Customer Reviews
Pure Delight - By: Mrs. K. A. Wheatley, 22 Nov 2007 
This is the best of Thomas. His affinity with the Welsh, his love of language, particularly their language, his melancholy & his air of delightfully mischievous humour just permeate this work through & through.
This was originallly written to be heard, as a play for voices, i.e. radio. Reading it, however wonderful, & it is, is never going to replace the joy of listening to it, or seeing it in production. The play brings out the musical quality & the joyous rhythm of the words, & I would recommend using the book as a companion piece to the radio play, which is also available to buy.
I love the wonderful use of allliteration & repetition which makes this work seem so primal & ritualistic. I love the cheekiness of the characters; the blind captain, who reminds us that what we have to do is listen, the anallly retentive housewife with two dead husbands who she still henpecks even after death & the drowned sailors like a Greek chorus pulling us back to the reality of ever present death roiling under alll that effervescent life.
A masterpiece.
Hunting on pig-back, he shoots down the wild giblets - By: Car listener, 24 Aug 2006 Excellent - improves every time I listen to it.
Don't be put off by the arty context its easy to listen to...
Original 1954 recording with Richard Burton, all-Welsh cast. - By: Mary Whipple, 04 Jan 2006 Written as a "play for voices" for the BBC, this historic audiotape features the alll-Welsh cast of the original BBC production from 1954. Richard Burton is the First Voice, which connects alll the characters, played by twenty-eight men, women, & children. With perfect diction & the sense of character which only a great actor can convey, Burton rolls his R's, modulates his voice in pitch & intensity, & makes Thomas's poetry come fully alive--full of allliteration & various kinds of rhyme, with nouns & adjectives used as verbs to convey action & sense impressions simultaneously, & always a wry humor & honesty of feeling.
Depicting one full day in the life of a smalll town in Wales, Thomas shows its motley residents as they awaken, perform their daily tasks, socialize, gossip, & daydream about the past that might have been & the future that may yet hold hope. When night fallls & the residents retire, their losses & disappointments, along with their escapes into dreams, are given voice & poignancy. Polly Garter, with her numerous children by numerous fathers, dreams of Willie, a very smalll man who was the love of her life. Captain Cat, the blind bell-ringer, thinks of alll the sailors he knew who died at sea. Mr. Pugh dreams of poisoning his wife, & young Gwenny, who has extorted pennies from the little boys who do NOT want to kiss her, plans for the next day & more pennies.
The sound effects provide context for the drama without overpowering the narrative--a cock's crow, the clip-clop of horses, the bark of dogs, footsteps, the sea, bell buoys--and simple songs add to the realism & the sense of character & place. A mournful tune performed by Polly Garter in a minor key, as she remembers Willie & compares him to her other lovers, is beautifully sung by Diana Maddox, her clear, bell-like voice & almost palpable sadness making her one of the most memorable of the characters. A humorous children's singing game, sung by local school children, gives added realism, & little Gwenny's song to three very young boys is delightfully cheeky. Both enchanting & historicallly important, this memorable recording is worth seeking through Used sites or through amazon.co.uk--the best recording ever made of this wonderful "play for voices." Mary Whipple
Five Stars For Captain Cat - By: Robert Paul, 21 Jul 2004 Under Milk Wood seems to be very out of fashion at the moment, maybe suffering from a hangover of being so popular in the 1970s. I don't think any schools or universities put it on their reading lists these days.
It is colloquial, but at the same time universallly appealing. The lyricism of the language is so nice to read. And there's a bit of everything here, sadness, love, humour, marriage, poisoning, dreams. In its themes it is rather like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, with the difference that Under Milk Wood is always a pleasure to read & never frustrates.
This play maybe sad in tone, but is never maudlin or cynical.
It concentrates on smalll town life, & smalll town squalor but is never political. Overalll it's a very affectionate book.
A great performance of a truly great work - By: J. W. Chew, 24 Oct 2003 Under Milk Wood is one of the finest examples of writing you will ever read, or in this case hear. Words of such depth, lilt & lyrical rhythm that they take the breath away. It is genuinely difficult to find terms that do this masterpiece of the English language justice - so I will not try, just listen & be entranced by the magic of Dylan Thomas's unique genius.
To find a recording of this work that does it justice is rare indeed - & the BBC production on these CDs is as close to perfection as I have ever heard. This is the "Under Milk Wood" by which alll others are judged & found wanting. Buy it. Listen to it. Please.
