Reader Reviews for Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: A great radio play that's poetic, innovative and amusing
Comment: This Dylan Thomas fellow could certainly turn a phrase. His "Under Milkwood" is a radio play that shows a day in the life of the residents of the fictional Welsh town of Llareggub (which is "bugger all" spelled backwards). While the story is of the slice-of-life variety, it is nevertheless enjoyable with its various relationship threads. For example, Mr. Pugh is constantly trying to poison his wife while she nitpicks him to death about his manners and Thomas visits upon them several times throughout the play. Thomas obviously loves wordplay and language, as evidenced by his vivid yet offbeat descriptions and the interesting names he selects for some of his characters (e.g. Mary Ann the Sailors, Captain Cat). It's like reading Shakespeare without getting bogged down in Elizabethan iambic pentameter.
I was so impressed with this that I'll probably break down and get the original radio play as performed by Richard Burton.Under Milkwood (BBC Radio Collection)
Customer Rating:
Summary: A tiny dingle is Milk Wood . . .
Comment: I've never read any of Dylan Thomas's poetry, but when I found a copy of Under Milk Wood for a quarter, I figured it'd be a perfect opportunity to get better versed in both drama and Thomas. I've always heard that he is one of the most depressing poets ever, so I said, "Hey, I love Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda. I love Morrissey. I will love this."
But I didn't love it. In fact, I was fairly unimpressed. I waited 95 pages for it to start, and then it ended. There wasn't even an abundance of sadness! I can handle a complete lack of movement within a story as long as it is depressing (I'm a Jim Jarmusch fan, too). This wasn't, though. It was even sort of funny. Not that I have a problem with that, but it was only sort of funny. A few chuckles here and there, but not enough to consider this a comedy.
In fact, I don't know what the hell it is. A Play For Voices? Sure, I guess. Maybe that's the problem: I didn't hear it. I know I can't judge a screenplay (or a play for voices. Whatever) by the way it appears on the page. Maybe this holds up upon performance.
But maybe it doesn't. I only read it, and therefore I have to focus on the piece as a work on the page. It succeeds in being a very detailed character study and it even sets up enough loose ends and possible connections for a novel. However, the play takes place over the course of one day, and it comes off as being just a day. Just another day. When it ended - the day and the play - I was anticipating what would happen next.
Maybe that's where the sadness comes in. These characters are dealing with ghosts in their dreams and their own limitations (the unrefinement of Nogood Boyo, the heartbreak of Polly Garter, the stationary reverie of Captain Cat) on a daily basis. That said, I still need something to happen. I've always championed the idea that life doesn't happen in the grand sweep, it usually happens in the long lulls. I'd have to try pretty hard to defend this play, though. Sure, the language is fantastic and Dylan uses his poetic creativity to paint a pretty picture, but at the end, I said "Hmm. Cool. Who gives a f***?"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Some memorable figures and a wonderful cast of characters
Comment: I recently read this while on vacation. The entire cast of characters is wonderful, wonderfully quirky, yet somehow very "normal". It is hard to describe genre-wise as it reads differently than how it was apparently intended - as a play for radio. But it works. A town of 500, with three quaint streets, a postman who reads the mail to all the (illiterate) inhabitants, my favorite couple in literature (Mr. and Mrs. Cherry Owen - she has two husbands, one drunk and one sober)and one of the most touching characters, Bessie Bighead, who was kissed once while not looking and never again despite looking... Fun!
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Time passes. Listen. Time passes."
Comment: Written as a "play for voices" for the BBC, this work was originally performed in 1954, with Richard Burton as the First Voice, connecting all thirty-three characters--men, women, and small children. Depicting one full day in the life of a small town in Wales, Thomas shows its motley residents as they awaken, perform their daily tasks, socialize and gossip, and daydream about the past that might have been and the future that may yet offer hope. As is always the case with Thomas, the "play" is full of alliteration and various kinds of rhyme, with nouns and adjectives used as verbs to convey action and sense impressions simultaneously. A wry humor and honesty of feeling make the work engaging for the listener/reader and charmingly illustrative of a time and place now gone.
Individual characters come alive through their own voices and through the gossip of others, spread by the postman and by neighbors. When night falls and the residents retire, their additional losses and disappointments, along with their escapes into dreams, are given voice and poignancy. Polly Garter, with her numerous children by numerous fathers, dreams of Willie Weasel, a very small man who was the love of her life. Captain Cat, the blind bell-ringer, thinks of all the sailors he knew who died at sea and Mr. Pugh dreams of poisoning his wife.
Simple songs add to the realism and the sense of character and place. An elegiac song by Polly Garter, as she remembers Willie and compares him to her other lovers, conveys an almost palpable sadness and makes Polly one of the most memorable characters. A humorous singing game by children adds to the realism, and young Gwenny's song to three very young boys is full of cheeky humor. Filled with the hurly-burly of everyday life in a small town in 1950s Wales, this and A Child's Christmas in Wales are among Thomas's most beloved works. Mary Whipple
Customer Rating:
Summary: starless and bible black & the sunny side of the street
Comment: I was first attracted to Dylan Thomas after studying James Joyce's The Dubliners at high school. I must say that in my opinion Thomas's play/poem makes a surprisingly good film, which is sadly not available thrugh Amazon.com, but to say this play for voices is delightful would be misleading, as this deep study of the underbelly of a small fishing village is about a peculiar kind of nationalism that is both celebratory and critical. What makes it such a great experience is how the language grabs you, and you have to listen to every word, so it is intense. The narrator begins his description of the sleeping town of Llareggub from Milk Wood, above the town, then enters the cobbled streets to observe and eavesdrop, over a twenty-four hour period, dipping into the thoughts, reminiscences and dreams of the townsfolk. Since Dylan Thomas died in 1953, and this was one of his last works, the world he describes is fifty years old and seems somewhat quaint today. But his rich language on occasions soars with the romance of feeling for the beauty of his nativeland (the vicar's morning address to the town, with nobody listening, is just wonderful), and love of its people. Nevertheless, in relating the sexual dreams and fantasies and activities of the town and the world of men and women a touch of gothic intrudes. There are oppositions at play between the open-hearted, sexually generous women and the close-minded wives, the ecstatic Organ Morgan the church organist and his petty shopkeeper wife ("a martyr to music"), the mischievious butcher's subversions, numerous attractions and solicitations between adults and the budding sexuality of the young, the stultified love of Sinbad the barman, and an unscrupulous postman and his nosey-parker wife.And many other endearing characters. The portrait Thomas paints of the town under Milk Wood is tainted by his own world-view, resentful of the Church, the lack of ambition and other provincialities. There's an amazing amount of activity in the town, apart from its economy, lots of drinking, sexuality and folksong, but despite the evidence of bad-blood the community seems to thrive on love and an underlying generosity of heart that allows for the bounty that all life brings. These days I'm not a great lover of poetry, and that's what this play for voices is, but Under Milk Wood still works for me.
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