Wilderness

Wilderness takes Cornbury Park, in Oxfordshire. Heywood Hadfield walks it in Louder Than War on 12 August 2023. The dates run from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 August. On Saturday storm Anthony arrives and there is mud. The main stage is the Wilderness Stage. The photos are by Trev Eales. The official page is kept.

On Friday afternoon the dress theme is Like Rabbits, and there are bunny ears. Mae Stephens closes with If We Ever Broke Up. The room hugs and chants boozy. That Friday her single with Meghan Trainor, Mr Right, comes out. The note gives it as a release date, not as a song from the hour. Then Confidence Man. Janet Planet and Sugar Bones jump. Clarence McGuffie and Reggie Goodchild play without a stop, under black-veiled hats. Planet sings COOL, about being the party girl, with a Madonna party chest. Bones rips his shirt off. The crowd roars. The Chemical Brothers close. Hadfield marks Go!, Dig Your Own Hole, Galvanise, Block Rockin' Beats, Setting Sun and Hey Boy Hey Girl. There is smoke, silhouettes, kangaroos on sticks, penguins and inflatable unicorns. The cannons let confetti go. Then orange balloons. The light design is by Marcus Lyall and Adam Smith.

On Saturday it rains. The Zombies, under the water and the mud. Colin Blunstone sings. Rod Argent, on organ, stretches Time of the Season. Different Game is there too, from the 2023 album of the same name. I Want You Back Again comes as an early single they introduce. Saturday's cricket is called off. Arlo Parks, with the album My Soft Machine, moves through Carolina: she staggers, runs and crouches. Impurities she introduces as a happy song and it is not. Eugene is about a triangle that hurts. On Black Dog, about depression, there is a very heavy guitar solo. She says she has come out of those dark times.

Christine and the Queens, when the rain eases. The set comes from the Redcar sequence. They open with Overture, ambient, and Tears Can Be So Soft follows. Chris comes on in a suit and takes the jacket off. Halfway, white angel wings go on. The album is Paranoia, Angels, True Love. There are statues on the stage. When it ends, SKYMAGIC lets 500 drones go over the trees: animals, geometric figures and a phoenix, about ten minutes. On Saturday night the car-park mud traps cars. On Sunday there are rescue tractors.

On Sunday the London African Gospel Choir opens with Paul Simon's Graceland remade. Homeless goes a cappella. On Gumboots there is a boot dance, the one from the miners in South Africa. Sugababes, under that name again: Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan. The musicians come out first, behind a bank of lights. They open with Freak Like Me. Hole in the Head, Push the Button and Round Round follow. Too Lost in You, from the film Love Actually, drops the pace. Each wing of the crowd gets one of the three: first Keisha, then Siobhan, then Mutya. The guitarist and the bassist come to the front for a moment.

Fatboy Slim closes. Hadfield stays with Right Here, Right Now, Rockafeller Skank and Praise You. Behind him video runs at full speed, and once I Heard It Through the Grapevine passes on the screen. The room jumps. There are people behind him too, on the stage. On Sunday the cricket does get played: The Asses Series, umpire Miss Piggy. Australia bats first. England needs 87 and gets them. In the costumes, a can of Foster's, a kangaroo, Kylie Minogue, Shane Warne, Dame Edna, Liz Truss, Elton John and Robin Hood. Hadfield counts 104 people who cross with no clothes. Three children go as pigeons and nobody can get them off. At Letters Live, Claire Foy reads a complaint to Viz about Alphabetti Spaghetti. Benedict Cumberbatch does an already old Shaw. Noma Dumezweni reads Dear Us, by Toni Morrison. Das Brass, nine brass, gets the mud dancing at The Jumpyard.