'Under Milk Wood' opens Friday

	From Under Milk Wood, center: Willy Appelman '09; clockwise from bottom: Ethan Weiss '09, Sam Parrott '09, Alex Frost '10, Buck LePard '09, Marie Roussel '10, Brandon O'Sullivan '11

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Skidmore Theater Department will present Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's moving and lyrical play Under Milk Wood over the next two weekends in Bernhard Theater.

The first weekend's performances will begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 11 and 12, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 13. A panel discussion titled "Dylan Thomas: His Craft and Sullen Art" will follow the Sunday matinee. Panelists will be poet Jay Rogoff, Terence Diggory, and Sarah Goodwin, all members of the English faculty. The second weekend's shows take place at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, April 17 and 18, and at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 19. Tickets are available at the Bernhard box office from noon to 5 p.m. daily, at $10 for general admission and $7 for seniors and students. For reservations or information, call 580-5439 or 580-5431.

Subtitled A Play for Voices, Under Milk Wood traces both the daily activities and the subconscious undercurrents of its characters during one spring day in the imaginary Welsh seacoast town of Milk Wood. The play opens in the predawn dark, inside the dreams of the villagers, then follows the folk through their waking hours and back into the night.

Carolyn Anderson, Skidmore's Kenan Professor of Liberal Arts, is directing this mainstage production, which features a cast of 15 student actors who together portray nearly 40 inhabitants of Milk Wood. Among them are Captain Cat (Willy Appelman '09), a blind old sea captain; Gossamer Beynon (Sarah Whalen '09), who dreams of illicit love; and barman Sinbad Sailor (Sam Parrott '09), who dreams of Gossamer Beynon. A character named Nogood Boyo (Alex Frost '10) dreams of nothing. Welsh songs and poems set to music accompany this version of the play, which Anderson describes as funny and poignant. "In a fast-paced world, we need to stop and look at one another, and to value each other more," says Anderson, who chose the play for its exploration of "the enduring relation of human beings to their community and to the world of nature around them."

Thomas worked on the play in 1949, four years before his death, and originally performed it on radio. It was produced on stage shortly before he died, and later on screen. Considered his magnum opus, Under Milk Wood has been critically acclaimed for its rich and challenging flood of language and the surreal nature of what one critic called its "timeless blend of humor and sensitivity." The poet himself saw the play as "an impression for voices, an entertainment out of the darkness, of the town I live in." His goal was "to write it simply and warmly and comically with lots of movement and varieties of moods, so that, at many levels, you come to know the town as an inhabitant of it."