As with Molière at the Comédie-Française or Brecht in Berlin, there is a satisfying smack of regional reality in watching Dylan Thomas’s classic invocation of an early spring day in Wales staged as the real Flintshire thing glitters tantalisingly through the panoramic lobby windows of Theatr Clwyd.
Watching being the key word. Premiered on radio in 1954, Under Milk Wood stands with Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons as a rare sound play to have grown into a theatrical classic. Whereas Thomas left it to the ears to envisage the musical obsessive Organ Morgan, the much-loved Polly Garter and other residents of his fabulous valleys village, directors and designers have a free hand to visualise.
