Good cheer

SFGT's spirited Christmas In Wales

by Johnette Rodriguez

A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES. By Dylan Thomas. Directed by Kate Lohman. With Chris Byrnes, Jeanine Kane, Sandra Mayoh, John Morgan, and Thomas Epstein. At the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre through December 20.

As the century's greatest lyric poet in the English language, Dylan Thomas could do wonders with the colorful and evocative imagery of Christ-mastime. As the most imaginative off-Trinity theater around, we could expect fine work from the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre with his words and inspiration. Indeed, A Child's Christmas In Wales is a hearty theatrical -- and seasonal -- experience.

Under Kate Lohman's dynamic and sensitive direction, we get much more than a staged reading of the endearing brief reminiscence of the title, written for radio. We're more than 10 minutes along before we hear the opening line, "One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner." Amplifying the nostalgia are scenes from short stories, plus snatches of other poems of Thomas's, and songs sung in Welsh Gaelic (translation sheets kindly supplied). The fact that none of the latter are Christmas carols underlines the fact that more than simple Christmas cheer is on tap here.

The setting is the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, on Christmas Eve, 1952. The following November, Thomas was to commit suicide via acute alcohol poisoning, perhaps after drinking at the White Horse. He was quoted as bragging, before he passed out, "I've had 18 straight whiskies. I think that's the record." The set, designed by Anker West, makes alcoholism a character on the stage: hundreds of liquor bottles fill the walls, glinting appealingly like Christmas itself.

Chris Byrnes plays Thomas with verve and gaiety. Fortunately, he doesn't attempt to mimic the real Dylan Thomas. Thomas was emulating the tradition of Parliamentary oratory, so to modern ears his recorded poems sound like bombastic parodies of Richard Burton doing Hamlet. Perhaps it was best that Byrnes also didn't try to sustain a Welsh accent, which is hard not to muddy into generic British. (Authenticity was left mostly to John Morgan, who is from Wales and whose Gaelic is fascinating to follow on the song sheet.)

One of the characters Morgan plays is Jim, the pal that young Dylan tussles with in the Child's Christmas passages. Multiple roles are played by all six of the cast. Jeanine Kane is Dylan's harried mother and the socially inept Miss Prothero, who comes downstairs after a blaze has been extinguished in her parents' living room and offers the firemen something to read. Sandra Mayoh is the present day Thomas's sweetheart-of-the-moment and the port-tippling Auntie Hannah, who "stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush." Joe Auger plays the guitar for them and is Mr. Prothero, whose response to the fire is to stand in the middle of the room, "saying, `A fine Christmas!' and smacking at the smoke with as slipper." Among his characters, Thomas Epstein is a fireman, Grandpa, and one of the assorted uncles.

Thomas's descriptions are wonderful cornucopias of imagery, such as when his list of presents includes: "blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaklavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes." Postmen didn't just knock on doors, but "With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully."

The snatches of stories that interlace the main text are also great fun and strike compatible tones of mischievous merriment. Byrnes is Uncle Ivor, irate because the cantankerous Will Century is counting his pints at the pub and his donations at church, suspicious that he will run off with the choir outing fund like Bob the Fiddle did before. Byrnes is back to being a boy in a story snippet where he is eavesdropping on two servant girls who are going to meet a mysterious beau who has them smitten and furious.

A Child's Christmas In Wales is bursting with joy, but sentimentality is shunned in this production like a weepy drunk around the eggnog. Available poignancy is passed on without comment or emphasis, as with Thomas's mention of "pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did drown." The only extended acknowledgment of death, a major theme and outrage in his poems, is toward the end with a group recitation of "Fern Hill." As read with proper sobriety by Byrnes, the poem concludes: "Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means/ Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea."

Overwhelmed in adulthood, Dylan Thomas nevertheless learned in childhood what to love in life. SFGT is passing along his spirit and wonder in fine style.