View from the Green Room: Waterford Youth Arts present Dylan Thomas’s masterpiece
In rehearsals for Waterford Youth Arts production of Under Milk Wood, directed by Jim Nolan, which was performed at Garter Lane last week. Photo: Joe Evans
The music of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood seduces its audience with language and imagery that are an aural delight… ”to begin at the beginning: It is spring… moonless night in the small town… starless and bible-black… the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters' and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”
We’re in the 1954 fishing harbour town of Llareggub (Buggerall – when read backwards!) and the townsfolk are lost in that inbetween time of sleeping and waking. Four gossipy narrators (Sadbh Ní Céilleachair, Leah Sheridan, Emily Doherty and Emma Coughlan) fill us in on the eclectic mix of oddball characters and their antics that will populate our world Under Milk Wood.
We see dead people everywhere. They haunt the harbour town with memories that blight the living with thoughts of what might have been. There’s Captain Cat (Victor McCreadie) – The old blind sea captain who dreams of his deceased shipmates and also of lost lover Rosie Probert (Kiki Moodley) – and wryly comments on the goings-on in the village from his window.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard ((Caitlin Whelan), fussy guesthouse owner who refuses to admit paying guests, dreams of nagging her two late husbands – Linoleum salesman Mr Ogmore (Matthew Fitzpartick) and bookmaker Mr Pritchard (Rory Farrell) who swallowed disinfectant.
The living are here today with oddball behaviour that could land them in prison or the county loony bin. Schoolmaster, Mr Pugh (Jack Dower) reads "Lives of the Great Poisoners" at his dinner table as he dreams of poisoning his nasty wife (Siofra Tobin). Postman Mr Willy Nilly (Evan Wemyss) and his wife (Bláthnaid Tobin) they steam open the post together and read the town's news so that he can gossip it around the village. Butcher Beynon (Benedetto di Placido) dreams of riding pigs and shooting wild giblets and enjoys teasing his wife (Lil Roche) about selling "owl's meat, dogs' eyes, and manchop."
The daily hilarious adventures of a spring day in LLereggub continue in Thomas’s carefully crafted and colourful soundscape of oddball characters. Church organist Organ Morgan (Rory Farrell) has grandiose dreams of music and orchestras within the village. His obsession with music deafens his wife and shop owner Mrs Organ Morgan (Caitlin Whelan), who simply longs for silence, as he plays continuously… ”it’s always organ, organ with Organ” – draw your own conclusions there! Barman Sinbad Sailors (Ryan Keogh), forbidden to marry by his grandmother, dreams forlornly of Gossamer Beynon (Lucy Colbert). 17 and never been kissed Mae Rose Cottage (Lily Meagher) dreams of meeting her "Mr Right" while octogenarian Mary Ann Sailors dreams of the rapidly approaching Garden of Eden.
Bessie Bighead (Polly Devlin) dreams of the only man that ever kissed her, while Rev. Eli Jenkins (Ivan Leahy) recites his poor poems to no one.
Bigamist baker Dai Bread (Leon Kavanagh) fantasises about harems, while traditional and plain Mrs Dai Bread One (Willow Donnelly) and mysterious and sultry gypsy Mrs Dai Bread Two (Caitlin Whelan) rock up everywhere together.
Aloof Lord Cut-Glass (Matthew Fitzpatrick) spends his daylight hours winding his 66 clocks, while Police Constable Attila Rees relieves himself into his helmet at night for no apparent reason. Gwennie (Ciara Wemyss) sells kisses for a penny; trouble maker and notorious alcoholic Mr Waldo (Ronan Donnelly) has many unhappy marriages and now is involved in an affair with Polly Garter (Kate Walsh).
Jim Nolan directs and gives his young cast plenty of business; moving around Ben Hennessy’s cluttered set of pendant houses and boats over colourful levels, creating moods and emotions rather than a normal script of act and consequence. I miss the over-exaggerated Welsh accents that add to the music of the Thomas soundscape but I enjoyed the recreation of bawdy sailors' dreams, the gossip snippets of vicious widows and domineering wives, the sexual longings of the young and the not-so-young.
Another fine production from Waterford Youth Arts.
