Dylan Thomas masterpiece heads to Shoreham

Swansea Little Theatre, who celebrate their centenary in 2024, are promising it in abundance as they head to this year’s Shoreham Wordfest with their production of Dylan Thomas’ masterpiece. They will be giving two performances on Saturday, October 8 – 2pm at Ropetackle Arts Centre and 7.30pm at Shoreham Methodist Church.

Dreena Morgan-Harvey, one of the company, is l ooking forward to making the trip with this most transportable of plays: “Under Milk Wood is very popular still. We always think are we going to get a lot of people coming to see it again and again and again but actually we always get a lot of people coming from outside Swansea, Dylan fans, and actually we haven't done it for about four years. What I love about it is the format. It is a play for voices. You've just got to love the words and it's easy to perform. It is not complicated visually. You don't have to do a lot. You have to let the w ords carry you through. You mustn't overdo the visuals because they get in the way. You've got to let the listener have the chance to use their imagination. It's all in the words. The people that matter say that it wasn't quite finished and that Dylan would have been tweaking it a bit but I don't think that matters. I think it's absolutely wonderful. He was a very clever wordsmith and it is just so perfect for South Walian voices. It's got to have that little lilt. It's not for the harsh valleys Welsh. Richard Burton had that South Walian lilt; Michael Sheen can do South Walian lilt; and Tony Hopkins has still got it.”

Dreena is one of the company performing the piece, just as she's been many times over the years. She first did it when she was in her 20s when she could get away with playing a 17-year-old, but as she says you gradually work your way through it: “Swansea Little Theatre is going to be 100 years old in 1924 and we managed to keep performing plays all the way through the Second World War. 40 ideas ago we were lucky enough to get the tenancy of this theatre building. Dylan Thomas was a member of our company. We've got many pictures of him playing and all the programmes and publicity pictures. And when we got the building we decided to name it the Dylan Thomas Theatre for him, and when we're not performing in the theatre, we let the building out to other companies.” The company was set up after the First World War at a time of a big church revivalist movement which meant that it was a time when “people were going back to the church in their droves and people going to the theatre were considered the devil's spawn. You didn't go to the theatre if you were a decent respectable person! But fortunately Swansea was a university town and more intelligent liberal-minded people were coming and they started Swansea Little Theatre at that time to do six different plays a year.”