A Christmas in Wales

Jericho Arts Centre to December 24, 2023
Tickets from $26 at 604-224-8007 or www.unitedplayers.com
Students: $15 with ID, at the door

Posted December 5, 2023

I wasn’t the only one whose interest in student director Sarah Rodgers was piqued after seeing Under Milk Wood in the fall of 2004 at UBC.  Adapted from the radio play by Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood was Rodgers’ MFA (Directing) graduation project and it attracted the attention of Jeremy Tow (1963-2010) whose career included serving as Artistic Director of the Chemainus Theatre Festival for eleven years and a year at Western Canada Theatre.

After Under Milk Wood, Tow commissioned Rodgers to adapt A Child’s Christmas in Wales, the lyrical prose poem written by  Dylan Thomas for radio in the early 1950s. Rodgers turned to her father, the late Denis Rodgers, a writer and poetry and oral languages professor at UBC, and together they adapted Thomas’s prose into a two-act musical stage play that premiered back in 2006.

Sarah Rodgers’ student production caught my eye, too, and I have followed her career beginning with UBC right through to the Arts Club, Ruby Slippers, Pacific Theatre, Studio 58, Pi Theatre, Gateway – in short, almost every theatre company in western Canada. She was recently appointed Artistic Director of United Players and the company is indeed fortunate to have her at the helm.

A Christmas in Wales is a hybrid: the disembodied voices of the radio play become actors, interchangeably taking on various roles with the exception of Kazz Leskard who plays ‘Dylan’ himself. There’s choreography, music and song. But the original prose poem takes only about twenty minutes to read – not enough for an evening of theatre so Rodgers – father and daughter – went looking for ways to expand it. And they found ways. When, for example, after Christmas dinner one of the characters suggests they tell scary stories, The Queer Chair – written by Charles Dickens – is added to hilarious effect. And when all the assembled family play a parlour game, The Minister’s Cat, an old Victorian favourite, is acted out. Wherever A Child’s Christmas in Wales offered possibility, the Rodgers jumped in, added music, period-appropriate sketches and the adaptation was born – a  delightful, nostalgia-rich evening of theatre.

While Dylan Thomas wrote the radio play in the early 50s, it’s about his childhood in Wales in the 20s so his Christmas memories are now a hundred years old. This is not easy to pull off theatrically; it can look sentimental viewed on the cusp of 2024. But something interesting happens as we join Thomas in his personal recollection: we view his childhood Christmas through our own lens. “It always snowed at Christmas” reminds many of us who might say, it “almost always snowed at Christmas, when I was a kid”. We remember throwing snowballs and perhaps we remember aunties who imbibed enthusiastically in too much port or uncles who smoked pipes (imagine! Inside!). We remember disappointing gifts – socks and hankies. And, if not “jelly babies”, then “Hershey’s kisses”. We even remember, like Dylan Thomas, those candy cigarettes that we pretended to smoke – and then ate!

Andrew Lynch, Gordon Law, Aerhyn Lau, Shannon Hunt, Evangela Kepinski and Ellen Kennedy breathe life into the adaptation but, best of all, is Kazz Leskard as Dylan – both as a young lad and the adult Dylan Thomas looking back at his childhood.

Alice Han and Ellie Lau alternate on the harp. As well, all the performers pick up and play various instruments. The music blends beautifully with the lyricism of Thomas’s prose.

Set design by Kevin McAllister with scenic painting by Omanie Elias and lit by Christian Ching transform Jericho Arts Centre into a wintry scene. Costumes, appropriate to the period, are by Catherine Carr.

Directed by Sarah Rodgers, A Christmas in Wales is long on nostalgia but you’d have to be grinchy not to be charmed. Sweet as sugar plums? Not quite. There’s always an undercurrent of melancholy, of time passing; just enough to give it an edge.

Dylan Thomas, a notorious heavy drinker, would love to know that his radio play has been adapted into a fully fleshed-out two act play, thereby allowing for a tipple (or two) at intermission. And he would have applauded United Players for making hot mulled wine available.

Me? I have a coffee and Bailey’s in my cup when I listen to the annual CBC recording of Dylan Thomas himself reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales – a Christmas tradition well worth honouring.