FRONT AND CENTRE
The legendary actress Siân Phillips returns to the stage in Under Milk Wood
‘To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black…’ Siân Phillips was 20, when, working in Cardiff, she first heard these words rumble out of her wireless in Richard Burton’s resonant tones, stopping her in her tracks. It was 1954, and they were the opening lines of a drama, newly commissioned by the BBC, called Under Milk Wood. ‘Nothing like it had ever been performed before,’ the grande dame of British theatre says now, with evident affection for a moment that is still clear in her memory. ‘It was free-thinking, daring, thrilling. And tremendously exciting.’
Since then, Phillips has starred in ‘around five’ versions, on both stage and screen, of Dylan Thomas’ famous play chronicling 24 hours in the life of the fictional Welsh seaside village of Llareggub. With two narrators and highly idiosyncratic residents, Under Milk
Wood is beloved for being as bawdy as it is beautiful, and as peculiar as it is poignant. This summer at the National Theatre, Phillips is stepping into a new character’s pair of shoes: those of Mrs Garter who, in the actress’ words, ‘just loves having babies, but can’t quite limit herself to one man’.
Before training at Rada, where she was in the same cohort as Diana Rigg and Glenda Jackson, Phillips studied at Cardiff University, reading the news for BBC Wales on the side to earn money. It was in the studios there that she crossed paths with Thomas, when they did a reading together for a poetry programme. ‘I was just a child, really, and he was adorable, so nice to me – holding the door open, keeping an eye out. The perfect gent,’ she says. ‘He didn’t notice me again that evening, but I sat in a corner of the bar with an orange juice, watching him and the famous raconteur Gwyn Thomas sitting together, telling each other stories, making each other roar with laughter. It was just wonderful.’
Since then, Phillips has brought her magnetic elegance to performances in the West End, RSC productions, films including 1964’s Becket, playing opposite her then-husband Peter O’Toole. She has starred in television shows from the Seventies series I, Claudius to Le Carré adaptations and, most recently, this year’s compelling final series of the Carmarthenshire drama Keeping Faith. Along the way, she has received a damehood and written two memoirs, which are being republished in August. At 88, she still has a twinkle in her eye that sparkles as brightly as ever. Anyone in pursuit of a post-show autograph after Under Milk Wood this summer may wish to make haste: Phillips is out of those stage doors like lightning. ‘I’m usually on the night bus looking down at the audience leaving the theatre as it pulls away,’ she says with an infectious, contralto giggle. ‘Or sometimes they’re on the upper deck with me, and we chat about the play all the way home, which is lovely too. Either way, there’s no hanging about.’ cb ‘Under Milk Wood’ is at the National Theatre (www. nationaltheatre.org.uk) from 16 June to 24 July.