| Event type: | Meeting |
| Date: | Thursday 5th November 2026 |
| Time: | 13:45 - 17:30 |
| Group: | Armchair Theatre Play Reading |
“To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’ and rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloe black, slow, black, crow black fishing boat-bobbing sea… And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now…“
As the inhabitants of Llareggub start their day, the play continues fast-paced, the chaos of life emerges – lusty, bawdy, sad, hilarious, manipulative, bullying, tongue-wagging, finger-wagging, gossiping… a series of vignettes, individual verses in a poem about village life. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. As night falls again, the memories and voices of the dead draw closer; the calm darkness descends on once more; the communal night draws the inhabitants back into their houses, and their dreams.
The characters include Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard, relentlessly nagging her two dead husbands; Captain Cat, reliving his seafaring times; the two Mrs. Dai Breads; Organ Morgan, obsessed with his music; and Polly Garter, pining for her dead lover. Later, the town awakens, and, aware now of how their feelings affect whatever they do, we watch them go about their daily business.
Then as dusk and darkness fall at the end of the day, we say "Goodnight", tucking them back into bed, to sleep once more. Lyrical, funny and moving. Under Milk Wood creates a rich modern pastoral, a tapestry of dreams and reality which has captured the imaginations of generations of readers. A Welsh epic, a work of poetic genius, a modern classic.
Quote from a review: “Dylan Thomas was wonderful. I loved the magic of his compound words, creating new meanings and descriptions, and painting verbal pictures that are as exciting as fairy tales and characters larger than life, that are really just life itself.”