Comedy, Dance and Theatre

'Meeting Joe Strummer' was a play I felt duty-bound to investigate - even though I was born about ten years too late to see them play live, The Clash were one of the bands that really reached out to me as a disaffected provincial youth stuck in his bedroom. 

So it'd have been right up my street anyway, but the fact that Joe lived in Somerset during the last years of his life made it a must-see.

Billed as "A passionate punk comedy about attitude, friendship and celebrity" the show followed the lives of two young men from adolescence in 1977 to middle-age and the way Joe Strummer and The Clash influenced their lives.

I'm occasionally wary of touring productions starring former soap stars.  And yes, Huw Higginson and Steve North were regular faces in The Bill and London's Burning respectively - but they did more than justice to director Paul Hodson's script, which made a post-modern nod to his cast's background by the fact that Huw Higginson's character, Nick, had become a minor-league celebrity appearing in EastEnders.

Punk Theatre

The production was simple but effective, like a three chord punk song, stripped down to its essential parts - performed by a cast of two, without props, on a stage empty apart from a backdrop of three massive photos of Joe Strummer. 

It explored the occasional ironies of left-wing politics and the importance of staying true to your beliefs, and through the experiences of the characters also touched on the fact that while being a rebellious punk frontman, Joe Strummer was also the middle-class son of a diplomat who'd been to public school.

What stood out above all was the way Joe had touched the lives of those involved in the production as well as the characters in the play - Steve North had spoken about this very eloquently on BBC Somerset's Drive with Elise Rayner - and as an extension the lives of those in the audience as well. 

At one point, it almost felt like Joe Strummer was speaking directly to us - hearing Huw Higginson deliver the lyrics to 'Clampdown' in the style of a great Shakesperian speech was one of the highlights of the evening.

"I'll be Joe - you be everyone else!"

And there were also plenty of laughs - from two fortysomething actors occasionally portraying themselves as sixteen year-olds acting out their fantasies of being in The Clash ("I'll be Joe - you be everyone else!) to the militant activist having to hide from his Mum while he sold 'Socialist Worker'.