This year marks the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth. There are many Welshmen and women coiled, Captain Cat-like, ready to re-ignite the flames of their own fiery Welshness and rather damp literary heritage. Thomas’ most famous work, his play for ‘Welsh’ voices, was first performed in New York during 1953 and is now being made into yet another film. So we can expect a stellar cast of Welsh luvvies and other Taff types, who all hail from the castle-strewn boundary west of those ‘bloody English’, to prepare their lines for audition. Indeed, anticipation is growing for the best festival of exaggerated, accented, proper Taffyness ever to come out of a Welsh garden shed. Under Milk Stout
(no connection to Dylan Thomas, or anyone else Welsh)
Silence
FIRST VOICE (VERY SOFTLY)To begin at the beginning.It is spring; a moonless night in the small starless town, starless and bible black. A familiar, booming Richard Burton-esque voice laps like waves on a treacle-tart Welsh shore somewhere in theWelshest of rarebits, twinned with the town of Llamedos, Llareggub on Sea.Boom… boom… and boom again, lap the waves on this Welshest of shores.One hundred years of lilting Wesleyan chapel-valleyspeak through cobbled streets, silent and hunched, courtiers and rabbits, wood limping invisible down to the sloeback slow, black crowblackfishing boat bobbing buggerall to do Pembroke by the Sea. Whisky-breath glasses, tears of condensation; condescension slowly trickling down towards cantations, hymns, and a Rosie Probert-tinted view of Wales. Welsh luvvies offer gledged glimpses into dickie-bird cameras with knowing glances, eyes as sharp as kitchen knives mouthing ‘though shalt not’ speak, without sounding proper heavy and all Welsh isn’it?Eisteddfodau, singing in the valleys, coalmen dancing with their sacks, houses blind as moles see fine tonight in the milk-stouting velvet dingles, blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle like a pumping town cock. The shops in morning, the Welfare Hall in widows’ weeds and all the people of a lulled and dumbfounded Wales are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping; the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioner, cobblers, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, Iman, policeman; the webfoot cocklewomen, tidy wives and the long-term unemployed in the faraway valley council estates where once there was coal. You can almost hear the dew falling and the hushed town heathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town asleep, fast and slow. You alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black-as-Catherine-Jenkins’-roots,
dab-filled sea.
Listen.
Time passes.
Listen.
Time passes.
It is night moving in the streets, growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall; the birds asleep in Milk Stout.
Listen.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets, in the slow deep-salt and silent-black bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms taxed. Only you can hear and seebehind the eyes of the sleepers; the movements and countries and maze and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of theirdreams.From where you are, you can hear their dreams.
Come closer now.
Captain Cat, the retired, blind sea captain, asleep in his bunk in the seashelled shit-in-bottle shipshape best cabin of Schooner House, dreams of never such seas as any that swamped thedecks of his ‘Caesar’s Palace’. Bellying over the bedclothes, his collection of vintage women’s underwear jellyfish slippery and sucking him down salt-deep into the Davy dark, where fishyvoices come biting out to nibble down to his wishbone, and the long-drowned nuzzle up to his Italian leather, questionable for a pensioner his age, duck-down shoulder-soft expensivelypadded jacket…FIRST DROWNED
Remember me Captain?
TOM JONES
You’re dancing Williams.
FIRST DROWNED
I lost my step in Nantucket.
TOM JONES
You were really great.
SECOND DROWNED
Do you see me Captain? The white bone talking? I was in Dr Who.
TOM JONES
Loved it, it was great. You were great, really great.
THIRD DROWNEDHold me Captain, it’s Richard Harrington. I was in ‘Hinterland’; all laverbread and seaweed, welsh noir in Aberystwyth, singing in the valleys, tea in a jam-jar, sleeping alone in acaravan, came to a bad end. Very enjoyable.TOM JONESI thought you were great too, really great. When I say ‘really great’ I mean you were ‘fan-tastic’.NO GOOD BOYO
It’s me Captain, Nasser Murthana, no good boyo from Cardiff, proper Welsh.
TOM JONES
No good boyo up to no good?
NO GOOD BOYO
Not in this lifetime Captain, maybe the next!
FIFTH DROWNED
Remember me Captain? Neil Kinnock. Lost my step on a beach in Brighton.
TOM JONESAye aye baldy, a bit late to rise from the deep now isn’t it boyo?FIRST WELSH DIVA’S VOICEIt’s me boys, Charlotte Church’s voicemail. Come on up boys, I’m hacked off.FIRST DROWNEDWhat’s it like there?SECOND DROWNED
Still all women in pointy black hats, clogs and shawls? Copper and coal?
THIRD DROWNED
Singing and rugger, how green is my valley?
NO GOOD BOYO
Kill the infidels!
FIRST DROWNEDMax Boyce and leeks, Cardiff Arms Park?SECOND DROWNEDTreorchy Male Voice Choir?THIRD DROWNEDBonnie Tyler. There’s proper Welsh for you.NO GOOD BOYO
Fuck Bonnie Tyler. The Daily Mail says I’ll bomb Wales and everybody in it when I get back.
FIFTH DROWNED
Fuck Bonnie Tyler is it?
SECOND DROWNED
Did I mention I was in Doctor Who?
FIRST DROWNED
I’ve been on Jeremy Kyle.
SECOND DROWNED
Slept with your sister did you? There’s lovely.
TOM JONES
Oh my dead, dead dears, I may indeed have done your sister. Was she in Vegas during 1973?
SIXTH DROWNED
Turn around for me Captain, the bone at your ear. Remember me? I was Lieutenant John Chard in Zulu.
TOM JONES
Jones 593, baritone?
SIXTH DROWNED
No, the other Welsh one. I was the star of ‘Helldrivers’ too.
FIRST WELSH DIVA’S VOICE
What, the sequel?
SIXTH DROWNED
No, Stanley Baker.
FIRST WELSH DIVA’S VOICEWhat, the Scottish female impersonator and comic?SECOND WELSH DIVAS VOICEIt’s me Catherine Jenkins and no, that was Stanley Baxter, you silly bitch.SIXTH DROWNEDNo, for fuck’s sake, Stanley bloody Baker from bloody Swansea. I’m bloody Welsh.SECOND DROWNED
Did Stanley Baker wear a frock in ‘Helldrivers’ then? I don’t remember that.
FIRST WELSH DIVA’S VOICE
One of those Welsh transvestites? Like a Druid!
SECOND WELSH DIVA’S VOICE
Fuck Bonnie Tyler? That woman is practically a Welsh saint!
TOM JONES
All Welsh down here is it?
FIRST DROWNED
More Welsh than Wales.
SECOND DROWNEDSilurians under Glamorgan, who’d have dreamt of that?THIRD DROWNEDCardiff full of minarets?FIRST DROWNEDSwansea full of Poles?SECOND DROWNED
Laugharne full of bloody English second homes!
THIRD DROWNED
Everyone wants to be Welsh these days. Taffys are proper popular.
NO GOOD BOYO
Not all of us are. Popular that is.
FIFTH DROWNED
Bonnie Tyler? She has the voice of a slow roasting tomcat!
SECOND WELSH DIVA’S VOICEThat’s a bit harsh. Her singing wasn’t all bad.SECOND DROWNEDRemember ‘Holding Out For a Hero’?SECOND WELSH DIVA’S VOICEYou’ve got a point, fuck. Bonnie Tyler it is then!SECOND DROWNED
Richard Burton is it?
SIXTH DROWNED
For the last time; Stanley fucking Baker. Burton had a face like an orange; all pock marked and pitted. Llke the tongue of a preacher’s boot.
SECOND DROWNED
His brother Graham - now he had beautiful skin. Better looking too; smooth as a baby’s B.T.M., but sadly no talent. Not like Richard.
FIRST DROWNED
J P R Williams? Now he had talent.
THIRD DROWNED
Ivor Emmanuel. Wasn’t he a Zulu?
SECOND DROWNED
Men of Harlech?
THIRD DROWNED
South Wales Borderers?
FIRST SECOND AND THIRD DROWNED
MICHAEL CAINE!
SIXTH DROWNED
Give me strength - STANLEY BLOODY BAKER!
TOM JONES
Everyone wants to be Welsh these days.
SECOND WELSH DIVA’S VOICEDid I mention I’m Jewish now. Dyed my hair bible black and everything.FIRST WELSH DIVA’S VOICEDoes that mean there’s a spot going as the premier Wales diva?SECOND WELSH DIVA’S VOICENo luv, you still need talent for that one.FIRST DROWNED
I blame Dylan Thomas.
DYLAN THOMAS
Don’t blame me, I had bugger all to do with it. I made it all up you see.
FIRST DROWNED
He made Laugharne look like a saucy seaside postcard; all smut and innuendo, Carry On and carrying on, so he did.
SECOND DROWNED
I don’t actually speak Welsh.
DYLAN THOMAS
Neither do I. Anyone for a pint of Scotch?
THIRD DROWNED
I had to speak Welsh in ‘Hinterland’. We dubbed it back into English for the Taffies.
FIRST DROWNED
If ‘Under Milk Stout’ is so Welsh, why is it written in English?
FIFTH DROWNED
Lloyd George knew my father. I must be Welsh.
SECOND DROWNED
I knew Shirley Bassey in Cardiff. She was proper Welsh.
THIRD DROWNED
Cardiff isn’t proper Welsh. You’re only Welsh if Aneurin Bevan went to school with your uncle, Richard Burton was your milkman and you come from the valleys where Tom Jones knew your Auntie on a very personal basis.
TOM JONES
I’m proper Welsh, I sound like it and everything. Can’t remember your Auntie though. Was she at the Bristol Hippodrome in 1967, throwing her knickers?
THIRD DROWNEDCroeso I Gymru.TOM JONESI’m hearing the strange voices again.SECOND DROWNEDIt means, “Welcome to Wales”.DYLAN THOMAS
You’re bloody welcome to it too!
TOM JONES
I have no idea love, but that’s the last time I’m turning round.
As the thin night darkens, a breeze from the creased water sighs and the streets close under Milk-waking-Stout. The town, where every tree-foot is cloven in the black-glad night of
the hunters of lovers, the English, the American, the Japanese and all coming tourists, that’s a God-built garden, of Heaven on Earth, the ‘Camarthen Caliphate’, a Dylan-a-thon of
Thomas’s Llareggub-land. Suddenly wind-shaken wood springs awake for the second dark time this Spring day. The cast of Welsh luvvies retire to their respective dressing rooms to
practice their accents, while others work on their Farsi. As Tom Jones dreams of his collection of vintage women’s undergarments from the 1960s, no one practices their Welsh
because what’s the point? The play’s in bloody English anyway.
