Volcano Shows: The Town That Went Mad

The Town That Went Mad Reviews The Independent 19 August 1997 Under Milk Wood meets the bawdiness of The Canterbury Tales and the sexuality of Tom Jones in a show that revels in its earthiness from the Welsh theatre company Volcano. The piece explores the character of the Welsh people, their traits, failings and, crucially, their relationship with the English through a series of spectacularly inventive physical set-pieces that vary from episodes of dynamic movement to beautiful frozen tableaux. Continually subverting theatre forms, The Town That Went Mad is effortlessly hilarious rather than grindingly pretentious. The production at first seems thrown together in a ramshackle way but it becomes rapidly apparent that every second is choreographed precisely. Anthony Thornton *The Herald* All is ferment and dark desires under the green, green grass of home... And while Tom Jones warbles out the soulful cliché, Volcano busy themselves lifting the lid on Milkwood and mineshaft, valley and chapel in search of home truths about their native Wales. It's a fierce, disjointed, rhapsodic piece. Full of jagged, poetic images—verbal, visual and physical—that embrace the sources favoured by Dylan Thomas but mix in other, more critical perspectives so that there's no room for cod nostalgia to brandish a token shallot, let alone a leek. Non-conformity abounds, and it is loudly celebrated here whether it surfaces in local politicking, sexual appetite or individual eccentricity. And when the town finally tilts in its madness—in the guise of a huge, rotating metallic frame—you feel it's so as the people can better gaze at the stars that shine down on them... truly, ther's magic in this madness. Mary Brennan *The Scotsman* "We'll put you all in a story by and by," Volcano Theatre promises in this alleged sequel to Under Milk Wood. It does not, but abandons any real narrative structure in favour of an anarchic meditation on the Welsh national identity. Volcano covers all the Welsh bases: rugby, Tom Jones, how to cook a rarebit on a spade, Bread of Heaven, inbreeding. This is a celebration, of the bad as well as the good. A whole clutch of fine lines are calculated to puncture blind patriotism: "I thought she was talking Welsh but she had in fact been drinking." The dynamic tension in this production is between the true nature of that "fresh and fair land" and the Eden that its inhabitants would like it to be. And as in previous Volcano shows, the snake in the garden is the "twisted geometry of human desire". Sexual desire, poetry, alcohol and death are the currency of the play, traded on a superbly designed and stunningly beautiful set. [...] Richard Turner *The List: Glasgow and Edinburgh Events Guide* A sort of Welsh Trainspotting for the theatre, Volcano Theatre's The Town That Went Mad definitely has a depressing message. The four main characters play out a range of roles from Anytown, rural Wales, weaving numerous themes into one plotline. [...] The physical staging mesmerises, the witty dialogue amuses, and the inventive use of props impresses—so much so that, when the final curtain comes down, you may find it difficult to accept its all over. Abigail Bremner Theatre in Wales The debate about why Wales is a leader in the world of international contemporary theatre could and will echo around forever. What is indisputable is that it is. One company at the cutting edge is the Swansea-based Volcano Theatre. Its current tour is The Town That Went Mad. This was originally Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood and under that name received rave reviews. The company took Thomas's now somewhat limp prose and violently shook it back to life. Then the purists got upset and performance rights were blocked. Undeterred, Volcano continued with the theme but withdrew the 'great man's' words, leaving a powerful dramatology of people inhabiting a world gone mad: and considering the furore, a reflection which Thomas himself would have appreciated. Volcano has performed as much abroad as at home - if not more so. Last year it went to South America, Canada, Germany, Norway, and two East European countries. This was on its own initiative. Swithin Fry www.theatre-wales.co.uk 1 January 1998 South Wales Evening Post The Town That Went Mad Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea Mad? Barking more like. This work now only contains distant echoes of Under Milk Wood since the company involved, Volcano, failed to obtain copyright permission for their original adaptation of Dylan Thomas' play for voices. Bawdy though masterful, the performance displayed a jagged, muscle-flexing edge, coupled with excellent use of the set and cast. Drawing on the words of Wordsworth, Blake and Caradog Evans, as well as the thoughts of Friedrich Nietszche, the work explores the tension between the romanticism of the community and the rationality of society. Set in Wales - "the country of song and syphilis" - and in particular in our own Abertawe, The Town That Went Mad, with its Tom Jones-impersonating pensioner and alternative use for a whisky, left the audience reeling. Julia Stuart