In the run up to the centenary of the birth of Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, there is a number of significant productions being developed to celebrate and discuss the writer’s work. In addition to the recent news of the New Theatre Cardiff’s production of Under Milk Wood the BBC has recently announced the commission of A Poet In New York to look at Thomas’ final trip to the States before his death at the age of just 39.
The upcoming dramatisation is planned to take us back to the smog ridden city of New York in 1953 as Dylan spends the summer there reading for the first production of Under Milk Wood at the Poetry Centre in Manhatten. Struggling with a lung problem, which was later discovered to be pneumonia in his autopsy, Thomas continued his lifestyle of excess, which would go on to fell the great writer, as he slipped into a coma and died on the 9th November 1953.
It’s this grim tale of Thomas’ early passing that A Poet in New York will attempt to recreate. It’s going to make pretty brutal viewing, but it should be a gritty insight into the poet’s final months. It’s an interesting angle to take considering the beautified beyond any aspect of reality view that the film, The Edge of Love, brought to his wife and his childhood sweetheart with the casting of Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller as the leading ladies.
A Poet in New York has been announced as being scheduled to air in 2014, but if it’s going to tie in with the centenary of his birth, we may not be seeing it until around the 27th October, which is when he was born. Filming has already begun in Cardiff and Laugharne for the one off production being created by Modern Television for BBC Cymru Wales.
Casting for the drama includes Tom Hollander (Rev, Any Human Heart) as Dylan Thomas and Essie Davis (The Slap, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) as his wife Caitlin, as well as Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting) and Phoebe Fox (New Tricks). Written by Andrew Davies (South Riding, Little Dorrit) and directed by Irish film writer, Aisling Walsh (Room At The Top), A Poet In New York sounds like it’s going to be on the darker side of the west moon.
Commenting on the casting of the lead role, writer Andrew Davies says, “I’m delighted that we’ve secured Tom Hollander to play Dylan. He’s a wonderful actor, with a striking resemblance to the poet, he’s captured the wonderful voice, and he has, more than any other actor I can think of, that outrageous charm that drew so many people to Dylan.”
However, Hollander has confessed that he’s going to need to put on a fair bit of weight to fully get into character as Thomas during the run up to his bleak demise under the killing fog of New York in 1953.
