Under Milk Wood

Dylan Thomas' poem "Under Milk Wood" was written as "a play for voices" -- a radio play -- and as an atmospheric fugue of sounds it works beautifully. The lush language describes a full cycle of night and day in the fictional Welsh town of Llareggub. We get a dreaming sea captain, a gossiping postman, a drunk organist, a wealthy "Mrs. Elmore Pritchard," a bunch of sheep and cows and horny pigs, and the "slow dark, crow-dark, fishing-boat-bobbing sea." Unfortunately, no man or beast or natural element sticks around long enough to make Under Milk Wood an interesting play. The poem moves gradually, like an hourglass, through night and dawn and breakfast and so on, but with no clear story or through-line. Even at just 100 minutes, the performance feels long. Gina Pulice has directed it keenly, with dancelike movement designed by Amy Sass, and Aaron Krasner's gentle guitar and percussion are intriguing. On radio the voices would need to be vividly Welsh, but Pulice doesn't insist on accents, and her cast covers a middling range -- from pretty good to unconvincing. The way the actors shape-shift from one local type to another may remind some people of another poet's portrait of a town, A Spoon River Anthology; the sometimes funny contrast between what the actors say and what they do will remind others of Word for Word. You want to like this production, but as a whole it just sits there.