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Commissioned by the BBC, and described by Dylan Thomas as 'a play for voices', UNDER MILK WOOD takes the form of an emotive and hilarious account of a spring day in the fictional Welsh seaside village of Llareggub. We learn of the inhabitants' dreams and desires, their loves and regrets. The play introduces us to characters such as Captain Cat who dreams of his drowned former seafellows and Nogood Boyo who dreams of nothing at all. It is a unique and touching depiction of a village that has 'fallen head over bells in love'. The First Voice narration reveals the ordinary world of daily happenings and events, while the Second Voice conveys the intimate, innermost thoughts of the fascinating folk of Llareggub. There have been myriad productions of UNDER MILK WOOD over the years and Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones have all starred in radio, stage or film adaptations.… (more)
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I urge anyone who is a devotee of the works of Dylan Thomas to see this edition. It adds a whole new dimension to the work!
Dylan's prose, though, is rich and fun and the play overall is still enjoyable. The cast of characters are a bit of a jumble until about midway through. At that point, I started recognizing who was who. The townspeople are rendered both humorously and poignantly by turns.
As a fan of Dylan Thomas, I'm glad to have it on my shelf but it didn't wow me as some of his work does.
I had the pleasure of listening to the audiobook version remade by the BBC in 2003, featuring the pitch-perfect original recording of Richard Burton as 'First Voice', together with a new all-Welsh cast of many wonderful voices - including Sian Phillips as 'Second Voice'. I've seen the 1970s film adaptation before but this audio recording was superlative. Now I want a printed edition - and I hope there'll be a suitably designed commemorative one out in 2014 for the Thomas centenary - as I know that I will want to savour this all again, line by line, over and over. As soon as I finished it I put the first disc back in and had to listen to it all over again. It is a magical and beautiful thing.
At times, it feels like one long poem. The language (which includes - albeit selectively - nonsense words of Thomas' own ingenious invention) is quite simply beautiful. The characters are unique
Amazing, amazing piece of literature.
I read this edition, as I wanted a greater background to the play. This is the book for that. You can read the play very quickly, but it is probably better for a second reading.
The introduction
You fall into the play, as you would image from a poet as great as Thomas. Written two years before his death, this was a culmination of his poetry before, but what might have come after may well have surpassed this, using the idea of the village being deemed as mad by bureaucrats and turned into a lunatic asylum, with all the villagers unaware they are defined as ‘mad!’ – “Are you mad in a sane world, or sane in a mad world??” That is the question? Thomas would have written an even better play than this had he not died tragically young (39).
The narration is pure poetry and the surreal nature of the voices is compelling and bewitching, bordering on genius.
Don’t skip the intro, your enjoyment will be lessened, but what you’ve never known, you never miss!
On a similar note if you are about to set sail on Ulysses a similar approach will pay dividends. If you are about to set sail on Finnegan’s Wake, – you’re ‘mad in a sane world!’
The writing IMP
The story is set in Wales in the small town of Llareggub (read that in reverse!) and we follow the inhabitants through their day - from their dreams during the night when we learn about their secrets, their desires and fears, until the next evening. It is funny, sad, disturbing, sometimes incomprehensible to me (I think that will get better when I listen to it), crazy and still so true to life in many aspects. There are so many characters that it is hard to keep up with them and to tell them all apart, but that is another aspect that I think will be better when one listens to it.
The story is told via 63 voices with 2 narrators plus dead and alive characters; voices and narrators often finish each other’s sentences to complete the thought. These town folks beguile us – a postman who steams open a love letter between a couple who have never set foot in each other’s homes, a husband who cooks a poison brew for his nagging wife, horny men, an affair, a 17 old looking for love, a butcher who sells questionable meat, and many more. Characters whose names reflect their profession adds entertainment – Dai Bread the baker, Organ Morgan the church organist, Jack Black the cobbler, and Evans the Death, the undertaker.
Amazingly, Dylan worked on this play over the course of 10 years finishing only 1 month before he died at the age of 39 in 1953; this is his last gift to the literary world.
Some quotes:
On sexual innuendos:
“…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.”
And
“…Poor little chimbley sweep she said
Black as the ace of spades
O nobody’s swept my chimbley
Since my husband went his ways.
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
She sighed to me with a blush…”
On men-are-pigs or maybe lust:
“Gossamer Beynon high-heels out of school. The sun hums down through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of her heart and buzzes in the honey there and crouches and kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast. Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street, steaming ‘Gossamer,’ and strip her to the nipples and the bees. She blazes naked past the Sailors Arms, the only woman on the Dai-Adamed earth. Sinbad Sailors places on her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing cockcrow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.”
And:
“I’ll tell you no lies.
The only sea I saw
Was the seesaw sea
With you riding on it.
Lie down, lie easy.
Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”
On poisoning someone – interestingly, these were the funniest passages in the book:
“Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr. Pugh minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs. Pugh a venomous porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes screaming out of her navel.”
And:
“…You should wait until you retire to your sty, says Mrs. Pugh, sweet as a razor. His fawning measly quarter-smile freezes. Sly and silent, he foxes into his chemist’s den and there, in a hiss and prussic circle of cauldrons and phials brimming with pox and the Black Death, cooks up a fricassee of deadly nightshade, nicotine, hot frog, cyanide, and bat-spit for his needling stalactite hag and bednag of a pokerbacked nutcracker wife.”