“To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and Bible black…”
Thus begins Under Milk Wood by acclaimed Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas, which will be performed by the British company Moonlight Theatre on their first international tour.
The story unfolds in a fictional Welsh seaside town named Llareggub. It is a setting that shares a similar strong, proud identity and bilingual culture with Malta, and local audiences are bound to recognise some familiar foibles and quirks in its colourful cast of characters.
Described by Dylan Thomas as ‘a play for voices’, Under Milk Wood began as a radio play, so the audience had to rely heavily on their imagination to ‘see’ the characters. But its immense popularity soon led to numerous successful stage and film versions of the piece, and it is often performed, with great success in theatres all around the world with the play now translated into some 30 languages.
Unlike most dramas, Under Milk Wood does not have a traditional narrative story. Instead, it is really a series of fascinating and often-hilarious glimpses and scenes of daily life in Llareggub, a timeless town that time forgot.
Unlike most dramas, Under Milk Wood does not have a traditional narrative story
The play begins in the middle of a dark night with everyone asleep, but the audience can overhear and see their dreams, then follow the townsfolk through the events of a single day, and watch and listen as they settle down again for the evening and another dark night.
The thread guiding the audience through the story and what goes on within these 24 hours, as well as the interplay between the town’s eccentric characters, is the two narrator figures – called First Voice and Second Voice.
Thomas actually brought his own poignant and poetic language to the public at the play’s first performance in New York when he read the massive part of First Voice, a role later immortalised by the great Welsh actor Richard Burton.
The other characters are a dazzling mix of colourful eccentrics, emotional dreamers and driven, frustrated lovers and losers, even a would-be murderer. In fact, Under Milk Wood has nearly 70 speaking parts; with such marvellously monikered characters as Blind Captain Cat, Butcher Beynon, Lily Smalls, Sinbad Sailors, Mrs Dai Bread One and Mrs Dai Bread Two, Willy Nilly Postman, Evans the Death, and Lord Cut-Glass to name but a handful.
Moonlight Theatre’s talented ensemble of 11 actors are taking on the momentous task of bringing them all to life as they go about their daily business.
There is a lot of laughter to be found in this comic masterpiece, with the tone set in the very place name the author invented for his fictional seaside town.
“Spell Llareggub backwards and you will see a little Dylan Thomas joke there,” producer Robert Orchard says.
“It sounds at first to a Welsh ear that this really could be a typical Welsh place name but, in fact, it’s Dylan’s comment on what happens on a typical day in the town! Interestingly, when the play script was first published in the 1950s, the town’s name was even spelt differently, as Llareggyb instead, so as not to offend the prudishness of the times!”
Under Milk Wood is being staged until Sunday at the Valletta Campus Theatre (Merchants Street entrance), Valletta, at 7.30pm. For tickets, visit www.ticketline.com.mt.
