Under Milk Wood
Reviewed by David Kashimba
Photo by Eric Chazankin

 Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas, is a poetically rich drama set in a small seaside town in Wales. An array of very talented actors in Porchlight Theatre Company do an outstanding job playing the wide variety of characters living in the town. All of them share a special connection to the sea but none more than the old blind Captain Cat (Howard Dillon) whose words roll out, like the many waves he rode in his career as a sailor, and break on the shores of the audience, filling our senses with the wet salty mystery of the sea. The sea is prevalent in most of Thomas’ poems as are echoes of the poet’s father who was also a sailor and went blind before his death – a death that Thomas never got over:

…And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die

On that darkest day. Oh, he could hide

The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Until I die he will not leave my side… (from the poem Elegy by Dylan Thomas)

But all the characters in this play are memorable. There’s Mrs. Cherry (Stephanie Hunt) who “has two husbands; one drunk and one sober.” There’s Mr. Willy Nilly the postman (Dodds Delzell) and his wife (Janice G. Erlendson) who steam open everyone’s letters and read them before they’re delivered. There’s a young 17 year old girl played by Marjorie Rose Taylor who in a hormone enriched frenzy says: “I’ll sin ‘till I blowup!” There’s a husband who mail orders a book titled The Lives of the Great Poisoners and reads it with relish while his wife belittles him at the dinner table.

While all the characters are very humorous, they’re also very human and we’re drawn into their world by the sea as we watch each character roll in and roll out with the surf and their words, that often make us laugh, also cleanse our souls and wash through the tides of our hearts.

For tickets or more information about this great show directed by Randall Stuart call (415) 251-1027 or visit www.porchlight.net.

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