Bob Kingdom has won considerable acclaim for the one-man shows in which he has created vivid portraits of, amongst others, Truman Capote, Stan Laurel and The Duke of Windsor. However, in Dylan Thomas: Return Journey it quickly becomes clear that he was surely born to play the Swansea boy whose extraordinary capacities as a writer were matched by an equally formidable capacity for self-destruction. Kingdom is a product of South Wales too, and like the poet he was entranced by the sounds of words at an early age. Here he gives us Dylan Thomas on his last lecture tour in the USA, re-imagining childhood experiences and confessing some the accidents and indignities of his alcoholic adulthood: ‘Poor me, poor me… pour me a drink.’ Bob Kingdom has always been a talented mimic – his Neil Kinnock is a thing of joy – and he uses this ability to great effect in the first half of this show when he conjures into sharp focus all the characters of The Outing, Thomas’s hilarious account of a charabanc trip to Porthcawl that never reaches its intended destination, there being far too many pubs en route.
Beneath all the humour and the exuberance of the language there runs a deep sense of loss. The most moving sequence in the second half comes when we hear of Thomas returning to a blitz-ravaged Swansea in search of his childhood self, only to find empty bomb-sites in the swirling snow. Bob Kingdom has skillfully interwoven anecdote and asides with recitations of some of the best-known poems. Those hoping for anything from Under Milk Wood will perhaps feel short-changed, but there is ample compensation in hearing the lyrical word-magic of poems such as Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and The Force That Through The Green Fuse, delivered with passion and hypnotic power. It is Fern Hill that concludes the show; a vivid, whirling evocation of childhood innocence and optimism that makes Thomas’s early death appear all the more tragic.
Anthony Hopkins’ direction is as spare as the staging; nothing distracts us from Bob Kingdom’s utterly convincing, captivating performance. There are those who find Dylan Thomas’s extravagant imagery too overblown, even incoherent, but such detractors will still find much to admire here; for the many who love his work this is a show that must not be missed. ★★★★☆ Mike Whitton
