A poet walks into a bar
Bob Kingdom’s Return Journey looks at the life of Dylan Thomas
I say and do things which introduce him in a good, but also in a funny way. BOB KINGDOM ON PORTRAYING DYLAN THOMAS
Dylan Thomas: Return Journey Dec. 9 to 21 | Historic Theatre at the Cultch Tickets: from $ 19 at tickets. thecultch. com
Post- show Q& A session with the artist: Dec. 10, 16
Bob Kingdom has a knack for turning himself into famous figures. Truman Capote, Stan Laurel, J. Edgar Hoover and the Duke of Windsor are some of the notable men whom he’s embodied onstage. But he may be best known for his portrayal of Dylan Thomas in Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, which comes to the Cultch Dec. 9- 21.
So is there any common thread, besides being well- known, that ties these well- known subjects together?
“Well, with Truman Capote and Dylan Thomas, there was the booze,” Kingdom said.
More so than Capote, Thomas was nearly as famous for being a lush as he was for his work. So it’s only fitting that Return Journey recreates one of the writer’s evenings during a tour in New York, while on his way to a bar — The White Horse Tavern, to be exact.
“The tours that he did in the U. S., the three- and- a- half tours, were all fairly late in his life, from ’ 50 to ’ 53,” Kingdom said. “I’m recreating one of the evenings of one of his later tours. For people who might not know much about him, I say and do things which introduce him in a good, but also in a funny way. And those who do know about him will be entertained by the way I’m doing it.”
• Kingdom’s depiction of Thomas goes back to 1990. In 1995, the show got a huge boost when Anthony Hopkins saw Kingdom’s performance as the Welsh poet and decided he wanted to direct. Dylan Thomas: Return Journey became the actor’s directorial debut. The show has since toured Britain, the U. S., Australia, and Ireland, as well as France, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. The Cultch shows come during the centenary of Thomas’ birth.
It’s a no- frills production, something that Hopkins emphasized.
“He ( Thomas) is not an actor,” Kingdom said. “He stands there four- square and does his poems. The only thing moving really is his gob, his mouth going up and down, and so you emphasize his obsession with words by not doing too much moving around. Tony ( Hopkins) wrote on the side of my script, ‘ I’m a genius, my brain is on fire. You’re about to see something extraordinary.’ That’s very much how I should feel as Thomas, waiting in the wings to come out onstage.”
Kingdom’s most recent role was as the Duke of Windsor. But he admits he has a soft spot for Capote, the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
“I love doing Truman Capote,” Kingdom said. “I enjoyed writing that, that’s all mine.”
With Dylan Thomas: Return Journey, he said, “sometimes, I can’t remember which is me and which is him. People ask where I got something from and I can’t remember. But with Capote, I know it’s something I wrote.”
He’s currently writing a play that will require him to embody the 19th century monarch Queen Victoria. Its angle?
“Well, she’s dead. So she’s living in the ultimate of reduced circumstances. And then she becomes a servant for the first of her life. Because she’s at my beck- andcall as a writer. She says, ‘ I find myself here, wherever here is, as a prolific writer myself, without a thought in my head of words to be spoken or movements to be made, rather in the manner of a servant awaiting orders and instructions.’”
• For the role, Kingdom wants to reduce his 5- foot- 6 frame to Victoria’s 4- foot- 11, which he envisions requiring him to stay seated in an adjustable chair on wheels, with a dress reaching to the floor. In general, though, he doesn’t choose roles that are too physically demanding.
“I think they would be challenging if I was doing people I couldn’t do,” he said. “I knew I could do Dylan’s voice and sound like him, and also I knew I could look and sound like Capote. I come onto the stage armed with the words he, Capote, might have said, and sounding like him, so I have everything in my favour. If I was doing someone I didn’t think I could do, if I was doing someone who was 6- foot- 3 — well I wouldn’t put myself in that position.”
Speaking of size, Kingdom recently visited Dylan Thomas’ childhood home in Swansea, Wales.
“I spent some time in August where he was born and where he lived with his parents, up until he was 19, and where he wrote a lot of his most famous things, including ‘ And death shall have no dominion,’ in his tiny little bedroom, it’s a box- room,” Kingdom said. “He used to say, ‘ You had to come out of the room to turn around.’”
• Asked what demons drove the poet, Kingdom says he believes it goes back to loss of innocence, and of childhood.
“He was a mother’s boy, really. And then, when he met Caitlin ( Macnamara), whom he married, they went to London, and it was quite an eye- opener. It was a different sort of life, a bohemian kind of life. Suddenly he was out of his comfort zone, really. And he was easily led astray. He was basically a craftsman, single- minded about his work, but the domestic side eluded him. He wasn’t very good with the day- to- day things.”
Would he have liked Dylan Thomas if he’d met him, or even as he portrays him onstage?
“I don’t know, I don’t know really,” Kingdom said. “Anyone when they’re drunk is a fantasy person. I’d like to have seen him when he was sober, I suppose. People he loved, and who loved him, he didn’t play- act around. I don’t think he had a big tolerance for alcohol. People wanted to get him drunk because they’d say, ‘ Oh, his stories are better when he’s drunk.’ It’s a bit of dilemma to be in. I think making booze the hero of his life is much to his discredit. I get sick and tired of all that.”