Left - Jonny Hawkins. Cover - Katherine Lunny and the Company'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing, boat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles ('though moles see fine tonight, in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat, there in the muffled middle by the pump and town-clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.'
Never, in the history of the English language, not even in Dickens or Shakespeare, has there been a prose-poetic paragraph more profound; starkly, spellbindingly evocative; blindingly, breathtakingly beautiful; more apt to provoke an involuntary outpouring of tears or paradoxical outburst of laughter. Dylan Thomas' opening gambit for Under Milkwood is the very stuff that makes other writers unbearably, acutely aware of their own inadequacy.
On the one hand, it's sheer perfection makes it a failsafe enterprise as a radio or other 'play for voices'. On the other, nothing could be more perilous than the aspiration to perform at the level of the words, as written. Rough Hewn Theatre Troupe is an initiative of Stella Maris College and brings together regular and occasional performers, under the direction of Geoff Cartwright.
Mitchell Smith's sympathetic lighting design, kept clean, simple and mostly subdued, went a long way toward creating the meditative, candlelit or warmly-incandescent mood so conducive to recalling valve radios occupying pride of place on the mantle, or sideboard, and imagining a tiny Welsh fishing-village.
Newcomer, Jonny Hawkins (an erstwhile theology student, of all things), might be a little loose with his diction, but he's a charismatic 'radio' host and pretty deft as the partly-electronic Foley man.
Cartwright is at the centre of the troupe, as the narrator, affording him an opportunity to exercise the full, round tones he clearly relishes. A little regrettably, for mine, he's opted for a rather conventional, evenly-paced-and-spaced, up-and-down inflection. So even, it would look like a sine-wave, if plotted on a graph. It's redolent, in its own way. And the rationale might be that it's enough of a challenge for the truncated attention-spans of the cyberworldly to sit still, shut up and listen for ninety minutes, without getting too adventurous with modes of delivery. Still and all, rather than take that safe, staunchly British path, it would've been interesting, at the very least, to challenge, if not reinvent it, using a more identifiably Australian cadence. For some reason, I kept on thinking about what a William McInnes, for example, might've brought to bear. Cartwright's saving grace, however, is just that; his grace, as well as obvious adoration & appreciation of Thomas' masterpiece.
Given the almost endless cast of characters invented by Thomas, versus a much more limited, static cast, the demands on it, in terms of finding a diversity of voices and being able to slip in and out of them in quick succession, are onerous. Yet Jarrad Bizzaca, Andrew Drummond, Louise Harding, Alana Kaye, Chris Turner and Katherine Lunny all perform commendably; the males, especially, proving exceptionally versatile and adept in creating a convincing cast of distinctive voices, even if accents were sometimes nebulous. Of these, Chris Turner, particularly, stands out, since the disparities between, say, Captain Cat and Mr Waldo are so pronounced one could easily be convinced they're being played by different actors. Quite a feat.
Lunny reveals herself to be quite a fine singer, as well as confirming her amply demonstrated competence and confidence as an actor. Even, or especially, with an audience totalling five (if we won't brave a mild winter's night to hear Dylan Thomas, there's no hope for us), Kaye's voice proved a little too recessive, 'though she enunciates beautifully. Louise Harding has many gifts, not least among them great clarity and an impressive effortlessness in conveying character. If there's a flaw in her performance, it's a reliance on Australian accents, rather than going the extra mile to reflect some British dialects, which would've served to keep us more firmly-rooted in the theatres of our minds. In this, though, Cartwright must wear final responsibility: decisiveness is called for in determining if it's to be an Australian adaptation, or a faithful genuflection to the work's Welshness. Both have their merits, but having a foot rather casually placed in both camps makes for a rather limp, if not lame, outcome which, even given the loving rendering delivered here, by an obviously devoted cast, is bound to have its lapses, as we're inadvertently jolted from Llareggub
to Lismore, or Lucas Heights.
I can't help but feel a different director might have ensured delivery of the more invigorated approach I tend to associate with the pen of Dylan Thomas, but, all things considered, this is a remarkably good and very worthy reading of this picturesque treasure-trove; a veritable advertisement for the potency of English which, when filtered through his unparalleled genius, knows no bounds or limitations. Cartwright's more understated style will likely meet with popular appeal, regardless of my preferences, if potential punters manage to lift their overly-carbohydrated carcasses off the Hardly Normal chaise, into their Camries, for an always pleasant trip to Manly. While Cartwright acknowledges the challenge of presenting a work which requires so much of a passive, 21st-century audience by way of an active response largely unfamiliar to it, Thomas' peerless skill wins the day, with each word leading us deeper and deeper, and ever so gently into that good night. Under Milkwood, every word is worth a thousand pictures.
I hope I've not been unduly harsh. After all, 'we are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood'.
The Rough Hewn Theatre Troupe present
Under Milk Wood
by Dylan Thomas
Venue: The Star of the Sea Theatre | corner Collingwood St and Iluka Ave Manly
Dates: Thursday – Saturday, August 5 – 14, 2010
Bookings: www.trybooking.com
Visit: www.roughhewntheatretroupe.com
