Under Milk Wood and other plays

‘Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age.’ There is no better accompaniment to wrapping presents and stirring Christmas puddings than Richard Burton and his fellow readers’ classic narration of Under Milk Wood. This version includes two Dylan Thomas radio plays, Return Journey to Swansea and Quite Early One Morning.

Another unassailable Naxos classic is Under Milk Wood and other plays, with Dylan Thomas himself appearing in the ‘other plays’ (Return Journey to Swansea and Quite Early One Morning). Thomas didn’t live to hear the BBC premiere of Under Milk Wood, a poetic drama for radio, broadcast in 1954 with Richard Burton as the First Voice. But here it is in all its incomparable splendor.
Burton, too, died relatively young, so that when this historic broadcast was re-worked in 2003 his voice, from this 1954 recording, was blended in with those of more modern actors. He was the irreplaceable star of the old broadcast, as you’ll hear here. As for Thomas, he takes the lead in Return Journey as himself, looking for ‘himself’ as he was as a teenager. And he’s the sole speaker in Quite Early One Morning, which anticipates Under Milk Wood at many points. There’s hardly a moment that isn’t magic on this wonderful pair of CDs.