From the poetry and
prose of Dylan Thomas and performed by Bob Kingdom
Directed by Anthony
Hopkins
The Street Theatre to
25 July
Review by Len Power
With the unusually slow fade of the lights and the
appearance of Bob Kingdom as Dylan Thomas, you have that strange feeling of
stepping back in time. The play is
fashioned like one of Thomas’s popular lecture tours and actor, Bob Kingdom, is
the very personification of the man.
Dylan Thomas died before his time in 1953, but his poetry
and stories live on. He was in demand as
a speaker for some years before his death.
Listening to the material presented here, you realize what was lost with
his early demise.
The show presents selections from his work and Bob Kingdom
delivers the words to perfection, his melodic Welsh accent carrying us along
willingly as he fleshes out the various colourful characters who dotted Dylan Thomas’s
stories. It’s funny and sad and a
beautiful evocation of his life and times in Wales. The actor’s superb presentation of some of
the most well-known poems brings out meanings that were never apparent from the
printed page.
The presentation is simple – just a lectern, a chair and a
black curtain - but the subtlety and depth of Bob Kingdom’s naturalistic performance
is remarkable. You can only imagine how
much work went into making this look so real.
Anthony Hopkins has directed the show with great care, obviously trusting
the material and the actor.
If Dylan Thomas to you is just ‘Under Milk Wood’, this show
will give you a much broader understanding as to why he is considered one of
the great writers of the 20th Century.
Len Power’s reviews
are also broadcast in the ‘Artcetera’ program on Artsound FM 92.7 on Saturdays
from 9am.