Under Milk Wood

Reviews

The Guardian

Even for Volcano Theatre, It must have been a record: a walk-out before the curtain had risen. But this was the Grand Theatre in Swansea, home of Dylan Thomas as well as Volcano, and the title was Under Milk Wood, holy scripture in these parts. The deliberate awfulness of the reading of the introduction, as unlike Richard Burton's sonorous tones as you could get, obviously forced some purists to quit without witnessing the assault on tradition that would inevitably follow.

So they missed a radical reworking of that revered text, a reading that turns a gently satirical fantasy into a savage attack on bourgeois morals and playful eroticism into a sexual nightmare. Harking back to Thomas's original idea of a play - The Town That Was Mad - where a community is declared insane and isolated in order to protect the conformity of the rest of the world, Volcano creates a Llareggub where stifling respectability breeds weird behaviour, from the failure to manage basic stuff such as teeth-brushing and hair-combing to a semi-naked Captain Cat miming to Tom Jones records.

The lack of respect for a local hero and his familiar text is due in part, one suspects, to the Croatian director Branko Brezovec, whose grasp of English and the subtleties of Thomas's poetry may be somewhat lacking, but whose disregard of literary qualities and cultural contexts has led to some exciting physical theatre.

The piece, though, is also very much a typical Volcano work in its deconstruction of the text. Much of the 80-minute production is not by Thomas and what is can be out of sequence. The manic mix of politics, wit, comedy, sex, physicality, stunning set and lighting from Andrew Jones helps to destroy the cosy, clichéd image of Wales.

Some scenes are messy and need tighter choreography, and the potential conflict between style and content is unresolved (and, relevantly or otherwise, there isn't a convincing Swansea accent to be heard) but it's another unpredictable, provocative challenge to cultural hegemony from Volcano. What a pity it only plays two other Welsh gigs (in Cardiff and Aberystwyth) in its tour: it hits hardest nearer home.


The Western Mail
Under Milk Wood, Aberystwyth Arts Centre

Croatian sheds different light on the town that was mad

This version of Dylan Thomas's tale is subtitled The Town That Was Mad, and Volcano Theatre focuses upon this least favoured interpretation.

Director Branko Brezovec was imported from Croatia especially for this production and the Eastern European theatrical influence is evident in the stark, brutal humanity portrayed.

Traditionalists will recoil from this sexually-charged, minimalist approach but what what Volcano has achieved brilliantly is to rip away the cosy country veneer of Milk Wood to reveal the devils in its inhabitants, devils common to us all.

This is no rendition. Thomas's text is dissected and only small parts are used but by chopping and changing through the characters the five performers take us into their very souls. This is a controversial approach but probably more true to Thomas's original intention than many a straight reading. The soundtrack seems inappropriate, with Tom Jones as the only Welsh link, but again it enables Volcano to wrestle Milk Wood into a greater global context.

The set is designed by Andrew Jones; a large open-metal cuboid frame, it holds several surprises as it reveals rooms, roofs and even old Captain Cat's long lost ship.

This Swansea-based company is to be congratulated on shedding such new light on Thomas's masterpiece.

Swithin Fry