before the band go out with a bang. The Ghost Of A Future Dead doesn’t break any new ground, but has solid foundations and outstanding musicianship.
words LYNDA NASH
It would be difficult for most of us to imagine how life would look if we’d lived nearly a century, but Brazilian writer Juliana Leite attempts just this in her debut English-language novel, Exemplary Humans. Natália reflects on her past from her Rio de Janeiro apartment, while waiting for a daily call from her daughter. The recollections are full of the exemplary humans that have graced her world including her husband Vicente, and best friend Sarah the cookie seller.
The narrator takes pleasure in reminiscing about her teaching career and shared experiences living in Brazil with her family. As external threats impact her day-to-day life, it sparks memories of resisting the dictatorship, highlighting the fragility of a democracy.
There’s a poignancy in the reflective nature of the prose, where memories, ageing, death and friendship are explored. Despite the melancholic nature and the questions around the reliability of these memories, there’s a hopeful aspect to the narrative, and with so many significant historical moments to look back on, it provides a rich and powerful backdrop to the storytelling.
Translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry, it’s clear to see why Exemplary Humans was such a success in its native country: a masterful, enthralling read.
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