This beautiful production of UNDER MILK WOOD profiles the dreams and lives and aspirations of the inhabitants of Llareggub – a Welsh fishing village.
The Narrator, Jack Thompson, First Voice, welcomes the audience to the dreams of the various folk of Llareggub, before they are roused to perform their daily rituals and we hear the posthumous hankerings of five souls drowned in the depths.
Director Kip Williams, taking over from Andrew Upton, – made an executive decision for the cast not to use the original Welsh accents in favour of Australian voices and cadence. The motley array of characters could, as easily be Aussie fisher-folk. The ‘web-foot Cockle Women’ are seamlessly transferred from the fictional Welsh village to any south-coast Australian town.
Through the vehicle of humour and satire, we are transported to our own familiar environment. We watch, intrigued, – as fishermen clade in hoodies (oilskins) wearing wellies (gumboots) grasping plump, oily, gleaming fish. And, you would never guess, -it is too rough! to go out in the boat so the fishermen adjourn to the Pub for a pint or two. (We are told, in Kip Williams’s program notes, that this is his favourite scene).
Who exactly are the inhabitants of this universally typical coastal village?!
Women, men, fishermen, sailors, postman, milk-man, ghosts, babies, children, adolescents, old people, a buxom school mistress, a publican, Mr. Mog Edwards, organ-Morgan…
‘And jelly-fish-slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark, at forty fathoms deep,-‘where the fish come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and the long drowned nuzzle up to him.’, welcome to the world of Captain Cat, the retired and blind sea captain.
Who is the gentleman Mr Mog Edwards?! We see Mr Edwards push a clothes rack and bolts of cloth onto the stage while Mfanwy enters in a flurry of flying feathers, falling into the gutter.
Mr Mog Edwards tells Mfanwy , ‘I’m a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, merino, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world.
‘I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.”
The deep timbres of Sandy Gore’s voice of Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard – Widowed Twice! – commanding her two late-husbands to obsessively perform their chores, rising up out of their crisp white graves of candle-whip bedspreads at the crack of dawn, was an extraordinary and humorous highlight.
Sandy Gore’s reflection in casement panels (wonderful set design by Robert Cousins), with cow bells clanging and bright flowers in their clear glass bottles, tells us it spring.
This is a well realised, memorable production with Williams winning strong performance from a strong ensemble cast, including Paula Arundell, Ky Baldwin, Alex Chorley, Drew Forsythe, Cameron Goodall, Sandy Gore, Alan John, Drew Livingstone, Bruce Spence, Jack Thompson and Helen Thomson.
Kip Williams’s production of Dylan Thomas’s UNDER MILKWOOD opened at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House on Saturday 26th May and runs until Saturday 7th July, 2012.
Tags: Sydney Theatre Reviews- UNDER MILKWOOD, Dylan Thomas, Drama Theatre Sydney Opera House, Kip Williams, Robert Cousins, Paula Arundell, Ky Bladwin, Alex Chorley, Drew Forsythe, Cameron Goodall, Sandy Gore, Alan John, Drew Livingstone, Bruce Spence, Jack Thompson, Helen Thomson, Heidrun Lohr, Sydney Arts Guide, David Kary.