Under Milk Wood (Pod mléčným lesem, 1963)

Přidal: Přemek |

Říjen 17, 2008

Dylan Thomas. Poetické drama. Hudba John Hardy, hrají Paula Gardiner, Lee Goodall, Dewi Watkins. Zvuk Nigel Lewis. Režie Alison Hindell.

Účinkují Richard Burton a další.

Natočeno 1963. Premiéra 10. 11. 1963 (BBC 3).

Lit.: anonym: To begin at the beginning… from Dylan Thomas’s „Under Milk Wood“. In web BBC, listopad 2016 (anotace). – Cit.: Burton’s famous narration connected him with Welsh poetry but without a trace of accent.

Lit.: anonym: Saturday Drama -Under Milk Wood. In web BBC Radio 4, říjen 2014 (článek). – Cit.: A special chance to hear the highly-acclaimed 2003 production of this classic ‚play for voices’, celebrating the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas. Richard Burton’s unforgettable 1963 performance as First Voice is remixed with Sian Phillips as Second Voice and an all-Welsh cast, including early appearances by Ruth Jones and Matthew Rhys, and a cameo role from John Humphrys. The play is a comic, affectionate and mischievous portrait of a day in the life of the mythical Welsh village of Llareggub (read it backwards) and has become one of the most famous radio plays ever written.

Groundbreaking from its first performance in New York City in 1953, the play won the Prix Italia for its innovative style in its first BBC recording 60 years ago. The 2003 production was streamed in 5.1 surround sound and now that 5.1 mix will be available on the Radio 4 website in an experimental player during the broadcast and for 30 days after that.

Lit.: anonym: Under Milk Wood. In web Gutenberg, b. d. (článek + text hry v angličtině). – Cit.: The 1963 radio dramatization was broadcast on the BBC Third programme on November 10, 1963, with Richard Burton as the narrator, of Dylan Thomas’s „play for voices“, about the inhabitants of a small Welsh village. From their dreamy dreams to their work-day gossip, this drama traces the lives of a group of villagers in a tiny Welsh seaport.

„To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits‘ wood limping invisible down to the sloe black, slow, black, crow black fishing boat-bobbing sea. [...] And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now.“
Subtitled „A Play for Voices“, Dylan Thomas’s best known work, Under Milk Wood, carries the double legacy of the author’s extensive work for radio–a medium for which, like the very different Samuel Beckett, he had an almost intuitive grasp–and his skill and ability as a poet. A polyphonic evocation of a day in the life of an imaginary small Welsh seaside town, Thomas’s play–“a green leaved sermon on the innocence of men“–visits in turn the inhabitants of Llareggub (read it backwards for the joke) while they sleep, when they wake and go about their daily activities, as the night falls. Balancing a rhythmic, densely poetic language with a nuanced ear for the musical cadences of speech, the play’s gentle, affectionate charm and humour resonate to create a deeply textured portrait of a community responding almost mythically to the awakening of spring.

To begin at the beginning.

Under Milk Wood was written as a play for voices and first broadcast on radio in 1954 shortly after the death of the author. In the original recording, subsequent 1963 recording and the film of 1971 the main voice was that of Richard Burton and his name has become associated with the piece almost as much as that of Dylan Thomas.
There is not a strong plot, more a progression of narrative. The progression is through one spring dayin the south Wales seaside town of Llareggub* from before dawn to after dusk. The play tells of the small dreams and grand desires of the living and the dead of the town. The mood and atmosphere of the piece are its strength.
There is a timeless quality to Under Milk Wood. Starting on a moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, we peep into the houses of sleepers. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea.
Blind Captain Cat dreams of the drowned comrades of his youth and of his long dead love, Rosie Probert. Myfanwy Price dreams that Mog Edwards, a draper mad with love, will warm her sheets like an electric toaster. Mr Waldo dreams of all the women who have pursued him through his life.
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard nags in death the ghosts of her widowed husbands, Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, whom she nagged to death in life. Dai Bread the baker, with one wife for the day and one for the night, dreams of harems, Polly Garter dreams of babies and Nogood Boyo cannot be bothered to dream of anything at all.
At dawn, the characters come to life and live their day.
Under Milk Wood is a sensitive, funny, occasionally disturbing, story of one day in the life of the town. All life is here and with a cast of over 60 very distinctive characters Dylan Thomas paints affectionate portraits of the childhood seaside people he knew so well.
Dylan Thomas extraordinary richness of language is the real star of this play. There is not a redundant word in the text with imagery cascading over lyrical imagery in every line.
*Dylan Thomas‘ sense of humour. Say Llareggub backwards!!!! (…).

Lit.: Brun, Rupert: Saturday Drama: Under Milk Wood in Surround Sound. In web BBC Radio4, 16. 10. 2014 (rozhovor o úpravě hry do surround soundu). – Cit.: Editor’s note: BBC Radio 4 offers you a special chance to hear the highly-acclaimed 2003 production of Under Milk Wood, celebrating the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas in surround sound (Saturday 18 October at 2.30pm). Starring Richard Burton it features an all-Welsh cast, including early appearances by Ruth Jones and Matthew Rhys, and a cameo role from John Humphrys.

The 2003 production was streamed online in 5.1 surround sound and now that 5.1 mix will also be available on-line in an experimental player on the Radio 4 website. Here Rupert Brun, Head of BBC Technology explains how to get enjoy the Surround Sound experience of this very special broadcast.

Editor’s note: BBC Radio 4 offers you a special chance to hear the highly-acclaimed 2003 production of Under Milk Wood, celebrating the centenary of the birth of Dylan Thomas in surround sound (Saturday 18 October at 2.30pm). Starring Richard Burton it features an all-Welsh cast, including early appearances by Ruth Jones and Matthew Rhys, and a cameo role from John Humphrys.

What’s happening?

This version of Under Milk Wood was recorded in surround sound and when first broadcast in 2003 it was available in this format to listeners at home who had the right equipment and software. When the play is repeated on Saturday 18 October at 2.30pm the surround sound version will be available as a live stream; the play will also be available “on demand” from about 5pm that day for the next 30 days. If you don’t have a surround sound system you can try our experimental “binaural“ experience, which turns the surround sound stream into an immersive headphone listening experience.

How to Listen to Under Milk Wood in Surround Sound

If you have surround sound speakers

You will need a computer with a broadband internet connection, an HTML5 compatible browser (such as the latest version of Chrome) and sound card connected to your computer with at least six channels, which should in turn be connected to a “5.1” surround sound system.

If you have headphones

You will need a computer with a broadband internet connection, an HTML5 compatible browser (such as the latest version of Chrome), a sound card with a stereo headphone output and a pair of headphones.

Where to find the audio

You will find the player for both loudspeaker and binaural headphone version on this web page

You will also find a link to some “Frequently Asked Questions” which include a test player so you can check your loudspeaker system is working before the play starts. If you are using the binaural experience you shouldn’t need to check it in advance, you can switch to different versions of binaural sound during the play.

What new technology is being used?

You don’t have to understand any of this in order to enjoy the surround sound experience; it’s included for those who want to know a bit about the underlying technology.

There is a new standard for HTML, the language that operates the World Wide Web, called HTML5. It includes an Audio API (application programming interface) which for the first time allows a web browser to play surround sound without the need to download and install additional software. It also includes the Mediasource API, which enables us to use MPEG-DASH, a new standard for media delivery, to get the data to you. Not all web browsers fully support HTML5 (particularly the Mediasource API) yet; we have tested the experiment using Chrome under Windows 7 and Mac OSX, and Internet Explorer 11 under Windows 8.1, but it might work with other combinations of computer and browser. We made all of the BBC Proms 2014 available using this technology.

The web browser also has the capability to render the 5.1 surround sound stream into a binaural presentation for headphones. This can provide a headphone listening experience which sounds as if it coming from outside your head, with front to back localisation of sound. To make binaural sound work perfectly we would really like the web browser to render the sound in a way that is optimised for the shape and size of each listener’s head but this is not practical at present so we are offering a choice of three different versions for you to try. We have not previously tried a public experiment with a surround sound stream rendered into binaural sound in a web browser so we are really keen to know what you think of it. To find out more about binaural sound and how this experiment works you can visit the BBC R&D Blog.

How can we give feedback?

You can comment on this blog or on Twitter using the hashtag #BBCR4UMW.

What if it doesn’t work?

As this is very experimental I’m afraid we can’t give you individual help getting it working but check the FAQ to make sure the equipment and web browser you are using are compatible with the experiment. If you can’t make it work or just don’t like it please let us know; you can listen to the broadcast in stereo on the radio, TV or online as usual.