70 years of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood

Though the lifespans of these two poetic institutions only fleetingly overlapped, they are not mutually exclusive – a thread can be drawn between the two, particularly from Thomas to the Southbank Centre, the Library’s home since 1988. This thread continued in our 2023 edition of Poetry International, as we celebrated the 70th birthday of both the National Poetry Library, and of Thomas’ radio play Under Milk Wood; the latter through a special event with Cerys Matthews.

Fittingly, to find the start of this connective thread we must begin at the beginning, and the opening of our Royal Festival Hall, as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Thomas, a regular and familiar voice on BBC Radio at the time, was invited by Aneirin Talfan Davies to record  a talk about the festival for the BBC’s Welsh Home Service. He duly accepted, producing an often tongue-in-cheek commentary on the spectacle of the festival, and festival-goers. Particularly drawn to the festival site’s many sculptural works, Thomas described Peter Laszlo Peri’s The Sunbathers as the ‘linked terra-cotta man and woman fly-defying gravity and elegantly hurrying up a w.c. wall’.

Fast forward to the present day and you’ll find another sculpture on almost the exact same spot – one of Thomas himself, and the only one to have been created during the poet’s lifetime. Although were it not for the eagle eyes of a Southbank Centre archivist your chance to see the work would’ve long passed. Oloff de Wet’s depiction of Thomas first appeared in our Royal Festival Hall in 1957, but a few years later, following a theft, was moved into a basement space for safe keeping, along with the building’s other bust. So safe was this keeping that it wasn’t rediscovered until 2003. Thankfully the bust now lives a more prominent life in the National Poetry Library.

When Thomas passed away, it was the Royal Festival Hall that provided the venue for a memorial recital. Held on 14 February 1954, the memorial featured the London Welsh Association Youth Choir, recitals from poet Cecil Day-Lewis, writer Emlyn Williams and actors including Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Sybil Thorndyke and Sir Lewis Casson, and ‘extracts from Under Milk Wood read by members of the cast of the BBC production broadcast’.

Arguably his best known work, Under Milk Wood had dominated the last years of Thomas’ life, and he had been honing his final draft right up to his death. Whilst characters, phrases and observations that ultimately feature in the play can be traced back as far as the poets’ teens through his letters, writings and broadcasts, it’s accepted that Thomas produced the play’s first draft in1949. It’s in March of that year that he is said to have given a reading of a first version of Under Milk Wood at a writers’ conference in Prague, and some months later a first script was seen by the poet Allen Curnow on a visit to Thomas’ home in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

Laugharne, the poet’s home from 1939 to 1941 and again for the last four years of his life, has been cited by Thomas as the inspiration for Under Milk Wood. Although it’s likely the small Ceredigion town of New Quay (Cei Newydd) where Thomas and his family resided between 1944 and 1947, was also a source of material for the play’s setting of Llareggub. The streets and eccentric inhabitants of this fictional seaside village make up the play, with the listener guided through them by an omniscient narrator, who offers insight into the dreams and deepest thoughts of the characters across a day in the life. 

In the early 1950s Thomas continued to produce further versions and updates of his play. The poet sent a draft of the first half to the BBC in 1950, and an updated, and shortened, version was published in the Italian literary journal Botteghe Oscure in 1952. Finally, Under Milk Wood’s premiere was given on 14 May 1953 on the stage of 92Y's Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York. But even this was far from a polished version of the play. Thomas had still been writing the second half on the train to New York, and only completed the last few lines in time to hand to the actors as they prepared to go on stage.

By the time of the play’s next reading later that month Thomas had added a further 40 lines to the work, and by the time he returned to the USA for another tour in October the poet had added a similar number again. Although American audiences almost didn’t get to hear the completed play, after Thomas lost the original manuscript in a London pub. On the 24 and 25 October 1953 the completed Under Milk Wood was performed at New York’s Poetry Center. Thomas, by now very ill, battled through the performances, but less than two weeks later collapsed, and died in hospital on 9 November.

A BBC studio recording of Under Milk Wood was already planned at the time of Thomas’ passing, and went ahead posthumously in January 1954. Boasting a renowned all-Welsh cast, including Rachel Thomas, Rachel Roberts, Hugh Griffith, and most notably Ricard Burton as First Voice, the recording drew great acclaim from audiences and critics, winning the Prix Italia. It remains the benchmark for performances of the work and is still one of the most popular records in the National Poetry Library’s vinyl collection. Extracts of Burton’s part within this recording have even featured in the DJ sets of Dylan Thomas Prize-winning poet Kayo Chingonyi.

Under Milk Wood on television and film

Although written for radio by Thomas, with the subtitle A Play for Voices, it didn’t take long for more visual interpretations of Under Milk Wood to appear. It was produced for the stage at the 1956 Edinburgh Festival, and in 1957 was given its first television adaptation. Delivered by the Welsh producer, David J Thomas, and narrated by Donald Houston it formed a 90 minute broadcast by the BBC on 9 May, albeit to mixed reviews.

In 1972 Burton reprised his role of First Voice in what has become the most celebrated film version of Thomas’ play. Directed by Andrew Sinclair, this adaptation featured additional big names in the form of Elizbaeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole, established Welsh actors such as Siân Phillips and Victor Spinetti, and actors who would go on to become household names for very different roles; David Jason and Ruth Madoc. It was filmed on location in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, a decision which didn’t go down that well with residents of Laugharne. A report for The Guardian at the time quoted an official of the town ‘To film Under Milk Wood anywhere but Laugharne would be as absurd as filming James Joyce's The Dubliners in Birmingham.’

In 2014, sixty years on from their original radio broadcast of the play, the BBC once again put together an all Welsh cast for a television adaptation. Actors Michael Sheen, Tom Pryce, Ioan Grufford and Siân Phillips – this time as Mrs Pugh rather than reprising her 1972 role as Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard – appeared alongside notable Welsh vocalists Tom Jones, Katherine Jenkins, Bryn Terfel and Charlotte Church. 

Within a year Church was appearing in another film adaptation of the work, this time a Welsh language version – Dan Y Wenallt – produced by Ffilm Cymru. The cast, a who’s who of contemporary Welsh language acting, also included brothers Rhys and Llŷr Ifans, Nia Roberts, Steffan Rhodri and Rhodri Meilir.

Musical adaptations of Under Milk Wood

For all these remarkable adaptations for stage and screen, an arguably more telling marker of the impact of Thomas’ Under Milk Wood comes through its influence of other art forms. In 1965 the jazz quartet of Stan Tracey – house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s – produced the self explanatorily titled album Jazz Suite Inspired by Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood". It would fast become one of the most celebrated jazz recordings ever made in the UK.

In 1988 George Martin marked 35 years since its first recording by producing an album version of Under Milk Wood. Dialogue from Thomas’ play was adapted into song to music by Elton John, Mark Knopfler and Martin. As with the many radio and television adaptations, Welsh voices were prominent with vocals from Tom Jones and Bonnie Tyler, and readings by Anthony Hopkins. The process of putting the album together was documented for television in a special edition of The South Bank Show.

Beyond jazz and pop, Under Milk Wood has also been produced as an opera. In 1973 the Hamburg State Opera premiered Walter Steffans’ Unter dem Milchwald, which had been written using Erich Fried’s German translation of Thomas’ original work. This same translation provided the basis for Austrian composer Akos Banlaky’s 2006 opera which was performed at Innsbruck’s Tiroler Landestheater. And in 2008, a French opera, Au Bois lacté was performed at Metz’ Opéra-Théâtre, composed by François Narboni from his own translation of the play. Under Milk Wood has also been adapted as a ballet, touring the UK in 2008 through Independent Ballet Wales having been choreographed by Darius James to music by composer Thomas Jewitt Jones.

Animation and Illustration of Under Milk Wood

In 1992 the Welsh language channel S4C commissioned an animated version of Under Milk Wood from Les Orton, who had previously produced the cult children’s cartoon Superted for the channel. The resultant 50 minute production used the 1954 BBC radio production, joined with a newly written soundtrack by Trevor Herbert and performed by Treorchy Male Voice Choir and the Welsh Brass Consort. The animation won a BAFTA Cymru Award.

But it’s the most recent illustration of Thomas’ play that brings us back to the thread connecting the poet to the National Poetry Library and the Southbank Centre. Illustrator Kate Evans is the latest artist to interpret the streets and residents of Llareggub and bring them to life for Cerys Matthews’ 2022 retelling of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. And both Evans and Matthews joined us at the Southbank Centre as part of Poetry International in July 2023 to discuss the book, its characters and its impact as part of a panel discussion featuring musician Arun Ghosh and chaired by Kayo Chingonyi