Under Milk Wood

Kevin Allen's 'Under Milk Wood' opens in UK cinemas later this week. - starring Charlotte Church as Polly Garter and Rhys Ifans as Captain Cat. I am looking forward to seeing it. After 'Left Field' is published I am going to re-write my Dylan Thomas comedy - 'Spitting at the Sky' - first performed as a professional reading at the Dylan Thomas Festival in Swansea in 2004. I was a friend of the art critic, Mervyn Levy, who went to school with Dylan. He told me that the two of them shared a flat in Chelsea in the 30s and loved going to Marx Brothers films. They acted out the parts when they got home. He also told me that Thomas had been interred in Macy's morgue in NYC. Knowing this I set the play in Macy's and introduced Dylan to the Marx Brothers there. The cast in Swansea included Sion Probert, Stan Stennett, Liz Morgan and my friend, Anna Gilbert. John Yorke, then Head of Drama at Channel 4, commented: “a powerful and beautifully written piece of theatre, and I have to say that your mastery of language isn't far off Thomas' himself.”