He's probably not doing spirit fingers. It's probably acting.
Under Milk Wood
By Dylan Thomas
Directed by Ted Dykstra
Featuring Mike Ross (music), Kenneth Welsh
Runs July 11 – August 2 @ Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Presented by Soulpepper Theatre
By Daina Valiulis
Have you ever, as a child, had someone tuck you into bed and read you an excellent bedtime story while acting out different voices for all of the characters? Under Milk Wood by Welsh writer Dylan Thomas is the perfect bedtime story for adults, and this production of it is unbelievable. Directed by one of Soulpepper’s founding members, Ted Dykstra, with original music written and performed by Soulpepper Academy member Mike Ross, the play is performed by Kenneth Welsh, one of Canada’s most gifted actors, who gives voice to the — literally — over 50 inhabitants of the Welsh town of Llaregub (now read it backwards).
Originally written as a radio play, Thomas meant for it to be “a piece, a play, an impression for voices, an entertainment out of the darkness of the town I live in and to write it simply, 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.” Welsh, a kind of “psychic archaeologist who stumbles on this town in the darkness,” according to Dykstra, delivers from the second he climbs down a ladder onto the stage made to look like an attic full of knick-knacks and old photographs. And he launches in — playing character after character, switching voices in a split second, and jaunting about the stage, making use of all the knick-knacks to tell us all about the residents of the little town: their dreams, their secret (and sometimes not so secret) longings, their daily activities.
Like a gleeful conductor of his own symphony, he bounces from Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard talking to her two dead husbands, to Lily Smalls posing in the mirror, to the 80-year-old lady Mary Anne Sailors who pops her head out and giddily shouts out little tidbits, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, the kind of moral centre of the piece and Welsh’s favorite character. He does them all with the endearing and exciting joy of a child, both discovering things about these people and revealing things about them to us. His obvious delight in the material makes him an absolute joy to watch. He loves the punchlines and delivers them with delicious relish as he jumps from one character to the next. My favorite character was Mr. Pugh, who secretly and longingly plots to poison Mrs. Pugh (who is not very nice). There is also a fantastic scene where Welsh plays the clockmaker and makes his eyes look crazily in all directions as he is driven mad by the ticking and chiming clocks. It is truly a tour-de-force performance not to be missed.
I also must applaud and give credit to the foley artists doing all of the sound effects throughout: burping, babies crying, dogs barking, bells chiming, a guy jerking off, and I swear they even had onions frying in a skillet at one point!
Please, please, please see this show — it’s great fun on a summer’s eve and the best bedtime story you’ll ever hear.
Kenneth Welsh! AKA Windom Earle!