Looks like a cricket attending a masquerade ball…
Brilliant
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I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to perform something when there’s already an ‘original’ out there then you should make yours very different from that one. So credit to him for doing that.
But there’s this of course. Which is literally an impossible act to follow.
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Dylan Thomas’ own reading of it is pretty good (Spotify) & there’s an Anthony Hopkins version but I haven’t heard it.
You can hear one segueing into another here, although the recording quality isn’t great
Thomas himself sounds dry and a bit distant from it (maybe a live recording though, so not the easiest circumstances). Hopkins goes faster than Burton and his syllables are shorter, but still a very competent job.
Burton, though … you can’t take your ears off him …
Burton is doing a reading. Michael Sheen is acting.
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Are you saying people who do radio plays aren’t acting ? The Archers stand still in their own clothes and read from their scripts. Burton was doing just the same, and it does say “& full cast” on the front of the record.
But it’s a voiceover. Same with the 1971 film.
2.45 mins in. Under Milk Wood (Dylan Thomas) with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole 1971 - YouTube
Burton played First Voice several times Under Milk Wood - Wikipedia, most famously in the 1954 radio production (I think my link was to this - you can hear the script page turned at one point). Yes, it was recorded before broadcast, but it was done after communal rehearsals and with most people there all at the same time, it seems
One of them said of it
Richard was a wonderful reader and actor for radio. Yes the voice was beautiful but that’s not all that mattered. It was his intelligence: as you listened you knew precisely what he was thinking as you heard the syllables fall. And that is an art.
Robert Hardy remembers Burton saying to him
Oh you have to come along to this new play I’m doing for the BBC …
It seems he thought he was in the play, not just reading it.
Maybe it comes down to whether Adam Gillen is still acting here if you only hear it on the radio, or if you’re there but you shut your eyes ?
He was acting in Under milk wood for sure but the opening speech was a narration.
Alan Gilliam is narrating a Prologue in Romeo and Juliet.
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Some exquisite carved calligraphy in this thread.
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Thanks!
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But it’s June 
Don’t worry, it’s dead by now 
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It had one chance, and it tried mating with Dave 
Amazing
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That really is fucking magnificent!
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