The Sydney Theatre Company Plays Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood by Andrew Miller

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Jack Thompson "begins at the beginning" Sydney Theatre Company’s Under Milk Wood. Photographer: Heidrun Löhr © 2012

Under Milk Wood, A Play for Voices
by Dylan Thomas

Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre: 31 May 2012
plays in Sydney until 7 July

The Sydney Theatre Company

Director – Kip Williams
Set Designer – Robert Cousins
Original Costume Design – Alice Babidge
Lighting Designer – Damien Cooper
Musical Director & Composer – Alan John
Sound Designer – Steve Francis
Costume Realiser – David Fleischer
Voice and Dialect Director – Charmian Gradwell
Dramaturg – Andrew Upton
Scenic Photographer – Derek Henderson

With
Paula Arundell
Ky Baldwin
Alex Chorley
Drew Forsythe
Cameron Goodall
Sandy Gore
Alan John
Drew Livingston
Bruce Spence
Jack Thompson
Helen Thomson

It is no easy task to stage a radio play, or even a “Play for Voices.” We’re not talking about, say, making a dreadful Hollywood movie, or even a schlocky 1950′s film of War of the Worlds; in Under Milk Wood nothing happens. That’s not so much even the main difficulty, though, as is presenting something to the eye which complements Dylan Thomas’ “prose with blood-pressure,” an actor’s doing things — or choosing to stay immobile — and creating activity in a sensible way without stepping on the imagination’s toes. Something similar goes for the cooperative efforts of the costume, set, and music. One way might be to make a sort of symphonic concert out of it, in three movements: night, day, and evening, the actors using their voices mainly with minimal secondaries of costume, gesture, lighting and music, a verbal analogue to a recital or concert. The other extreme might be to turn it into a ‘proper play,’ with with changing sets of Coronation Street, matte paintings behind of Llareggub Hill and Milk Wood, changing to Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard’s parlor, and so on, but even these couldn’t keep up with Thomas’ fast-as-dream flight from house to house, it would look like an attention-deficient mess, would have destructive sentimentality, and would abuse the audience’s imaginations and their ears’ and mind’s eyes. Dylan Thomas’ description is so vivid, the imagery in his prose (which he was sensible, honest and unpretentious enough to call prose), with its quick unfurling of chains of words, and its taught, lithe rhythm, which is more than poetic enough for the sharply outlined, almost to the point of caricatured, characters with their simple psyches who we see unconscious and conscious, inside and out. There are few scientific mysteries in Llareggub, or rather they are brushed aside. The description is unsolid and doesn’t need to be solid, it is so vivid. The characters are borderline cartoonish already, or perhaps nowadays we could say graphic novelish, the play does remind me a bit of Ben Catchor’s.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!