Theatre / Under Milk Wood

"To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloe-black, slow, black, crow-black, fishing-boat-bobbing sea."

Under Milk Wood is a radio drama – or rather, a play for voices – written by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It recounts one day in the life of a small Welsh fishing village, Llareggub, frequently skipping from character to character and showing the thoughts along with the outward actions of each. The whole is guided by two narrators, denoted in the script as "First Voice" and "Second Voice".

The first widely-available production of the play was recorded by The BBC and aired in 1954, with an all-Welsh cast led by Richard Burton as the First Voice.

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This play provides examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Appropriately for a play by Dylan Thomas, Llareggub is home to a few of these.
  • Cherry Owen, whose wife delights in retelling his drunken antics from the night before.
  • Waldo, who's in a hurry to get to the pub in the morning.
  • Sinbad Sailors, the pub barman, who pours himself a pint of beer for breakfast.
• Betty and Veronica: The two Mrs Dai Breads are this to their husband – Mrs Dai Bread One is the Betty, and Mrs Dai Bread Two is the Veronica. Dai's chosen both of them, and they do not appear to have any complaints about this arrangement – although neither of them makes him breakfast in the morning.
• Call-Back: Happens a few times.
  • Early on, Waldo dreams of an incident from his boyhood when a girl charged him a penny for a kiss ("I only got a halfpenny"). Later on, when the schoolchildren are playing in the cobbled street, one of the girls is getting the boys to kiss her or give her a penny.
    Kiss Gwennie where she says, or give her a penny. Go on, Gwennie!
  • We come back to Polly Garter singing of her lost lovers more than once. When she gets together with Waldo in the woods at night, it's them she's thinking of, not him.
  • Organ Morgan's obsession with music in general and Johann Sebastian Bach in particular gets several mentions and comes back at the end, when he somehow mistakes a very drunk Cherry Owen for Bach.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Bessie Bighead puts flowers on the grave of Gomer Owen, who "kissed her once by the pigsty when she wasn't looking, and never kissed her again, although she was looking all the time." That line always gets a laugh. Later on we learn that Bessie has Down Syndrome or something similar, and that Gomer only kissed her because he was dared. At this point there is usually a gasp from the audience when they realize what they had earlier laughed at.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Dai Bread the baker does not bring any bread home for his wives, leading Mrs Dai Bread One to ask her neighbour for some.
  Can you spare a loaf, love? Dai Bread forgot the bread!
• Death by Irony: Mr Pritchard, the late second husband of Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, "maddened by besoming, swabbing and crubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant."
• Dreaming of Times Gone By: A lot of the villagers do this. Those who don't are not so much Dreaming of Things to Come but dreaming of things they would like to happen. The exception is Nogood Boyo, who dreams of "nothing" – although he later fantasises about Mrs Dai Bread Two in a wet corset. Mr and Mrs Floyd are the only villagers who sleep peacefully.
• Erotic Dream: A few of the villagers' dreams are this, notably Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price who dream of each other, and Nogood Boyo who fantasises about Mrs Dai Bread Two.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The story unfolds over the course of a single twenty-four hour period.
• Father Neptune: Blind old Captain Cat, who dreams of his deceased shipmates and his lost lover, Rosie Probert.
• Good Shepherd: The Reverend Eli Jenkins, who delivers a poetic sermon on his love for the village every morning and recites an equally-poetic prayer for the village every evening; the latter provides the Title Drop.
  We are not wholly bad or good,
  Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
  And Thou, I know, will't be the first,
  To see our best side, not our worst.
• Gossipy Hens: Can you blame them? Llareggub is home to a bigamist who lives with both of his wives, a guesthouse owner who won't allow any guests, a well-known village bicycle, a would-be poisoner and several alcoholics, so there's plenty to gossip about, even before you factor in the postman and his wife steaming open everyone's letters and reading them.
• Henpecked Husband: A few examples.
  • Mrs Pugh nags Mr Pugh, who orders a book called Lives of the Great Poisoners and fantasises about putting arsenic in her tea.
  • Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard bosses both of her dead husbands around. For them, there's no escape.
• In Love with Love: Lily Smalls and Mae Rose Cottage both dream of being in love.
• Jar Potty: Police Constable Attila Rees relieves himself into his helmet at night.
• Kavorka Man: The somewhat disreputable widower Waldo – "rabbit-catcher, barber, herbalist, cat-doctor, quack", overweight and alcoholic – is apparently the father of the otherwise-unmentioned Beattie Morris's baby ("it's got his nose"), in addition to which he gets "another paternity summons" in the post and meets up in the woods for a midnight tryst with Polly Garter (not that she's fussy).
• My Local: The Sailor's Arms. The likes of Cherry Owen and Waldo drink there regularly. It's named after the Sailor's Home Arms pub (now called the Seahorse Inn) in New Quay on the Cardiganshire coast, a regular haunt of Dylan Thomas himself when he lived there in the 1940s. The pub's attitude towards licencing regulations seems to be rather lax.
  The ship's clock in the bar says half past eleven. Half past eleven is opening time. The hands of the clock have stayed still at half past eleven for fifty years. It is always opening time in the Sailor's Arms.
• Love Letter: Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price exchange these. Dreams aside, their relationship consists entirely of them sending each other love-letters.
• Mystery Meat: Butcher Beynon claims he sells the meat of dogs, cats and other animals. His wife believes him, and dreams of him getting into trouble for this. Lily Smalls, the Beynons' maid, thinks he's lying, and so do the village gossips.
• Neat Freak: Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, whose obsession with cleanliness drove her second husband to suicide — by drinking disinfectant. It's also the reason why she refuses to let anyone stay at her guesthouse, as guests would get the place dirty.
  And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes!
• Noodle Incident: Quite what Nogood Boyo was doing when he was "up to no good in the wash-house" is left unsaid.
• Once More, with Clarity: When Bessie Bighead first appears, she's putting flowers on the grave of Gomer Owen who "kissed her once by the pigsty when she wasn't looking, and never kissed her again, although she was looking all the time". That line usually gets a laugh. Later on in the play, when we learn more about Bessie — that she has what we would now call Down's Syndrome, and that Gomer only kissed her because he was dared to do so by his friends — the line gets repeated, and it's not as funny second time around.
• Polyamory: Dai Bread the baker has two wives ... under the same roof. On top of that, he dreams of having a harem.
• Quirky Town: So very much.
• Really Gets Around: Polly Garter is a single mother with several children, and it's hinted at that they do not all have the same father. Mrs Pugh thinks she should be arrested "for having babies", and if you believe village gossip she's been with quite a few of the local married men. Towards the end, she meets up with Waldo for a midnight tryst in the wood. She sings of her lost lovers.
  Oh, Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men,
  And I'll never have such loving again.
• Roguish Poacher: Hinted at.
  The River Dewi is said to abound in trout, but is much poached.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Although it sounds like it could be a proper Welsh place-name, Llareggub is actually one of these.
• Servile Snarker: Lily Smalls, maid to the Beynons, has her moments.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Happens when Polly Garter is singing at the same time as the school bell ringing.
  Oh, Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men,
  And I'll never have such [ringing sound] again.
• Sound-to-Screen Adaptation: Several, notably a 1972 film version with Richard Burton reprising the role of First Voice and also featuring Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Taylor. Then there was the 2014 BBC TV version which featured Michael Sheen, Katherine Jenkins and Tom Jones, among others.
• Twice Shy: Played with with Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price, whose love is restricted to their dreams and the letters they write to each other. Played straight with Sinbad Sailors and Gossamer Beynon, who both yearn for each other but never interract.

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