If ‘Under Milkwood’ is not absolutely unique, it is hard to think of anything else quite like it. ‘Oh, what a lovely war’ for example does have a cast where everyone plays multiple parts with neither a central story nor any main characters but with that work, the central aim was a satirical look at a particular historical event. In ‘Under Milkwood’, this is no overriding event and the action never moves outside of a tight-knit Welsh seaside community. The central character is the town of Llareggub, the timespan covered is a just single day and rather than satire, the main focus is a sophisticated blend of cynicism and affection with the audience introduced to some fifty characters through a weaving of picturesque poetry and sharp interactions of dialogue. The play is in essence of a continuous poem acted out, giving a portrait of a certain Welsh community in the 1950’s.
The quick-fire pace of ‘Under Milkwood’ is based around short lines delivered in rapid succession, typically only five to seven words in length and frequently less. Dylan clearly took great care to make the images succinct, often with humorous effect. For example, the description of a drunken lover ‘snoring like a brewery’ says an awful lot in remarkably few words. Many of the poetic images create funny and ribald images. A sailor reminiscing about the ‘jolly rogered sea’ again blends a pirating term with a sexual connotation, again with great brevity. Many images are simply poetic evoking sensual engagement with visual mental pictures. Numerous lines rely wordplay, with cynical connotations such as the wedding where the groom is asked if he will take a woman to be his ‘awful wedded wife’.
The Theatre Clwyd production had the added impetus of being actually performed in Wales with quite a Welsh cast and this close association to the play came over strongly in the sincerity and vibrancy of the performances. The eleven-strong cast enabled frequent crowd or ensemble scenes to be performed, as the script required, in addition to a host of individual character portraits. For the most part, everyone wore white costumes although there were occasional colourful dresses or black cassocks. Hats were essentially used to denote specific job functions such as the postman or a policeman, at times with a little more such as the butcher having an apron, but a key element of the play was that once a character’s job function had been given, virtually all the other information provided related to their personal passions, quirks and idiosyncrasies.
This was a play about individual people rather than their roles in society. There were numerous memorable and amusing cameo portraits such as the eccentric Organ Morgan played by Jacob Coleman and Evans the Death played by Macsen McKay. Douglas Walker’s blind Captain Cat recurred a few times, as a prominent member of the community with Georgia Griffith’s romantic Polly Garter singing a soulful lament, one three actors who had songs in the folk tradition. Kate Wasserbeg’s smooth direction ensured that lighting changes in the background were scarcely noticed as the emphasis kept moving rom one character to another, frequently giving to a lifelike realisation to the time of day having changed.
The set was, for the most part, a jumble of some hundred or so model houses each of which had lights on inside. This was powerfully symbolic denoting the nature of a seaside town built on slopes going down to the sea; a place which had not been in planned in neat rows like a council estate but evolved over time, with the houses effectively all ending up forming a kind of collective jumble. The lighting on the houses changed throughout the performance together the stage lighting and a subtly-used video back-screen to denote the passage of time, from carousing in the small hours to tradesmen starting work at dawn. Sound effects such as animal noises and atmospheric music enhanced the moods so that you really felt you were seeing a whole day in the life of a town, condensed into a just couple of hours, with all the shenanigans and intrigues going on beneath the surface as everyone went about their daily lives.
This was an excellent presentation of an unusual work that essentially aimed to simply create a picture of a town through a host a quicky characters.
There was an honesty to the writing, underpinned by a deeply cynical humour. This was best exemplified with the Welsh-sounding town name of Llareggub; try saying it backwards!
‘Under Milkwood’ is on until 4th April, see https://theatrclwyd.com
Reviewer: John Waterhouse
On: 19.03.26
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