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An evening of bugger all
Owen Teale as the narrator, First Voice, with Llareggub in the background Under Milk Wood
Malvern Theatres
**** Under Milk Wood
is Dylan Thomas’s final creation, over six years in the making, and
first broadcast on radio in January 1954, two months after Thomas’s
early but unsurprising death at the age of thirty nine. It was soon adapted for the stage, showing at the
Edinburgh International Festival just two and a half years later. Terry Hands’ current production not only marks
the sixtieth anniversary of that radio premiere, but also the centenary
of Thomas’s birth in Swansea. Owen Teale (Game of Thrones) leads
a very strong cast of Welsh actors which includes Kai Owen (Torchwood)
and Steven Meo (The Fabulous Baker Boys). As narrator or First Voice, Teale introduces us
to the colourful characters of Llareggub, the small Welsh seaside town
where we are shown a full twenty four hour cycle in the lives of the
town’s inhabitants, extraordinary in their ordinariness. We meet lovers and fishermen, mothers and school
children, as Thomas uncovers the hopes, fears and dark dreams of almost
seventy of the townsfolk, all cleverly played by a cast of only eleven. We see mere snippets of these lives and how they
intertwine, so that it is more the town as a living entity which we get
to know, rather than those who dwell there, although we do gain insight
into the inner worlds of some of the more prominent characters, such as
blind Captain Cat, the exotic Mrs Dai Bread Two, and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard
and her two dead but very present husbands. Indeed, one of Thomas’s concerns regarding
Under Milk Wood, which he intended to be the Welsh equivalent of
Joyce’s Ulysses, was its lack of plot. Richard Burton, who
famously narrated Under Milk Wood for several separate
productions, is quite correct in his assertion that, ‘The entire thing
is about religion, the idea of death and sex’, and nobody has ever
really worked out whether the work is a play, a poem, something
different or something in between. The language used is truly beautiful, and
Thomas’s use of poetic devices such as alliteration and assonance make
listening, at times, a joy. He also uses very different speech patterns
to distinguish different characters, most noticeably in the rhythm and
rhyme of Reverend Eli Jenkins (Simon Nehan), or the song of poor Polly
Garter (Hedydd Dylan) lamenting her lost love. And so we are shown a portrait in words of
Llareggub, a town that could be anywhere or nowhere, filled with people
who don’t exist but could be any of us, and where everything and nothing
happens every day. Read the name of this fictional town backwards and
Thomas tells us precisely what of import goes on there. Although this production was gorgeously lit and
perfectly set, with the whole town recreated in miniature behind the
cast, for me some of Thomas’s wonderful lines went by too quickly to
savour. That is in no way a criticism of the actors, I just felt that
some phrases deserved and needed to be pored over and reread, which
obviously would sound pretty silly in a live performance. The imagery conjured up by descriptions of the
old sea captain being nibbled down to his wishbone, or vegetables making
love above the tenors needs time to sink in, and this can never be done
satisfactorily in such a production. On the plus side, I am certain
there will be many amongst the audience who go back to their Thomas in
search of more linguistic gems. There is much comedy throughout Under Milk
Wood, despite the seemingly ever-present shadow of death, and at one
point, after a particularly noisy outhouse scene, Owen Teale, who had
thus far held the proceedings together superbly, corpsed utterly,
bringing a sniggering pause over the whole production. Teale handled this well and by his gestures (he
was for a while totally incapable of speech) managed to include the
audience in his hilarity, turning what could have been incredibly
awkward into a finely shared moment of live performance. After what
must, to Teale, have seemed an age, he managed to continue, and put in a
faultless performance for the rest of the evening. At around two hours, the piece seemed rather long
and slow at times, and perhaps Thomas was right to hanker after some
kind of plot. This is a great piece of writing, however, and Terry Hands
has done a good job of bringing it back to the stage. A must see for
Thomas connoisseurs but not for those of a sleepy nature perhaps, as the
lilting lines and lack of linear narrative make for an atmosphere
described by my companion as ‘soporific’. But then perhaps Thomas would
find it fitting if just a few audience members, like the dreamers in the
cobbled streets of Llareggub, were gently ‘rocked to sleep by the sea .
. .’ To 17-5-14 Amy Rainbow
13-05-15
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