Student's Milk Wood is a wondrous place

· By Peter Birnie

UNDER MILK WOOD
At the Frederic Wood Theatre,
6354 Crescent Road at UBC, to Oct. 2
Tickets: $10 to $18, call 604-822-2678
www.theatre.ubc.ca

Across the course of a single day, Under Milk Wood charts life in a kooky Welsh hamlet. How kooky? Dylan Thomas dubbed the place Llareggub, which is "bugger all" spelled backwards. Theatre at UBC begins its season with a charming production of the poet's much-loved "play for voices." Taking what was really just a lyrical "50"s radio play and making it a moving and magical dance, director Sarah Rogers and musical director Karin Konoval reprise the production of Under Milk Wood they brought to the Fringe Festival in 2000 with the senior drama class at Arts Umbrella. This time they call on UBC students training for a bachelor of fine arts degree to perform a complicated choreography of movement, music and character, and the result is one long act (100 minutes) of pure artistic bliss.

The cast of graduating students gets a great forum from its peers, as four of the production's designers are also BFA candidates. Isabelle Rubin's set is deceptively simple, with a heavily raked stage littered by half a dozen rough-hewn crates and a couple of oversized lobster traps. Each of these containers hides much more, such as actors and trap doors and an illuminating little twist at the end that comes courtesy of lighting designer Nicola Waterfield. Her gentle washes of light and dark through Llareggub's day are punctuated by sharp spots of light tied to the rhythms of the play, and Michelle Harrison's sound design shows a similar flow tied to the famously drunken cadence of the Thomas words.

Nicole Chartrand's costumes are deliberately drab, as befits the clothes of the poor, and a clever choice because a character's colour must come from the actor.

Everyone in the cast has multiple roles and each actor shows real ease in bouncing back and forth. But no one is more remarkably flexible than Anastasia Filipczuk, whose every expression indicates the creation of a genuine comic talent.

Even better than all the many small moments of fun are the many ways this ensemble works in unison on those choreographed moments when the women all squeal like little girls or everyone becomes fishermen too keen on drinking pints to bother fishing.

Rodgers brings a robust physical strength to the story even as Thomas is weaving words to create a world of harsh reality (the stink of a drunk) or dreamy reminiscence (dead husbands both return through the keyhole to a twice-widowed woman). Add the thread of KonovalÕs musical choices, so unobtrusive that you rarely see who's playing the instrument, and this production of Under Milk Wood is a symphony of sumblime delights.

This article printed from The Vancouver Sun.