Cultural highlights 2025: Crime Cymru, the joy of local and a Hollywood star from Wales

Eric Ngalle Charles

The Jollof House Party Opera – A vibrant fusion of culture, flavour, and music – co-produced by Fio and Music Theatre Wales: Volcano Theatre in Swansea on Thursday, 9 October 2025.

The Jollof House Party Opera was a stunning celebration of West African spiritual harmony, effortlessly blending culinary delights, musical storytelling, and the warmth of communal gathering.

Its roots are deeply embedded in the tradition of the renowned Jollof rice, inviting audiences to experience the flavour and spirit of a true house party, all set within the grandeur of an opera.

When I entered the Volcano Theatre in Swansea on Thursday, 9th October, I sensed I was in for a wonderful surprise and I was not disappointed.

I was greeted by gentle sounds of music drifting through the air like the faint whispers of a distant waterfall—melodies that make you sit under a mango tree and dream away in the Yoruba sunshine.

The lighting and set design were bold and authentic, with rich textiles and festive banners setting the mood.

Then the hearty laughter of writer and musician Tumi Williams, the original production’s co-creator and the person who plays Chef Adeola’s fantastic role, woke me from my reverie.

Like two puppies rolling on the ground on a warm afternoon, Tumi and I discussed the role of Jollof rice in our childhood. As he wandered off to change into his costume, my eyes met the vibrant Kente fabric.

Pots, pans, and garlic hung upside down, and smells drifted through the air. I was excited to see Volcano Theatre transform into a lively living room with groups of men, women, and children.

They all gathered to experience a small piece of Africa. The seating was arranged like a hollowed-out orange, perhaps a half-smiling moon.

As our hearts danced with every note, Tumi made an entrance, the music commenced, and he dropped a small bag. As he picked it up, he revealed its contents.

Clare E Potter

2025 has been a really culturally enriching year for me as I’ve been discovering incredible artists and projects in Rhondda Cynon Taf.

A highlight: The Gwyl Morfydd Owen (Festival). Pontypridd was a thrum of art and music and lampshades parading. I knew little of Morfydd Owen’s life but the festival opened us locally and beyond to what an incredible musician, composer, singer came out of this area and became a world class artist.

On offer were lectures, opportunities to participate, performances: for one, the astonishing VRÏ trio (Patrick Rimes, Jordan Price Williams, Aneirin Jones who rung the museum alive with cello, violin, voice); the library had a first class art exhibition from local and international artists who responded to themes, music, or Morfydd’s life.

The aim of the festival to celebrate and promote this ‘forgotten daughter of Pontypridd and also [to bring] a bright light of encouragement that we all have something unique to give to the world.’

This year, I also discovered the inspiring and welcoming venue in Treforest, Park Arts. An old chapel now made an art centre where artists meet to collaborate, support one another, make ideas happen and put on gigs, book launches, workshops.

It was here I recently heard the exceptional tour of Obsolete by Matthew Frederick supported by the equally enchanting Nate Orr.

I’m a massive fan of Matthew Frederick and this 3 hour gig was generous and rousing, a bright light for our hearts. I’d recommend his new and beautiful album which you can also get in limited edition on . . . floppy disc! Brilliant.

So, it’s going to be local for me going into 2026; there are many riches of theatre, dance, art, poetry and film still to explore.

Oh, and the absolutely super-duper Collage Club initiated and run by one of RCT’s finest community artists: Abril Trias.

I’ve loved these gatherings with others as we’ve stuck and pasted and dreamed with paper and glue sticks.

Adam Somerset

“My Unexpected Journey” is bracketed, opening and closing, in a theatre. Luke Evans returned to act on stage after an absence of more than a decade.

“Backstairs Billy” in the winter of 2023 was a critical and popular hit. He writes how the energy required in the eponymous central role would send him back to the dressing room drenched in sweat. The production was a marvellous one. The fact of his time in film made a difference. Two Japanese fans went to the first thirty performances.

The film years- the USA to New Zealand for “the Hobbit” are described with an accelerating gusto. Their ingredients are serendipity, excess, wonder. The actor, surprised at each new turn and opening, confesses to feeling at times a sense of imposter syndrome.

His earlier career on the London stage is powered by relentless industry. A night of performance at the Donmar Theatre is be preceded by rising at 9:00 in the morning for a day stint in a restaurant.

After roles in musical theatre he makes an unexpected transition to drama with a revival of Peter Gill’s “Small Change.” The experience is wholly new with two pages given to the experience of Peter Gill as a director. The focus on the rhythm of the dialogue is intense. Gill uses a metronome to set the discipline of the speed of delivery.

If the professional years are recounted as a Candide-like picaresque swirl the account of childhood to the time of leaving home as a teenager is in sobering contrast.

School, and life, in Aberbargoed is one of constant bullying. The fact of being within a Jehovah’s Witness family adds to the isolation. His entry to a bigger world is, like so many others before him, via the Eisteddfod route. Escape from the suffocation of religion comes with the encouragement and the early prizes that music is abel to give. .

Consciousness of his sexuality early on is coupled with the knowledge that it makes him a person to be excoriated in the eyes of his parents’ faith. The difficult path to emancipation begins on shopping trips to Cardiff with his mother. He slips away to the Chapter and Verse bookshop. A single book can be smuggled back home tucked in the back of his waistband.

The first literary encounter, and sense of connection, is surprisingly E.M Foster. He reads with a thrill the blurb on the back of a copy of “Maurice”. Evans was born in 1979; his description is a jarring reminder of how harshly the treatment of a child might be just a few decades ago.

Chris Lloyd

For the 2023 Gwyl Crime Cymru Festival – the first international crime fiction festival to be held in Wales – I was on the organising committee, so it passed me by in a blur of admin and woe.

It was lovely, then, to be able to take part in the 2025 festival without any committee responsibilities and see just how much it meant to the community of writers, readers, bloggers, booksellers and librarians in Aberystwyth, where it was held, and further afield in Wales and beyond.

The number not just of big name authors attracted from outside Wales to take part, but also of our own home-grown writers is glowing testimony to the work done by Crime Cymru since it was formed less than ten years ago in raising the profile of crime writing in Wales.

The world has heard of Scandi-Noir and Tartan Noir – when it comes to Welsh crime writers, Crime Cymru has unleashed the dragon’s roar.

To continue with the Crime Cymru theme, one of its founding members, and the beating heart of the cooperative, Alis Hawkins published the latest novel in her Oxford Mysteries series.

It’s always a good year when a book by Alis comes out, and the third in her stories featuring Non Vaughan and Basil Rice, two very different Welsh main characters in 1880s Oxford, has set an already towering bar even higher.

Much darker than the previous two in the series, it tackles issues of misogyny, bigotry and the social and sexual politics of the age, casting a stark light on issues that are still powerfully relevant today.

A personal highlight of the year for me was interviewing Alis at her launch events in Aberystwyth and Coleford and appearing on panels with her a good half a dozen times more.

Not just one of the most unique voices in crime fiction, she is also a hugely entertaining and fascinating speaker.

My apologies to all the audiences we’ve made miss their trains while we’ve talked on.