Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas’s last work and only play, opens at the Kelly Theatre this February. Thomas introduces the colorful townsfolk of Llareggub (“bugger all” backwards) through their dreams as he examines powerful forces that operate beneath the calm exterior of a town which as “fallen head over bells in love.” Under Milk Wood has its final dress rehearsal Wednesday, February 11, and opens Thursday, February 12. The Hilltop Players offer performances on February 12-13 and 19-21 starting at 7:30pm and Sunday, February 22 at 3:00pm.
Under Milk Wood was commissioned by the BBC who in 1963 recorded it as “play for voices” with narration by another famous Welshman, Richard Burton, who claimed “the entire thing is about religion, the idea of death and sex.” These themes are central to the lives of the colorful characters described with great fondness by the author. Like his poetry, it relies on the clang of its lines and the pictures evoked by its words to communicate its meaning. The town has its own personality which is divided along Freudian lines in to a conscious world of daily activity narrated by the first voice and a subconscious world of intimate thoughts revealed by the second voice. The multitude of anecdotes interwoven in a masterful fashion and written in a lyrical, evocative language, creates an enduring portrayal of the place and the people.
On the creative team are stage director, Maggie “The Dame” Balsley, our Technical Director/Scenic Designer, Meta Lasch, and four student designers: Rebecca McDowell (set design), Alex Franke (lighting design), Michael Blatzer (costume design) and Carlito Gilchrist (sound design). The cast, in multiple roles, includes: Andrew Harper, Ben Rogers, Brady Dunn, Doug Gouldsberry, Christian Witt, Elijah Boyles, Jed Shook, Zac Morris, Adrianne Castelucci, Elizabeth Conley, Geena Diomedi, Ingrid Young, Jordan Connor, Jordyn Smith Laurna Grubb, Maggie Dillon, Maura Reiff, and Michelle Campbell.
Under Milk Wood is the a wonderful opportunity for the Hilltop Players to get the entire program involved and to challenge our students with the poetic performance required.
Dylan once said, “The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolized, or meant was of very secondary importance — what mattered was the very sound of them as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and quite incomprehensible grownups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And those words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clapping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing.”