When I was very young, one of my favourite bedtime stories was about a ghost who brings dreams to life. The eponymous Jinnie Ghost sweeps from door to door, leaving in her wake a sea of mermaids, frogs and rocking horses come alive. This is what the opening scene of Cartesian Productions’ Under Milk Wood reminds me of, except dialled all the way up to one hundred.
On entering the Keble O’Reilly, theatre-goers are enveloped by a canopy of bedsheet clouds and the dulcet tones of folk music. Once seats are taken and lights dimmed down, First Voice (Bea Smalley) walks onto stage and switches on the “ON AIR” light: “To begin at the beginning”.
It is no wonder that I am reminded of a children’s book here, as the dreams that follow are imbued with such vibrancy that they are nothing short of fairytales. Lights flash, and a sodden sailor crashes in, his eyes milky and wild as he conducts a frantic roll call of the drowned. The linen ceiling above seems to ripple like sails, or waves. Abruptly, we hop from dream to dream, to a giddy young couple professing their love for each other, then to an erratic cobbler, then to a sinister undertaker. One man seems intensely afflicted by ‘This Little Piggy’ while his long-suffering wife laments their incessantly sanctimonious neighbours, who march around in pairs to the droning beat of a metronome. In sleep, the townspeople are their truest selves. A widow twice barks at her dead husbands with all the tenderness of a military commander, ordering them to recite their chores: “Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes”. All at once, the heavens rise up, up, up, and the stage is awash with gold. As I am told later, the production team struggled through multiple iterations of the sheet canopy and sacrificed seating for this feature, but it is well worth it to heighten the play’s intimate atmosphere and create the striking dawn of a new day in Llareggub.
The play features some wonderful character performances: Mr Pugh (Jack Harris), who longs to poison the cold and exacting Mrs Pugh (Esme Dannatt), Mae Rose Cottage (Magdalena Lacey-Hughes), sweet, seventeen and dreaming of sin, the philandering Mr Waldo (Will Withers) and his sweet-souled paramour Polly Garter (Esme Dannatt again). The play was very well-acted, with particularly notable performances by Jack Harris and Clara Tubiermont, captivating in every role they took on, and Wally McCabe, pitifully morose as Captain Cat. Additionally, Esther O’Neill as Second Voice delivered immense monologues throughout, all while continuously acting, not merely reciting. However, every character stayed with me in some small yet significant way: Organ Morgan wearing his scholar’s gown (pre-empting the joke I jotted down at the first mention of his name), poor puppy-loving Mrs Beyman and the steady town patriarch, Reverend Jenkins.
The minimal staging was compensated for by the versatility of the props – one particularly smooth moment occurred when two actors held a tablecloth at opposite ends while a drunkard rested his head upon it. When his wife shrilly barks at him, they ripple the cloth to physically snap him out of his stupor. Later, this same cloth is passed deftly between performers to become a different dinner table, reflecting the smallness of the town, and the deeply intertwined lives of its inhabitants. The costume was cleverly adapted for quick changes; a vivid slip of crimson fabric switches from scarf, to skirt, to belt and back. The tragic and sightless Captain Cat looks every bit the rumpled seafarer, swallowed up by the ocean, wrung out, and hung up to dry. Ironically, in this play the blind see all, with Captain Cat predicting Willy Nilly’s post-round with almost oracular skill, reflecting the repetitive monotony of life in Llareggub (‘bugger all’ backwards). Later, I cried while watching the Captain dance with his lady love, rope travelling up the back of her skirt, a creeping reminder that her fate has been decided and she will forever remain a voiceless Annabel Lee. The achingly talented Esme Dannatt sings a heart-wrenching folk ballad, waltzing with her washing, a bundle of men’s clothes puppeted expertly to represent a lover from days gone by. Hypnotic, harmonic and utterly haunting, her presence lingers onstage long after she leaves. High up above, she’s accompanied by a fiddle in a gorgeous half-partnership, their unity and trust augmented by the fact that neither one has a clear view of the other.
In the interval, we ate fruit and cheese and talked about language. It is Dylan Thomas’ grasp of language that has always made his work stand out to me – or rather his lack of grasp, as his lines seem to have a mind of their own, writhing and wriggling out of the page like eels. It is this linguistic vitality that stood out to director Ted Fussell when he made the decision to perform what was originally a radio play onstage. The second reason Fussell gave for this choice when I pulled him aside after the show was the creative freedom it afforded the company. He described his lofty ambitions for the production with admirable passion; essentially, the goal was to create an experience as magically expansive and captivating as Thomas’ written words. And indeed, at this they succeeded. The inventive use of a projector to beam shapes, sketches, photos and shadow puppets onto the wall was incredibly effective and beautifully complimented the whimsy of Thomas’ world. At times, even the characters themselves interacted with the projector, whether using it as a stove to heat up a kettle or languidly stretching out an arm to reach up the back wall. What began as an idea for the sequence at the play’s beginning became a constant ritual for Cartesian Productions, with each scene bringing about a new and innovative way to incorporate projections, a masterclass in immersive loveliness. Unusually, the tech team worked on stage in real time, using cassettes for sound and manually dimming the lights. This tied in the radio show element nicely, while managing not to distract from the play itself. Clearly, their integration into the production had been thought out, with buoys placed under the table that made the wires look almost like rigging or tentacles, and the tech team themselves falling into a soft slumber along with the cast at the play’s denouement.
Although I did love this production, I feel compelled to mention a few imperfections. At times, certain members of the cast were too quiet especially, when coupled with the folk band. In a play where every line is a beautiful thing in and of itself, it is a shame when they can’t be heard. However, this is not an issue inherent to the introduction of a live folk band into the show – this detail worked excellently and really took the play to the next level. Additionally, the presence of an interval seemed unnecessary as the play is a very manageable length, and the effect of its spellbinding charm is lessened for a moment by having to settle back into its world after being pulled out of it. This being said, if you were going to have an interval, I can think of no better scene to preface it than Polly singing like a songbird and weaving in and out of her washing.
As expected, the cast of Under Milk Wood did not go gentle into that good night (sorry). What followed was a rip-roaring ceilidh, with the townspeople eventually enticing even those on the fringes of their society to join in. All organised by musical director Natalya Battiwalla, the band even joined the cast on stage and the farewell seemed just as much of a romp for Cartesian Productions as for the villagers. It reminded me of something I had observed throughout the show; through the analogue methods of staging, lighting and sound, the sense of community in Llareggub seemed mirrored in the company, whether they were working together to hoist the canopy, or collaboratively placing media on the projector. While in another production this may have detracted from the show, I can imagine nothing more fitting for Under Milk Wood.
As the performance nears its final moments, the town begins to wind down sleepily for the night. While a rare sliver of affection can be seen from Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard to both her late husbands, Captain Cat ends the play caught up in his torturous cycle of remembering and forgetting, and Polly Garter dreams of her lost sweetheart still while in the arms of another. I will leave my ramblings here – after all, “Llareggub is the capital of dusk” and all good things must come to an end.
[Cartesian Productions’ Under Milk Wood is running at the Keble O’Reilly, 12-15th Nov 2025 and will be broadcast live over radio at 7:30pm on the 14th! You can tune in via Southampton Solent’s Student Radio, or our very own Oxide Radio]