Under Milk Wood

During 2020 and 2021, while we were prevented from performing, or even from rehearsing, by the Covid 19 pandemic, we kept ourselves busy by meeting online.

At first, and like so many people in the the UK at that time, it was online quizzes, but that doesn’t quite hit the spot for performers, so we looked for something to do that was more in line with our usual activities. We decided to read a play together, and Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood was the obvious choice. At the time it was a private project for our own enjoyment only. However, we were so pleased with the result that now the work has entered the public domain, we have decided to share it with you.

An Enduring Masterpiece

Under Milk Wood is a lyrical portrait of a fictional Welsh seaside town called Llareggub (spell it backwards!), and the dreams and inner thoughts of its quirky inhabitants. The play is narrated by two omniscient voices, who guide the audience through a day and night in the life of Llareggub, from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again.

It’s origins lie in a piece created for his school magazine in 1931, when he was just 17 years old, which imagined a conversation between Benito Mussolini and his wife. The play, which he continued to revise and rewrite it until his death, was chiefly inspired by Thomas’s own experiences of living in various Welsh towns and villages, especially Laugharne, where he moved with his family in 1949. The title is borrowed from a poem by his friend Vernon Watkins. That conversation between the Mussolinis became the scene between Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and her two dead husbands.

The first broadcast with Richard Burton as First Voice was on 25th January 1954, less than three months after Thomas’s death, although it had already been performed live in New York in May 1953, this time with Thomas himself on narration duty. It has been adapted for the stage, film, television, opera, and musical theatre, and has been translated into many languages. It features some of Thomas’s most memorable characters, such as Captain Cat, the blind old sailor who dreams of his drowned shipmates; Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, the widow who nags her two dead husbands; Polly Garter, the young woman who sings of her lost lover; and Rev. Eli Jenkins, the poet-preacher who blesses the town every morning and evening.

Under Milk Wood is considered to be Thomas’s masterpiece, and one of the most popular and influential works of 20th-century British literature. It is a celebration of language, imagination, and humanity. It is a play that invites the audience to listen to the voices of a small community, and to share their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears. It is the image of community that it paints that drew Stage Two Downham to it as our lockdown project.

Our Production

As we were limited by the needs of the Covid 19 lockdown, we rehearsed and recorded Under Milk Wood entirely remotely. Each actor’s performance was recorded at their own home using their own equipment, usually a mobile phone. The sessions were hosted on Zoom, and the individual recordings were then edited together to produce the final audio.

Once the Covid regulations allowed, we met in and around Downham to take some photographs to accompany the audio, and it is this that makes the video presented here.