Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Dylan Thomas: Return Journey
Richard Jordan Productions.
Genre: Poetry-Based Theatre, Storytelling
Venue: Pleasance
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An atmospheric recreation of some of the most memorable works of Dylan Thomas, presented in the style of reheased readings.
Review
Dylan Thomas. National poet of Wales, writer of the radio play Under Milk Wood, considered to be the finest work to come out of Wales. Alcoholic, womaniser, died in New York in 1953, aged 39, just after the first public readings of Under Milk Wood. Now newly immortalised by Taylor Swift after his inclusion in her recent album The Tortured Poets Department, a new generation are discovering his words. This production is the closest we can get to the authentic Dylan Thomas.
Originally directed by Anthony Hopkins, the piece is devised and performed by Bob Kingdom, and his likeness is remarkable. He himself refers to it in Dylan creativity, face like “an excommunicated cherub, a nose regularly polished.” Having heard recordings of Thomas, it is remarkable how accurately Kingdom has captured the cadences, the rhythm and the tone of the poet, close your eyes and you’re there with him. Simply staged, with a lecturn for notes, it’s all about the words. And what words.
The foundations of the show are return journeys that Thomas made back home to Wales after his fame had began to spread, the truths and complexities of being a fish out of water, and drinking like a fish. He arrives two hours late for one gathering, bursting into a crowded parlour full of neighbours and throwing up, the silence that follows broken by a neighbour saying, “He’s grown.” He seeks his younger self, of whom nobody has a good word to say, funny and poignant, with melancholy a coal seam deep.
It’s the poetry that breaks your heart, and the selection is limited, but superb. And Death Shall Have No Dominion rings out like a tolling bell, Kingdom phrasing it superbly, the lower tones of his voice adding the bass. Wisely, the piece doesn’t end with Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night, with Thomas urging us, and his dying father,to “rage, rage against the dying of the night.” Instead, Kingdom takes us to Fern Hill, Dylan’s tribute to his childhood, “Now as I was young and easy Under the apple boughs.” However, mortality is always present, “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
This beautiful evocation is for the fans, for the poetry lovers and,who knows, for the Swifties who want to take a deeper dive into a true tortured poet. It still has a place on the Fringe, and offers an hour of an appreciation, and joy, of the words.
