Dylan Thomas: Return Journey - Bob Kingdom

Published Friday 26 August 2005 at 11:20 by Thom Dibdin

It is 20 years since Bob Kingdom first performed this tribute to Dylan Thomas at the fringe. That was at the Hill Street Theatre and this year, for one last night only, he returned to the Assembly Rooms to loom out of the darkness and let Thomas’ words, perfectly enunciated in that big plummy, all-Welsh round voice, roll around the auditorium.

Watching Kingdom recreate Thomas as he was on his final lecture tour of the United States is quite simply a pleasure for any fan of the poet. In a deliciously rambling outpouring of adjectives, assonance and alliteration, Thomas’ anecdotes, his observations on the American lecture circuit from his broadcast A Visit To America, and short stories, are mixed up so you cannot tell where one ends and the next begins.

Only the poems, Fern Hill, Poem in October, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, and Do Not Go Gentle, are given the slightly aloof separation of a declamatory first line, a step away from the lectern and their own spotlit existence. Then Kingdom sways slightly, smiles disarmingly at the audience and, with a frown, mentions his thirst. It is, for a moment, as if Thomas is actually in the room.