Established in 1983, the Presteigne Festival is renowned for the diversity and quality of its programming and, like previous seasons, continues its immersion in contemporary music. Within the Welsh border town this year there have been a dozen world premieres given over the August bank holiday weekend. From 2013, George Vass – the Festival’s artistic director – introduced chamber opera, with stagings subsequently by established and emerging composers including Sally Beamish, Charlotte Bray and Joseph Phibbs. This year saw the Welsh premiere of Scenes from Under Milk Wood by Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, an Edinburgh-based composer, already familiar to Presteigne audiences, and arguably best known for her Three études for piano and flower pots.
Her music-theatre adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s radio play mixes newly conceived instrumental music, song and spoken word, an idea derived from Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat. Devised for narrator, pairs of singers and actors (who perform multiple roles), with support from a six-strong instrumental ensemble, Scenes from Under Milk Wood retains many of Thomas’s much-loved characters and preserves the temporal arc spanning dawn to dusk over a single day. Of her shrink-wrapped version, Cruttwell-Reade has commented that “thehybrid form of the piece connects back to the experimental radio feature world that first gave rise to Milk Wood, and the decision by our director Harvey Evans to return the production to a semi-staged radio studio”. At St Andrew’s Church, this presentation comprised a platform with nothing more than six music stands and illuminated by an ‘On Air’ sign, the cast dressed to suggest the 1950s.
Any performance of A Play for Voices (Thomas’s original subtitle) stands or falls on the quality of the spoken and, in this instance, sung voices. And it is no small challenge for a composer to fashion new musical layers – both as background and foreground – for a work already celebrated for its own distinctive musical shape and rhythm. How far can one distance oneself from the legendary 1954 broadcast (with music by Daniel Jones and the voice of Richard Burton), and enhance an audience’s existing experience? Ideally, a composer will retain their own individual ‘voice’ and complement something already perceived as perfect. This balancing act was accomplished well by Cruttwell-Reade, although my expectations were only partially met by the cast and musicians of this under-directed production from Nova Music Opera.
There was, however, a standout performance from mezzo-soprano Rebecca Afonwy-Jones whose exceptional singing and well-projected spoken characterisations vividly brought to life several of Milk Wood’s comic residents. Memorably portrayed were the affectionate Rosie Probert “of 33 Duck Lane”, Polly Garter – with a beautifully sung lament for her Little Willie Wee – and the twice-widowed Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard. In a fruity mezzo, Afonwy-Jones clearly relished the line “it is time to inhale your Balsam” when instructing one of her deceased husbands. Elsewhere, the darkly comic banter between Mr and Mrs Pugh never quite hit home; “Here’s your arsenic, dear” raised only a limp laugh, tonal variety lacking from Thomas Humphreys despite every encouragement from actor Madeleine Morgan as Mrs Pugh. His warm baritone balanced well with Afonwy-Jones when singing of the never-to-be-consummated love between Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Jones. Meanwhile, Osian Clarke enlivened his characters with animated expression, not something always achieved by narrator David Prince who relied too much on his script, much to the detriment of lines such as “the sloeback, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat bobbing sea”. Surely not words to declaim with your head buried in the text?
To one side of the stage and under the direction of George Vass, the players of the Nova Music Ensemble provided a carefully calibrated musical backdrop, often coloured by just harp and vibraphone. With an alert ear to Llareggub’s inhabitants (over sixty are listed in Thomas’s original text), Cruttwell-Reade underscored narration and spoken passages to delineate, amongst others, Captain Cat, Mr Waldo and the Revd. Eli Jenkins. Whether drawing on folk inspired melody, simple chord patterns with piquant harmonies or obsessively pulsing rhythms, her music brought distinct changes of pace, texture and weight, admirably serving its purpose, if only occasionally a little intrusive.
This semi-staging makes for an ideal touring production. Musically it works, but the work’s poetic beauty and satire only shine through intermittently. More expressive delivery and stronger direction when the cast and musicians go to Cardiff in September will bring dividends.
David Truslove
Scenes from Under Milk Wood by Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade; Welsh premiere of a joint commission between Nova Music Trust and the Presteigne and Spitalfields Festival
David Prince (narrator); Rebecca Afonwy-Jones (mezzo-soprano); Thomas Humphreys (baritone); Madeleine Morgan (actor); Osian Clarke (actor); Nova Music Opera; George Vass (conductor), Harvey Evans (director)
Nova Music Ensemble: Sarah Bennington (flute); Catriona Scott (clarinet); Malgorzata Zwierzchowska (violin); Gemma Wareham (cello); Olivia Jageurs (harp); George English (percussion)
St Andrew’s Church, Presteigne, 21 August 2025
All photos © Anjulie Chen