[Jayne Osborn]

I've tried to listen to Under Milk Wood and tried to read it... and failed. (Also failed to see why it has been so highly acclaimed.)

The Richard Burton narration is responsible for much of the acclaim, I suspect, but then, Richard Burton could read a telephone directory and have many of us enthralled.

Last Friday I went to a small theatre to watch the new film version - and only twelve people turned up. Two enjoyed the film, the other ten declared it ''rubbish'', or words to that effect. I was of the latter persuasion.

There, I've said it!

Jayne

[Nigel Mace]

I haven't seen the film, Jayne, although I'd be interested to do so. However, I not only adore Burton's performance but I possess a bootleg recording of Dylan Thomas's own performance of it in New York - it's first ever recording. It has nowhere near the brilliance of Burton's diction AND it is still unmistakably, a masterpiece. My playwright partner and I can lapse into conversation made up of appropriate fragments at the drop of any allusive hat - as could my father, himself an actor. What on earth do you not 'get'!

Confession is said to be good for the soul - every word of which I take leave to doubt - and I will hope that yours leads you to read and 'hear' it anew.

"Listen, it is night... "

[R. Nemo Hill]

Judging by the preview, I am eager to see the new version.

Nemo

[Jayne Osborn]

Ha! I think I've stuck my head above the parapet, Nigel.

To be honest, I'm not expecting anyone to agree with me - though the other 9 in attendance at the theatre who did made me feel a little bit heartened. (10 out of the 12 of us who watched the film are members of this small theatre.)

Jayne

Cross-posted with Nemo. It might be right up your street! Let me know when you've seen it.

[Nigel Mace]

Performance is, of course, often a 'challenge' to long cherished mental readings (and even more to the ones one - well me anyway - used to conduct in the privacy of my youthful bedroom). I can still recall the extra thrill of uncertainty which a clearly inebriated Rupert Davies, at The Cit's in Glasgow, imparted to his projection of Captain Cat. The words were OK, indeed impressively slurred; it was the way his movements managed to make the stage scaffolding waver that added an unexpected extra to the evening. "Captain Cat, at his window thrown wide to the sun and the clippered seas..." - it was the throwing that made us hold our breaths.