Under Milk Wood- Clwyd Theatr Cymru- Theatre Royal, The Lyric

Dylan Thomas; a Poet renowned for his sensuality. This play has been dubbed a play for voices, and it certainly lives up to that. Each and every character depicted was an assult on the senses.

The staging and scenery were simple but effective. I had a front-row seat, and at times found it difficult to see what was going on due to the raised platform, but otherwise thought it was very fitting. Of particular note was the use of lighting depicting time passing in days, and in lives.

I was astounded at the fervour with which each line was delivered. The actors morphed seamlessly intp their various characters, and those narrating remained in character even when facing away from the audience. I remained intrigued the whole way through, and was sad that it had to come to an end. I particularly enjoyed the characters portrayed by Richard Elfyn, who stole the show with his 'loony' characterisations.

I would like to see more from this theatre company. A professional, profound and uproarious performance which the whole audience raved about on the way out.

9.5/10

I will leave you with my favourite quote:

Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down
alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps
and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for
each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their
black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth
away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks,
china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like
Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships,
clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers,
tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius
clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that
cataract their ticks, old time-weeping clocks with ebony
beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six
singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass
lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark
day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill,
but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different
times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime,
and tock.

The lust and lilt and lather and emerald breeze and
crackle of the bird-praise and body of Spring with its
breasts full of rivering May-milk, means, to that lordly
fish-head nibbler, nothing but another nearness to the
tribes and navies of the Last Black Day who'll sear and
pillage down Armageddon Hill to his double-locked
rusty-shuttered tick-tock dust-scrabbled shack at the
bottom of the town that has fallen head over bells in love.