Under Milk Wood

Jericho Arts Centre until April 30, 2023
Tickets: $15-$33 from www.vitalsparktheatre.com

Metro Theatre, May 5-14, 2023
Tickets: www.metrotheatre.com

Posted April 24, 2023

Hard-drinking, hard-living, hard-loving writer Dylan Thomas set Under Milk Wood, originally produced as a radio play for the BBC in 1954, in LLareggub, a fictitious  seaside town in south Wales. When asked what Llareggub means, it’s reported that Thomas said to read it backwards: buggerall. True? Who knows, but irreverence and  playfulness with words infuse Under Milk Wood but never at the expense of his characters who live, love and dream of love in that small town. Thomas clearly had profound affection for all of them, including ever-nagging Mrs. Pugh, philandering Mr. Waldo and Willy Nilly, the postman who not only delivers the mail, but reads it first.

Language, what exuberant language! How’s this for a love song from Mog Edwards to Myfanwy Price:

“I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussors, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole cloth Hall of the world. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.” Ah, now that’s language that makes your ears stand up and pay attention.

At a time when we say apps and docs, can’t take the time to say barbecue (BBQ) or vegetables (veggies) and send awkwardly truncated text messages,  it’s a rare treat to revel in such long, languid lyricism.

One of two narrators, begins at the beginning: it is predawn, “a moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black” and the play proceeds through the day until the evening. The town awakens, the characters rouse themselves and begin their day. Like peeping Toms we visit them, eavesdrop on the town gossips discussing who’s pregnant again, catch Mr. Pugh fantasizing about killing Mrs. Pugh, observe twice-widowed Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard in her voluminous white nightgown, check out the local badboy Nogood Boyo and fall half in love with Polly Garter who, despite many lovers, dreams of “little Willy Wee who is six feet deep”.

Plot there is none. The village sleeps, wakens, greets the day, goes about its business and sleeps again. But Thomas’s unparalleled ear for language and rhythm, his meticulous detailing of these townsfolk and his affection for towns like Llareggub (that right into the 1950s had avoided the hurly-burly of 20th century life) is so palpable you feel that, for one day, you’re actually there.

Produced by Vital Spark Theatre Company and directed by Joan Bryans, the company’s artistic director, this is a rare opportunity to see a cast of 20 come together on a simple set (designed by Todd Parker) where they bring Thomas’s beautifully crafted homage to these characters and this place to life.

Read this out loud to get a feel for the material: “There’s the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles of the humming streets, hammering of horse-shoes, gobble quack  and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring whinny and morning moo from the clog dancing farms, the gulls’ gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs. Organ Morgan’s general shop where everything is sold; custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar, stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles.”

There is strong multi-cast ensemble work with some standout performances including Rebecca Walters, Dana Schindel, David Hollinshead and Matt Loop. The town’s children are confidently played by Soleil Greenfeld, Bradley Mah, Clara Mah and Dylan Mah.

It’s finally spring in Vancouver and young men’s – and women’s – fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love. There’s a lot of that in Under Milkwood; it’s definitely lusty. But old people – not immune to the world greening up and the trees bursting into bloom – remember when the sap began to rise in their now old bones. Blind old Captain Cat recalls entreating the prostitute Rosie Probert to let him, “shipwreck in her thighs.” What an image amidst a fabulous feast of images.

Actor Nancy Wickwire, who was involved in the first production of Under Milk Wood in New York City, remembered meeting Dylan Thomas and described him this way: “…looking as I always thought a poet should look. Perhaps a bit plumper than a poet should look…with a marvellous scarf thrown around his neck, and came in with a wonderful grin on his face and his hair all tousled, and he was round and marvellous. He was very shy. You had a feeling that he was as shy with us as we were with him.”

His instruction to the cast was simply this, “Love the words. Love the words.”

Dylan Thomas died at the age of 39 in New York City from what was likely undiagnosed pneumonia.

We still love the words.