Cultural highlight 2024: Chuck Chuck Baby, a planetarium and Wildsmith at litfest

Sarah Tanburn

I want to focus your attention on some of the smaller gems of 2024: both Nye and Hamilton at the Millennium Centre were major events, but you will have heard of them.

I’ll start with the fabulous Blackheart Orchestra at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay.

Two people playing thirteen instruments in haunting, funny, rocking songs and an enviable stage rapport. Watch out for them next time round, and meanwhile they are on the usual streaming apps.

A shout-out is also due to the venue: the intimate ambiance is just lovely.

Innovation

Sticking with the innovative rock vibe, Dark Side of the Moon is an incredible fifty years old this year – when did that happen?

A spectacular planetarium show took place at the CultVR Lab on Penarth Road which ran until 28 December.

If it returns, you must go if you can, even if you are not much of a Floyd fan.

Dress warm, lie back and be transported to the heart of the galaxy.

The album is as fabulous as ever, while the visuals are funny, relevant and beautiful. This is one of the best immersive experiences I’ve ever enjoyed, in a venue which deserves a higher profile.

Biggest hit

My biggest hit of the year was the film Chuck Chuck Baby, which I saw at Chapter during its season in Welsh cinemas.

Writer/director Janis Pugh has created a wonderful tale of female love and friendship which deservedly won two Bafta Cymru awards.

Helen is stuck in a left-behind coastal town in north Wales, packing chickens and looking after her ex-husband’s mother.

When her schoolgirl crush comes for a visit, she needs a different kind of courage.

Pugh described the film as Ken Loach meets LaLa Land; it certainly has both grit and great songs, along with beautiful cinematography, resulting in a story which is funny and viscerally moving.

You can watch it on BFIPlayer. Get in popcorn, tissues and be ready to guffaw loud enough to wake the neighbours.

It’s been a hard year for publishing in Wales, with cuts and austerity biting deep.

These highlights are a chance to celebrate some successes, showing that narrative, visual and performance arts are still very much alive.

Chris Jones

The ‘cultural’ highlight for me has to be the Llandeilo Litfest held way back in February (seems an age ago).

Of the many best bits of the Festival, the one that stands out is the sparkling discussion between Nation’s own columnist Ben Wildsmith, author of Flags & Bones, and Adam Price AM. This is how political discussion should be conducted (but rarely is).

Other bookish highlights of the Festival included Dafydd Iwan discussing his new book in English and of course his rendition of Yma O Hyd. There was Coal and Community in Wales authored by Richard Williams, Amanda Powell and Owen Sheers’, a book of photographs marking 40 years since the start of the Miners’ Strike, and writers Sophie Buchaillard and Madeline Miller discussing  ‘Broken Britain’, how fiction can aid a better understanding of ourselves and of our neighbours. Other books included Siân Phillips – A biography with Hywel Gwynfryn and Nia Roberts.

Fiddlebox

For music fans, there were outstanding performances by Carmarthenshire favourites Fiddlebox and Mumbles A Cappella male voice choir who performed at the launch of My Choir Journey by Brian E Davies.

I have listed only a few of the many excellent cultural and children’s events at the Festival and those of you who want to know more can visit the Festival website https://www.llandeilolitfest.org/programme

Nation readers will be pleased to note that the 2025 programme includes a launch of Jonathan Edwards’ memoir.

Jonathan is the ex-MP for Carmarthenshire and a writer for Nation on politics. I am looking forward to it!

Matthew G. Rees

In this dramatic, domino year of three Welsh First Ministers when the word “pollution” has achieved such prominence not only in politics but in alarm rightly raised at the sullied state of our rivers and shores, the revival by a Welsh theatre company of a play by the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen seemed timely indeed.

An Enemy of the People was first performed in Oslo (then Christiania) in 1883. Not a few think it as “relevant” now as it was in Ibsen’s day, if not more so.

Its story concerns a doctor’s discovery of serious contamination in the waters of a struggling town hoping to revive itself as a spa – and attempts by figures in authority and those with vested interests to cover the news up.

Swansea’s Fluellen Theatre company performed the play to full houses at the city’s Guildhall, employing the auditorium of the historic council chamber to good effect.

Amid the marbled pillars in that crucible of old Copperopolis, theatregoers were given a sense of the challenges involved (and the courage required) in speaking truth to power.

Director Peter Richards delivered a compelling production shorn of some of the play’s more repetitive passages. Brendan Purcell excelled as Dr Thomas Stockman, admirably supported by a committed cast.

This was a strong and (in its choice of venue) innovative week for theatre in south-west Wales. Full marks to Fluellen.