Dylan Thomas

Any Christmas show that recounts how Thomas Bowdler took the racy passages out of Shakespeare (thus the word bowdlerized ) is not your usual Christmas show. It is a characteristic detail in Jeremy Brooks' and Adrian Mitchell's two-act adaptation of the Dylan Thomas poem, "A Child's Christmas in Wales," at the Grove Theatre Company's Gem Theatre in Garden Grove.

The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in New York on Nov. 9, 1953, at age 39. Already a celebrity, Thomas was turned into a legend. Did he die as a result of 18 double whiskies drunk neat in the White Horse Tavern? Or was the cause half a grain of morphine (enough to lay out a horse) administered by an incompetent physician? Did another doctor really say that the poet was dying of "a serious insult to the brain"? Reports conflict, myth balloons. Thomas' put-upon physique took several days to finally give up its ghost, time enough for hundreds to flock to the doors of his hospital ward, to pay their respects, perhaps, or to glimpse the roaring boy in his ruin, and for his glamorous and equally tempestuous wife, Caitlin ( Uma Thurman and Lindsay Lohan are among the actress who have down the years been slated to play her, in bio-pics that — this being the story of a great love, and Dylan Thomas — always seem to fall apart at the last minute)

Dylan Thomas is the shared theme of two plays running in repertory at Cal Rep in Long Beach. On paper, the more interesting of the two would appear to be Bill Bushnell's new adaptation of Thomas' screenplay "The Doctor and the Devils." But inside the 221-seat Studio Theatre itself, Joanne Gordon's revival of Sidney Michaels' biographical play "Dylan" is far more engaging.

An eastern Pennsylvania art museum has received one of its largest gifts ever: about 500 works and property once owned by Modernist artist Peter Grippe. The collection given to the Allentown Art Museum features Grippe's own sculptures, drawings and prints. It also includes works by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jacques Lipchitz and poet Dylan Thomas. Grippe was a Cubist-inspired sculptor and printmaker who died in 2002. His widow made the museum donation.

At the time of his death in 1953, Dylan Thomas seemed the epitome of everything expected of a poet: brilliant, impulsive, unconventional and reckless; a prodigious drinker, an incorrigible skirt-chaser, a marvelous storyteller and a spellbinding reader of his own and other people's verse. Even Philip Larkin, hardly a kindred spirit poetically or politically, felt a keen sense of loss: "I can't believe that D.T. is truly dead. It seems absurd," he wrote to a friend.

A few photos of Dylan Thomas, stuck on the wall of the bar in Brown's Hotel, are all there is to tell the visitor he has stumbled into the poet's adopted hometown. Laugharne has always been in two minds about Thomas, torn between pride at being associated with a giant of 20th-Century poetry and the suspicion that he made the town a laughingstock. So while they don't disavow him, they certainly don't exert themselves to publicize the connection either. That means no souvenir stores, not even a sign directing visitors to his house or grave.

Gary Oldman ("Sid & Nancy") as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. His real-life wife, Uma Thurman ("Henry and June"), as Thomas' wife. The appeal of the $4.5-million "Dylan," to be produced by London's Harlech Films (a division of HTV International) and distributed by Miramax, was apparent. But a funny thing happened on the way to the screen. Nine days into the late-January shoot, Oldman collapsed on the set in Wales, said by doctors to be suffering from "nervous exhaustion."

Although "one Christmas was so much like another" for Dylan Thomas in his youth, the Grove Shakespeare Festival's sixth annual production of his famous story, "A Child's Christmas in Wales," has been so thoroughly revamped by first-time director Bud Leslie that it seems like a new show.

GroveShakespeare, which announced last week that it would do Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales" as its 1993 holiday show for an eighth consecutive year in Garden Grove, may not produce the show after all. This development comes partly because of the Grove's surprising reluctance to renew the rights, partly because it still owes royalties on the show and partly because of another company's eagerness to stage the show in or near Orange County.

"More than anything, this novel is a labor of love, of the admiration of a son for his father, which is probably not such a common thing these days. . . . But the story also fulfills its original premise--that of the Dylan Thomas poem--and it is uplifting to see the triumph of old Jake Hawkins, raging successfully against 'the dying of the light.' "

"The Edge of Love" has, as they say, all the tools, all the elements that usually make for success. It ought to be coaxing superlatives from all and sundry, but instead it leaves a bitter, unsatisfying aftertaste that lingers in the mind. Certainly the stars seemed aligned for "Edge" to turn into a quality British production. Its quartet of actors -- Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys -- are gifted and almost criminally attractive.

Regarding "Choirs That Move a Nation" [Dec. 19]: I am not a native of Swansea, Wales, having been brought up in the north of England on the edge of an industrial belt that is similar to South Wales. These both suffered from the legacy of the Industrial Revolution and may find echoes in Pittsburgh, Detroit or West Virginia. However, Swansea is much more than the squalid downtown you portray. People tend to forget that the Mumbles and other holiday areas are also part of the city and county.

Shakespeare has traditionally fared well at the outdoor Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, frequently earning kudos for artistic director Ellen Geer and her acting ensembles. "Under Milk Wood" by Dylan Thomas -- Shakespeare's lyrical, 20th century kindred spirit -- would seem a natural, especially beneath a night sky on a rough-planked stage that merges into tangled brush and arching oak trees.

At the time of his death in 1953, Dylan Thomas seemed the epitome of everything expected of a poet: brilliant, impulsive, unconventional and reckless; a prodigious drinker, an incorrigible skirt-chaser, a marvelous storyteller and a spellbinding reader of his own and other people's verse. Even Philip Larkin, hardly a kindred spirit poetically or politically, felt a keen sense of loss: "I can't believe that D.T. is truly dead. It seems absurd," he wrote to a friend.

For Gary Bell, who stars in the Laguna Playhouse production of "A Child's Christmas in Wales," the key to his role as Dylan Thomas has always been the story's evocative prose. "It reads like a poem even though it's not," Bell says of the original tale, first published in 1945 and adapted for the stage by Adrian Mitchell and Jeremy Brooks in 1982. "It's the way the images tumble over each other," adds the actor, who's something of an expert on Thomas, having played the role every year since 1986.

Dylan Thomas, the flamboyant poet and playwright who was born and raised here, called it "an ugly, lovely town." And so it was: an ugly port city of sprawling, squalid brown dockyards, a lovely city ringed with hills, wrapped around a sparkling blue-gray bay. The dockyards are gone now. Where once "the smoke of the tinplate stacks" fouled the air and seared the lungs, a bustling marina stands, filled with sidewalk cafes and wine bars.

An eastern Pennsylvania art museum has received one of its largest gifts ever: about 500 works and property once owned by Modernist artist Peter Grippe. The collection given to the Allentown Art Museum features Grippe's own sculptures, drawings and prints. It also includes works by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Jacques Lipchitz and poet Dylan Thomas. Grippe was a Cubist-inspired sculptor and printmaker who died in 2002. His widow made the museum donation.

Dylan Thomas, the flamboyant poet and playwright who was born and raised here, called it "an ugly, lovely town." And so it was: an ugly port city of sprawling, squalid brown dockyards, a lovely city ringed with hills, wrapped around a sparkling blue-gray bay. The dockyards are gone now. Where once "the smoke of the tinplate stacks" fouled the air and seared the lungs, a bustling marina stands, filled with sidewalk cafes and wine bars.

Any child's Christmas tends toward the magical, given the right conditions. But only "A Child's Christmas in Wales" speaks to us in the compelling language of Dylan Thomas, whose yuletide memories come wrapped in the dreamlike properties of true enchantment.

Awash in alcohol, the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died on the cusp of 40 during his 1953 lecture tour of the United States. In "Dylan," playwright Sidney Michaels propounded that the reason for Thomas' spectacular self-destruction was the stellar American success that lured him away from his quiet writer's life in Wales. A revival of "Dylan" at the Skylight is a stunning, sprawling evocation of those turbulent months before Dylan's untimely death in New York.