"I remember when I talked to him, he spoke of the incredible joy of life. But then at some other point in the conversation he was talking about the darkness, and he wasn't feeling too well that day. But the joy seemed very real, and the darkness seemed very real, and neither of them seemed to exist without the other." Robert Lowell describing Dylan Thomas, 1953.
As some of you may know, the theatre group I work with, the Madrid Players, performed Under Milk Wood last March, sadly and musically and humorously. Turned out to be the theatrical experience of my life. Since we're now pretty much at the end of the process - just some photos and DVDs to be passed out - I thought I'd take some time to put down my "director's notes" - perhaps for people who enjoyed our show, perhaps useful for other people thinking of staging it.
As some of you may know, the theatre group I work with, the Madrid Players, performed Under Milk Wood last March, sadly and musically and humorously. Turned out to be the theatrical experience of my life. Since we're now pretty much at the end of the process - just some photos and DVDs to be passed out - I thought I'd take some time to put down my "director's notes" - perhaps for people who enjoyed our show, perhaps useful for other people thinking of staging it.
Now I know
plenty of folks who think that UMW is a play to be enjoyed, not to be analysed,
and it’s an opinion I respect. One of the joys of directing it is that there
are sections so clear, so simple and so brilliantly written that you can just
throw them at the actors and leave them to get on with it. ( I call this my
“method.” )
But.. you still find people who feel UMW isn't quite a "proper" play, and that Dylan belongs in some sort of strange corner for Welsh idiot savants, as if what he wrote was fine but he didn't quite understand it himself, and because it moves people and makes them laugh but isn't exactly political or philosophical, it's not worth serious attention. So I hope nobody minds as I go through some of the reading that helped shape our production.
Now, Under Milk Wood is an odd, unbalanced, episodic kind of thing, but it has that capacity of the truly great plays to offer an infinite number of readings. One perfectly adequate approach is to do it with a light touch, emphasising the innuendo and seaside humour, offering a kind of Welsh Disney or a Carry On film with poetry. Andrew Sinclair's 1971 film has elements of this approach. I didn't want to go down this road.
With such a well-known play, however, I did want to try to find a way in an audience might not have seen before. I did a lot of surfing the web to rattle a few ideas round : this review of a 2011 production provided a breakthrough. The idea that you could use the text of UMW to tell another story running behind and around the words in the play opened it up for me.
Now, Dylan introduced the first New York performance in the Poetry Centre on May 3rd., 1953 : " A picture of a small Welsh town-that-never-was."; and the long essay by David N. Thomas, "The Birth of Milk Wood" confirmed that, in spite of the legend, Under Milk Wood was written mostly outside Wales.
With such a well-known play, however, I did want to try to find a way in an audience might not have seen before. I did a lot of surfing the web to rattle a few ideas round : this review of a 2011 production provided a breakthrough. The idea that you could use the text of UMW to tell another story running behind and around the words in the play opened it up for me.
Now, Dylan introduced the first New York performance in the Poetry Centre on May 3rd., 1953 : " A picture of a small Welsh town-that-never-was."; and the long essay by David N. Thomas, "The Birth of Milk Wood" confirmed that, in spite of the legend, Under Milk Wood was written mostly outside Wales.
In this paper, Thomas makes clear that, contrary to popular legend, very little of UMW was written in laugharne, or even in Wales : in summary, it was started formally in 1944 in New Quay, Ceredigion, which provided the geography of Llarregub, Maesgwyn farm, the graveyard full of drowned sailors... picked up again in 1947 at South Leigh, in Oxfordshire, where Dylan completed most of the first half. It might have remained a fragment had not his promoter, John Malcolm Brinnin, sold all the tickets for a performance in New York in May 1953, forcing Dylan to write some 60 % of the play - part of the first half, and the entire second half - between New York and Boston in April 1953.In his last summer, he added two poem/songs : the Reverend Eli's sunset poem, and Come and Sweep My Chimbley, either in Hammersmith, or in Laugharne. then he set off on his last trip to New York.
The timing is important here : in early 1953 Dylan was mourning his father, who had died the previous autumn; he was a sick man himself; and his marriage had all but disintegrated ( I've wondered how far this accounts for the number of husband/wife relationships in the play, almost as if he's running over all of the ways these very strange couples can find happiness - might be stretching the point, though ). All of this accounts for the strange, bittersweet, atmosphere in the second half of the play, and the moments of genuine darkness.
By now, we had our path. We would present a play about the beauty and joy of life, told from the point of view of a not-quite-disillusioned and dying man who knows the value of everything he's losing. Told against the backdrop of an ephemeral Spring day in Wales, remembered by a great poet in the depths of despair in a bar in New York.
When I was 16 years old, in my first summer job, selling ice cream from a kiosk on Rhyl prom, I remember a Scots guy who used to come by on sunny afternoons to cadge a free cornet. He looked about 50, although I guess he was in his 30s, clearly a serious drinker, ill. To be honest, he kind of scared me a bit, and I gave him ice cream so he'd move on quickly, as much as to be kind. The next summer I worked on the prom again, and Ididn't see him. Sunshine, the sea, sweetness, what I saw in the eyes of that lost man - all kind of Under Milk Wood, and I hope all somewhere in the adaptation.
The timing is important here : in early 1953 Dylan was mourning his father, who had died the previous autumn; he was a sick man himself; and his marriage had all but disintegrated ( I've wondered how far this accounts for the number of husband/wife relationships in the play, almost as if he's running over all of the ways these very strange couples can find happiness - might be stretching the point, though ). All of this accounts for the strange, bittersweet, atmosphere in the second half of the play, and the moments of genuine darkness.
By now, we had our path. We would present a play about the beauty and joy of life, told from the point of view of a not-quite-disillusioned and dying man who knows the value of everything he's losing. Told against the backdrop of an ephemeral Spring day in Wales, remembered by a great poet in the depths of despair in a bar in New York.
When I was 16 years old, in my first summer job, selling ice cream from a kiosk on Rhyl prom, I remember a Scots guy who used to come by on sunny afternoons to cadge a free cornet. He looked about 50, although I guess he was in his 30s, clearly a serious drinker, ill. To be honest, he kind of scared me a bit, and I gave him ice cream so he'd move on quickly, as much as to be kind. The next summer I worked on the prom again, and Ididn't see him. Sunshine, the sea, sweetness, what I saw in the eyes of that lost man - all kind of Under Milk Wood, and I hope all somewhere in the adaptation.
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| Sunny afternoon by the sea in Wales. This is Llandudno prom. |
