Described as "a play for voices," UNDER MILK WOOD has had some famous interpreters, notably Dylan Thomas himself (in the first New York performance) and Richard Burton - in Douglas Cleverdon's legendary BBC broadcast, still available for commercial purchase.
Produced to celebrate the centenary of the author's birth, Pip Broughton's production for BBC Wales assembles a stellar cast from locations across the globe - Cardiff, Laugharne, New York, London and Los Angeles. They include Sir Tom Jones, Bryn Terfel, Charlotte Church, Ioan Gruffudd, Jonathan Pryce, Sian Phillips and Katherine Jenkins. Together they offer a joyful interpretation of UNDER MILK WOOD, each playing their parts direct to camera while delivering their lines with due recognition of the piece's verbal pyrotechnics. They prove beyond doubt just what a brilliant writer/poet Thomas was, possessed of the unique ability to communicate the sound as well as the sense of words, putting them together in memorable combinations.
Stylistically speaking, Broughton's production makes considerable use of dissolves, creating a dreamlike world that emphasizes the connection between life and death inherent in Thomas' piece. There is no great divide between the two: characters speak to us from the dead just as the poet himself speaks to viewers, even though it is sixty-plus years since his death at the premature age of thirty- nine. The locations are kept deliberately unspecified - although we are aware that the actors have been filmed in different parts of the globe. This is once again a deliberate strategy Broughton employs to emphasize how the piece speaks to everyone across time and space.
UNDER MILK WOOD describes a day in the life of the fictional town of Llareggub (one of Thomas' favorite jokes, as the name is actually the epithet "Bugger all" spelled backwards). Sometimes the actors in Broughton's production get the pronunciation wrong (using the BBC's less suggestive amendment "Llareggyb" instead), but this oversight does not detract from the overall effect of the production which celebrates Thomas' Welshness; he never lost his feeling for the country that nurtured him, as can be seen through his language.
Broughton's production is a memorable celebration of the work of a great poet, and deserves a wider release. I do hope that BBC Wales choose to release it on DVD or for digital download as soon as possible.
