(4 / 5)
First performed in America in 1953, and broadcast posthumously as a radio play by the BBC in 1954, Under Milk Wood has had many adaptations for the stage. This is the first time that accessibility has been integral to the performance and design.
The production is part of Craidd, a collaboration between five Welsh organisations working to improve mainstream representation of Deaf and disabled people both on and off stage across Wales. This staging uses integrated British Sign Language (BSL) and captioning.
This means that accessibility is literally centre stage at many times and fully incorporated into the staging. BSL trained actors are key to the delivery. use is made of video and back projections to magnify some of the action on the stage. Text is not standard surtitles but rather animated and colourful, shifting and dissolving – enhancing the experience for most in the audience.
As a seeing and hearing member of the audience it’s at times difficult to know where to focus the attention. This is a recognition of how compelling the different aspects of the production are – the imaginative captioning text which is difficult to keep your eyes off but also wishing to constantly refocus on the considerable skills of the actors. You get better at that as the play progresses. This type of accessible theatre, built into its design at the outset, can be potentially engaging for all members of the audience.
It’s an excellent ensemble piece (with each actor playing multiple roles), fast-paced and funny, musical and magical with a dizzying array of characters. This is not a conventional play in terms of plot or narrative drive. An omniscient narrator guides us through the lives and loves of the villagers and this along with interconnected vignettes advances the action. Scene settings, of which there are many, are suggested by precise lighting and sound design along with creative props. The pace of constant change makes this demanding stagecraft but it feels effortless.
Hayley Grindle’s set and lighting are stand out. The cottages imagined as oversize doll’s houses, sometimes ordered, other times in disarray, depending on the time of day, often providing a glorious warm glow to proceedings.
Kate Wasserberg has not shied away from the darker, at times uncomfortable, themes in the play, more prevalent in Part 2. ‘There’s a nasty lot lives here when you come to think.’ gets one of the bigger laughs of the evening. A lot more than mischief is hinted at in the lives of the community.
At the end we are full circle, another night is approaching. Something very like this will be happening tomorrow.
This staging captures and amplifies the play for voices – tender and poignant, funny and irreverent, lyrical and bawdy. Theatre Clwyd’s Under Milk Wood is a captivating imagining of Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece.
Andy Stroud
Credits
Creative: Hayley Grindle (Set and Costume Design), Katie Elin-Salt (Associate
Director & Dramaturg), Laura Meaton (Movement Director), Adam Bassett (BSL Director), Joshua Pharo & Sarah Readman (Co-Lighting, Video & Creative Caption Designers, Oliver Vibrans (Composer), Lynwen Haf Roberts (Musical Director), Liam Quinn (Sound Designer), Jacob Sparrow (Casting Director).
Production: Suzy Sommerville (Production Manager), Alec Reece (Stage Manager),