The Radio 3 Mix

[Chris Newman]

DracoM


By a fluke the other day I was discussing Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood with Richard Burton as The Narrator with a friend when I saw the BBC CD in a charity shop for all of £1, and I snapped it up.

The full poetic play was given on The Third Programme in 1963. I wonder if it has had a subsequent airing? Very doubtful, but the BBC must have a treasure trove of past productions. With drama of this quality, I certainly do not mind a repeat!

I have the Caedmon recording made at the premiere with Dylan Thomas himself and some New York drama students. As the show progresses these American kid's voices become more and more Welsh sounding. Thomas is on brilliant form, as good as Richard Burton. It is very funny, done in front of a YMCA audience who love it. Tragic to think Thomas was dead a few days afterwards.

[Barbirollians]

I have a vague memory of the Under Milk Wood recording being played on Radio 4 shortly after Burton's death.

[hackneyvi]

I too forgot about The Essay (thanks fhg), but it is in a bit of a graveyard slot and is only 15 mins so cannot tackle any subject in any depth.

I wonder if listeners to Radio 3 of longer standing always appreciate that iPlayer means there's no such thing as a graveyard slot to some sections of the audience. If I were to identify my own equivalent of 'a graveyard slot', it would be the weekday schedules between 7 am and 7pm. I don't really bother looking at those sections too closely because that's not where I find the interesting music is. My own age and circumstances mean that I've never been able to listen to those programmes because they're the times when, 240-odd days of the year, I'm at work.

The acquisition of a computer for the first time in 5 years has meant the evening programmes have all become available to me via the iPlayer where some have always been impracticably late. There's no way I'd sit up till 1 am listening to a jazz show on a Sunday night (or any other night) but I listen to Pre-Hear and Hear and Now on Sunday and Monday evenings, often recording them to build up a library of interesting contemporary or uncommonly played modern music. The iPlayer page defaults to 'Yesterday' whenever I log on and I scan all parts of the schedule now everytime I logon because all parts are accessible.

I appreciate that you're talking about speech not music but the whole of the schedule preceding the hour we're listening in is available for quite lengthy periods of time now and listeners can adjust and have adjusted to that luxury. The slot is irrelevant because increased-automation has meant that only unbroadcast programmes are now out of reach.

[Ferretfancy]

I have the Caedmon recording made at the premiere with Dylan Thomas himself and some New York drama students. As the show progresses these American kid's voices become more and more Welsh sounding. Thomas is on brilliant form, as good as Richard Burton. It is very funny, done in front of a YMCA audience who love it. Tragic to think Thomas was dead a few days afterwards.

I have the Argo LPs of Under Milk Wood in its original BBC production from 1954. The original transmission of the play was on 25th January that year and it was repeated two days later. Listening to the LPs, it is apparent that it was recorded at the time of both those live transmissions, but on acetate discs rather than on tape. Argo's LP must have been derived from a later tape transcription from those discs. The version on the BBC CD is taken from the later production of the play made in 1962. It is of course technically superior, but in spite of the fact that Richard Burton is still there it lacks the magic of Douglas Cleverdon's original direction of a cast which includes Richard Bebb, Hugh Griffith, Rachel Roberts and the choir of Laugharne school, not to mention many other fine Welsh actors..
It seems a great pity that as far as I know the first version is not available, it is one of the great radio plays.

Incidentally the Caedmon recording you mention predates the first broadcast. It was done as a read through by Thomas and students on 15th and 19th May 1953 at the Kauffman Hall of the Young Men's Hebrew Association with the poet as First Voice and the Rev. Eli Jenkins, and was unfinished. Thomas returned to Britain and completed the work for the BBC at the end of October, so in fact he was not dead a few days after that New York reading, but died on 5th November 1953, more than two months before the first BBC performance.

I've gleaned most of this from the notes to the Argo LP by Daniel Jones, who also wrote the settings for the songs in the play.

[aeolium]

Ff, Under Milk Wood must have been completed by end-September 1953, or very early in October, as it was premiered in the Lyric Theatre Carmarthen on 8 October, with Dylan Thomas in the cast (what a shame that was not recorded for broadcast!). He flew to America shortly after this, and died in fact on the 9th of November.

Though I think the Cleverdon production of 1954 is the best overall, I would not be without the Caedmon recording of Thomas reading the play with others in May 1953.

[aeolium]

I appreciate that you're talking about speech not music but the whole of the schedule preceding the hour we're listening in is available for quite lengthy periods of time now and listeners can adjust and have adjusted to that luxury. The slot is irrelevant because increased-automation has meant that only unbroadcast programmes are now out of reach.

hackneyvi, you are quite right about iplayer and I use it a lot. I suppose with The Essay it has fallen somewhat off my radar as I don't usually listen to it live and it can seem too insubstantial, at just 15 minutes, to make the effort to listen again at a later date. I am more likely to be using the iplayer for longer speech programmes such as Drama on 3 or Sunday Feature, or any of the concerts, or Through the Night.

That said, I am making the effort to listen to this week's programmes about the nature of history, and will try to keep an eye open for interesting themes in future weeks.

[Anna]

I have a BBC cd of the original 1954 broadcast (Richard Bebb, Hugh Griffith, Rachel Roberts and the choir of Laugharne school as mentioned above.) Naxos also have the 1954 which includes two earlier radio programmes: Return Journey to Swansea and Quite Early One Morning, read by Dylan Thomas and others. I have as well a copy of the R4 2003 broadcast where Richard Burton's voice has been digitally mixed with a new cast. I've also heard the Anthony Hopkins and the later '63 Burton version but the '54 version is by far the best of. I think the Naxos cd is also available as a download.

[Bryn]

Back in the late '70s or early '80s there was a BBC radio production broadcast on FM in an experimental quadraphonic format. I think they used UHJ or one of its forerunners. I taped it at the time but that tape was one of all too many that went n a house fire, later in the '80s. I don;t recall it being up to the early '50s recorded performances. Let's forget the dreadful filmed versions, eh?

[Chris Newman]

I have the Argo LPs of Under Milk Wood in its original BBC production from 1954. The original transmission of the play was on 25th January that year and it was repeated two days later. Listening to the LPs, it is apparent that it was recorded at the time of both those live transmissions, but on acetate discs rather than on tape. Argo's LP must have been derived from a later tape transcription from those discs. The version on the BBC CD is taken from the later production of the play made in 1962. It is of course technically superior, but in spite of the fact that Richard Burton is still there it lacks the magic of Douglas Cleverdon's original direction of a cast which includes Richard Bebb, Hugh Griffith, Rachel Roberts and the choir of Laugharne school, not to mention many other fine Welsh actors..
It seems a great pity that as far as I know the first version is not available, it is one of the great radio plays.

Incidentally the Caedmon recording you mention predates the first broadcast. It was done as a read through by Thomas and students on 15th and 19th May 1953 at the Kauffman Hall of the Young Men's Hebrew Association with the poet as First Voice and the Rev. Eli Jenkins, and was unfinished. Thomas returned to Britain and completed the work for the BBC at the end of October, so in fact he was not dead a few days after that New York reading, but died on 5th November 1953, more than two months before the first BBC performance.

I've gleaned most of this from the notes to the Argo LP by Daniel Jones, who also wrote the settings for the songs in the play.

Thanks for the correction, FF. Last year I camped and painted in Gower in South Wales and took a trip to Laugharne and Thomas's famous Boathouse. I bought the Caedmon recording (Now on Harper Collins) on CD and some stories and poems (it says formerly Caedmon) read by Thomas on an Alto CD. There are no notes with UMW and the notes on the other record seem to conflate events. I seem to remember the notes on the original LPs which I bought as a schoolboy rather confused events. The DT Website confirms "May 14: First stage performance of Under Milk Wood in New York with Dylan narrating (recorded by Caedmon)"

" 'I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very enjoyable ..."
Under Milk Wood