Actors Michael Sheen, Siân Phillips and Kezrena James attended a virtual event for National Theatre to discuss Under Milk Wood, in which the shared their thoughts on the production, the rehearsals, the performances and more.
Watch the video below:
We have uploaded screencaptures on our photo gallery:
Under Milk Wood is on the National Theatre stage since June 16, but the press night took place last Wednesday (24), which has brought some good reviews to the production and Michael Sheen’s performance. You will find some reviews below, but before them, check out some photos from both the rehearsals and the play:
Now to the reviews:
Nor could you wish for a more loquacious, richer narrator than hirsute, woody-voiced Sheen, who looks like he’s been training outside an off-licence.
Evening Standard (4/5 stars)
Ler maisA charismatic Michael Sheen is part showman, part shaman in this staging of Dylan Thomas’s 1954 radio play, conjuring a Welsh town into lyrical, beguiling life with mostly older actors on a bare stage.
To celebrate the first time Dylan Thomas’s classic Under Milk Wood was read on May 14, 1953 in New York, Michael Sheen recorded a performance of “Do not go gentle into that good night” for National Theatre, which you can watch in the video below.
Under Milk Wood marks the reopening of the National Theatre after months closed due to the pandemic. Set to open on June 16, the production features Karl Johnson and Siân Phillips and is directed by Lindsey Turner. More information here.
Check out some screencaptures from the video:
According to Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye, the play will be directed by Lyndsey Turner and is set to open in June. More below:
Celebrated Welsh stars Michael Sheen and Sian Phillips will lead the National Theatre out of lockdown with a jam-packed production of Dylan Thomas’s masterpiece Under Milk Wood.
Olivier award-winning director Lyndsey Turner, an associate of the NT, will stage Thomas’s play for voices in the Olivier Theatre.
The National’s hierarchy had considered reopening its South Bank complex with a new work, a move felt more appropriate for the occasion by some.
However, they were persuaded by Turner’s apparently ‘visionary’ ideas of staging Under Milk Wood, which took Thomas close to 20 torturous years to finally complete.
(The first full version of the radio play was broadcast from Manhattan cultural and community centre 92nd Street Y in 1954).
The plan is for the work to begin previews at the NT from June 16, with an official opening night on June 26.
Both Sheen and Phillips have form with Under Milk Wood. They took part in a BBC Wales commemorative version, to celebrate the centenary of the poet’s birth in 2014; and have been associated with several other productions. Sheen also directed a reading, on the 92Y stage where the play made its debut.
Set in the fictional Welsh fishing village of Llareggub (bugger-all, backwards), the scabrous piece charts a day in the life of the area’s colourful inhabitants who have been ‘lulled and dumbfounded’ by events; which seems fitting, given the current circumstances. (More cast are being assembled to play the residents of Llareggub.)