Under Milk Wood

In early April moonlightmead waxed lyrical about going to see Under Milk Wood at her local theatre and recommended it, including a helpful link to the tour dates.  When I looked I found that they were playing at the Cheltenham Everyman, so suggested to SM that we go to see it.  The advantage of Cheltenham is that door to parking space is less than half an hour's drive, so it's easy to go after work and you're not faced with a long journey home afterwards.  The disadvantage of Cheltenham is that it's full of pretentious people during the day and at night all the chavs from the Stroud valley go clubbing there.

To undigress.  The play itself was excellent.  I am so glad we acted on the recommendation, especially as it's something I probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise.  I can vaguely remember reading Under Milk Wood at school (the death knell for all literature).  This performance, with the Welsh voices, let the words ripple through and, to use pretentious Cheltenham speak, almost take on a life of their own.  A cast of 9 took on the 36 named characters plus various unnamed roles; in addition to the two 'voices'.  To watch each actor, with no change of costume or props, becoming different people, was brilliant; by the end a simple change of mannerism and even though I couldn't remember the character's name I knew exactly who they were.

All the actors did a brilliant job, but Owen Teale as First Voice was amazing - so many words to remember, and from the beginning when he set the scene he drew me right into the village of Llareggub (or Llaregyb if you are offended reading the name backwards).  And Steven Meo as Willy Nilly the postman (amongst other characters) stole the scene.  We're not sure whether he was hamming up his part at one point or whether it was scripted, but two of the other actors were laughing rather more than would have been appropriate in character.

It's the centenary of Dylan Thomas' birth this year and it was great to be able to join in with the celebration.