Starless and bible-black

It was such a thrill for Hils, Crog, Madam Arcati and I, as we gathered on the South Bank for our first major theatrical production post-pandemic - Under Milk Wood at the National Theatre (NT) - last night! We certainly didn't quite know what to expect...

Firstly, I must state that in my opinion there is probably no version of Dylan Thomas's magnum opus that will ever better the original BBC radio recording by Richard Burton in 1954.

Secondly, let's get the "elephant in the room" dealt with - Lyndsey Turner’s new production certainly was not a conventional treatment of this literary masterpiece; the conceit was to sandwich it into another context by way of a new (rather over-long, admittedly) introductory segment, in the setting of a nursing home, inevitably (and a bit clunkily) using Thomas's wistful nostagic satire as the means whereby an estranged (and resentful) son tries to jog the memories of his father who, he discovers too late in their relationship, has dementia. Whether this worked, or was even necessary, is a moot point. Venerable journal The Spectator certainly didn't like it; as Lloyd Evans rather excoriatingly put it in his review:

Before the National Theatre produced Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood they had to make a decision. How could they stuff this dazzling, rapturous comic tone-poem with misery and pain? The policy at the NT is that ticket holders must endure a play rather than enjoy it. They had four options. Racism, homophobia, misogyny and mental illness are the sources of woe most favoured by modern theatre-makers. The NT duly ticked box four, mental breakdown, and hired a writer, Siân Owen, to supply the necessary dollops of torment by penning a one-act melodrama as a preamble to the script itself.

Having adjusted to the unsettling introduction, however, the moment this "play for voices" actually began we were immersed in Thomas's mellifluous poetic use of language - and in the lives of all the fantastic characters who inhabit the Welsh seaside town of Llareggub [which is "Bugger all" backwards, for the uninitiated]: their dreams, their lusts, their interactions, their foibles, their triumphs, tragedies, hatreds and loves, writ large. The "elderly residents" of the opening segment transformed into them all, as the storytelling unfolded.

Ah, the cast! Could one seriously express anything other than praise for, and and awe at, the sheer mastery of Michael Sheen - playing as he did "the estranged son" and the "First Voice" (narrator) of this epic - or Dame Sian Phillips (at the venerable age of 88) playing the "village tart" Polly Garter with all her lusty behaviour and illegitimate children and poignant regret over her (now long dead) one true love? In fact, most of the (significantly older generation) actors were sublime - notably Karl Johnson as the bewildered "dad" with his occasional reminiscencess of his severe, oft-bullied, childhood; Alan David as the embittered Mr Pugh with constant fantasies of murdering the overbearing Mrs Pugh; the remarkable Anthony O'Donnell as Blind Captain Cat; and Susan Brown as the redoubtable Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, proprietoress of the boarding-house into which she wants no guests ("breathing on the chairs"), still dominating her husbands despite the fact they are both dead and merely ghosts...

All of Dylan Thomas's characters are, of course, larger-than-life: The Reverend Eli Jenkins, Dai Bread and his two wives, Ocky Milkman, Nogood Boyo, Mog Edwards, Gossamer Beynon, Willy Nilly Postman, Organ Morgan, Lord Cut-Glass and his clocks that all tell different times, Evans the Death, Mr Waldo, and the tragic Mr and Mrs Cherry-Owens. Some were brought to life more effectively than others in this ensemble, as is inevitable with any quick-change production - and indeed, at times, the amount of "quick-changes" themselves were to the detriment of the prose - but conversely, some of the visual "tricks" (such as the changing of the breakfast tablecloths on a single table to indicate the change of households in which the scenes were located, the reuse of a wheely laundry trolley from the prologue as Nogood Boyo's fishing boat in Llareggub, and the mobile kitchen hob/tea trolley/milk float, armchairs and other furniture that turned up in many scenes throughout) worked very well indeed.

Let's face it, "trendy new interpretation" or no, there's absolutely nothing that can diminish literature of this magnitude:

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding though the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

Come closer now.

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing, dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams...

An absolute joy. [And after the show, we congratulated Dame Sian for her part in it; sat as she was, waiting her ride home, just outside the stage door.]

Under Milk Wood is on at the Olivier, National Theatre, until 24th July 2021.