Thomas’ Prose Is Like Poetry to Actor’s Ears

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. “The language carries the images along like a boat that sails the waters.”

Bell is so enamored of the great Welsh poet’s lyrical use of the language that he has written in his script some lines by another poet, Hart Crane, to remind him of what he wants to convey:

The imaged word it is

that holds hushed willows

anchored in its glow.

It is the unbetrayed reply

whose accent no farewell can know.

“The imaged word was so important to both of them,” says Bell, an Orange resident and reference librarian at the Anaheim and Santa Ana public libraries. “There are other parallels too. Hart Crane died young, just like Dylan Thomas, only younger. They both burned brightly.”

Crane died at 32, a suicide; Thomas died, reportedly of alcoholism, at 39.

Despite the setting of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” in Thomas’ native village of Swansea, Bell tries not to affect a strong Welsh accent. That’s because, contrary to what you’d expect, Thomas did not have one.

“He left Wales at 18 and went to live in London,” Bell explains. “If you listen to his recordings, you can hear that he speaks standard [British] English, without the pronounced Welsh lilt.”

Of course, when Bell doubles as Thomas’ father, D.J., his lines suddenly acquire the graceful upward curl at the endings of phrases that characterizes a Welshman’s speech.

If they didn’t, Wendy Cullum, who plays Auntie Hannah, would correct him. Cullum not only comes from Wales, she’s from Swansea. “It’s quite a nice coincidence,” Bell says. “She’s sort of our vocal monitor.”

You’d think, between Crane and Cullum, that Bell might feel a little hemmed in by so much advice. But apparently not. He is even grateful for a reminder sent from London by Mitchell, who saw the Laguna production last year.

“Adrian wanted us to remember that the Welsh are not all sweetness,” Bell says. “They’re a rough lot. They’re into rugby. They’re coal miners. I think he wanted us to be sure to bring out the human foibles in the characters as well as the sweetness and likableness of the piece.”

* “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” continues through Dec. 24 at the Laguna Playhouse’s Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m.; Dec. 22, 7:30 p.m.; Dec. 24, 4 p.m. $20-$35. (714) 497-2787.