By Dylan Thomas, adapted by Tim Baker
To continue the Dylan Thomas celebrations, director, Tim Baker, has revisited his own adaptation of some of the short prose works. Within the context of Return Journey, where the poet revisits Swansea in search of his younger self, some of the short stories are dramatised.
There's no attempt to represent Swansea pictorially, Mark Bailey's circular set is bare except for low slate walls against a big sky. Instead the visualisation is in the words. And indeed words are what the play is about. Poetic words, weasel words, lists of words, evocative words, words of mood, words for things and, above all, words of memory.
Nor are there any named parts. The excellent and energetic cast of five, Daniel Graham, Owain Gwynn, Sion Ifan, Jenny Livsey and Gwawr Loader all play Dylan, often breaking up sentences between them.
They also play all the characters that inhabit the stories, male and female, leading to some very witty body language, particularly when being the opposite sex.
It is a delight of a production with the words painting vivid pictures, particularly of weather. Has there been a more rain-soaked urban scene than that of The Followers? Or a more magical picture of a hot day by the sea than the very moving Who Do You Wish Was With Us?
That wonderfully funny evocation of a charabanc trip that never reaches its destination, The Outing, is a particular success and certainly contains the best herd of cows I've ever seen on stage.
The other story is The Peaches which is funny, sad and deeply sinister, all at the same time.
What gives the play its heart though is Return Journey with its precise evocation of the world Dylan, the Young Dog, came to maturity in. The names of film stars, cafés, poets and the comradeship of other like-minded young men is incredibly evocative.
To cap it all there is glorious harmony in the Welsh songs that the cast sing to both link and divide the scenes.
This is an utterly enchanting production.
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