From the moment the warm resonant tones of Owen Teale’s narration as First Voice in this Clwyd Theatr Cymru production of Under Milk Wood stroked the quietness of this packed auditorium, there was a sense that this performance was going to be something special.
This was the first time I have seen or heard a complete performance of Dylan Thomas’s great work, having only heard snatches of it before on radio. I left with a real sense of knowing the people and the place he knew so intimately. Laugharne, the little town on the River Taff estuary must have acted as divining rod to Thomas’s eager imagination. I left with a huge admiration for the way he manages to make us see behind the ordinary. And I somehow doubt whether it would be possible to improve on this Clwyd ensemble’s delivery of Thomas’s mesmerising text.
Teale led the way with his easy-mannered and excellently paced story telling. His call for us to, “Listen. Listen,” effectively had the audience believing they could do just that. With sometimes poignant, sometimes amusing effect, the cast supplied a backing track of voices near and far, children’s songs, dogs barking, cats yowling, kettles hissing, birds calling or hooting on a circular stage set in front of a beautifully-made hanging backdrop of the village, designed by Martyn Bainbridge. As the day progressed, a sun travelled above and around the top of this 3D model like the aesthetic mechanical of an ancient clock. We, it seemed, could gaze down like gods on this little micro-world as its players emerged through the day.
There were so many wonderful cameos throughout this piece. Ifan Huw Dafydd’s blind Captain Cat was right on the money – a great bewhiskered old sea dog if ever there was one. As he manages to identify the perpetrators of various sounds across the village while sitting at his window, he demonstrates to himself the perfect comfort of a human map.
As in Shakespeare, Thomas makes the bawdiness of sex, the partaking of drink and the futilities of love unexpressed stand head to head with an extraordinary awareness of time passing, the footfall of wildlife, and the rhythms of everyday lives.
Under Milk Wood stands as an unsentimental spoken word record of a world that is rapidly disappearing – in much the same way that the war artists wanted to capture the British way of life before impending invasion threatened to obliterate its very roots, Thomas does the same here. His razor-sharp but affectionate studies of his fellow men and women will always serve as a reminder of the value of a community to itself, its characters passing through.
This superb cast of twelve captured every nuance of the almost forty different personalities they portrayed with aplomb, and deserved the rousing ovation at the close before the “black-bandaged night” reclaimed us all again. Highly recommended. ★★★★★ Simon Bishop
