FERN HILL

Guy Masterson at the Cramphorn Theatre

21.01.10

One man, many characters. Biochemist turned actor Guy Masterson began with just a taste of Under Milk Wood, the solo show he brought here last year.

Then he was off exploring the rest of the oeuvre, mining the rich vein of Dylan Thomas's poetry and prose.

Beginning with “a slap of sea and a tickle of sand”, that glorious evocation of seasides past in Holiday Memory. Masterson peopled the beach with assorted families, plus a beautifully observed glum donkey. Spitting, snarling, slinking and sliding cats in the snow, with even more aunts, uncles and scampering kids in A Child's Christmas in Wales, which ended this superb performance all too soon.

Between these two solid bookends, a collection of poems, including Masterson's favourite, Fern Hill, the tragic Lament, and Thomas's musing on his work, In My Craft or Sullen Art.

Other delights were a third story, the hilarious but touching Visit to Grandpa's, and in a moment's breather between poems, a brilliant re-creation of the poet himself reading, and the famous Richard Burton First Voice.

And it was Under Milk Wood which provided a coda, a kind of benison:

Eli Jenkins' sunset poem.

Every morning when I wake,

Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,

O please to keep Thy lovely eye

On all poor creatures born to die

And every evening at sun-down

I ask a blessing on the town,

For whether we last the night or no

I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good

Who live our lives under Milk Wood,

And Thou, I know, wilt be the first

To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!

Bless us all this night, I pray,

And to the sun we all will bow

And say, good-bye--but just for now!

Hear Guy Masterson's Fern Hill

and Dylan Thomas's My Craft ...