He ambles on from stage left, twinkly in a tweed suit and grizzled beard: Michael Sheen, who has brought this new Welsh National Theatre company into being by his will and star power, and who hunkers into the central role of Thornton Wilder’s hymn to small-town life (and death) as if it was written for him.
This play from 1938, a stalwart of the American canon, has been given a light, Cambrian makeover. We’re still in New Hampshire in the first decades of the 20th century, but the accents, the songs and the names of the surrounding mountains are all Welsh. The depiction of the arc of lives lived in a tight community works just as well. This is the epitome of that stock phrase — a warm hug of a show.
