Under Milk Wood review - Classic ‘play for voices’ goes back to its roots in style on Leamington stage

​This year marks the 70th anniversary of a landmark theatrical event, the broadcast on the BBC Third Programme of Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas’s immortal evocation of a day in the life of Llareggub, a fictional seaside village in South Wales.

Landmark, not only because the play has become a firm favourite down the years, the object of many film and stage adaptations, but because it has set the standard for a play for voices, a form that continues to thrill writers and actors and a core audience. The Loft recreates the original recording, performed as if in a 1950s recording studio.

It is possible to close your eyes during the performance and just listen to the speeches. If you do that you will be rewarded richly enough, for the music of the language is brought fully to life in the marvellous textures of the readings. Every voice is distinct, the Welsh accents convincing, the actors each slipping seamlessly between many voices, so that a whole landscape, physical and social, is warmly evoked.

But by watching this as an event in a recording studio we are treated to something more. The company do not just read their lines but act the parts of actors reading lines by which they are obviously delighted, as well they might be. The set helps, complete as it is with period microphones, musicians, and the actors all in beautiful 1950s costumes.

I'm reluctant to single out individuals for their contribution, for this is really an ensemble piece. But I can't resist mentioning Jo Banbury as Polly Garter, whose lament for her long-lost “Little Willie Wee who is dead, dead, dead,” is heartbreaking. Blind Captain Cat (Bryan Ferriman’s) eulogy to Rosie Probert (Glynis Fletcher) adds a dark pathos to the play, as he imagines her forgetting him as she slides into the oblivion of death.

Dylan Thomas is said to have given only a simple piece of advice to his actors: “Love the words.” Those words continue to sing in the Loft’s evocation of this sad, funny, glorious play.

Until April 6. Tickets: lofttheatrecompany.com