The Brag

Zoe Norton Lodge & Vanessa Hughes / Photo by Isabella Melody

Bambina Borracha
Sydney’s most exciting theatre collective tackle Dylan Thomas.
By Nell Greco

Back in the olden days – before television had been invented, and when theatres were too expensive to visit – folks used to crowd around their wireless and listen to radio plays to get their kicks (or so I’m told). Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood was, I believe, a family favourite – even the kids loved it! For their latest production, Sydney theatre collective Bambina Borracha have re-animated Thomas’ play for the third dimension, spear-headed by Zoe Norton Lodge and Vanessa Hughes.

Set in the town of Llareggub (bugger all if you reverse it) in Wales, Under Milk Wood is Thomas’ warm-hearted reincarnation of the people and places of his homeland. A narrator provides insight into the dreams and mind-wanderings of the townspeople – from the now-blind Captain Cat (who dreams of his deceased crew) to the twice-widowed Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard (who still talks to her deceased husbands, ordering them around the house); and Lord Cut-Glass, who “in his kitchen full of time listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for each year of his loony age, and watches…”

As a child, Norton Lodge’s Welsh father would read her the play before bed; Hughes, meanwhile, has previously experimented with the stories in Under Milk Wood, producing and directing short films from the text. Their collaboration for this production was a chance to let their imaginations run, somewhat unfettered, in the third dimension.

“We’ve got a lot of audio recordings, we’ve got a lot of projections and also there’s me jumping around!” exclaims Norton Lodge – who will be embodying and exorcising in excess of 60 characters on stage. “Some [of the play’s] characters are tough nuts to crack, like, really tough,” says Hughes, who directs the production. “It took us some time to come to terms with [Lord Cut-Glass] because he’s absolutely mad – schizophrenic or something,” laughs her partner-in-crime.

Even as a radio play, the task of defining this menagerie of distinct characters and voices has proved challenging to past casts – so what is Norton Lodge’s secret? “I’m the queen of the stupidest ideas,” she insists, “and you just always have to throw them out there, until people laugh at you and then move on. Sometimes little nuggets of [comedic] gold pop through!”

Both ladies have been working on this project for some years. Having been high school buddies, it was only a matter of time before the two were combining their talents in a theatre. Sydney University Drama Society (SUDS) is where they first got the chance – but once their degrees were completed, they realised they didn’t want the fun to stop there. Along with co-founders Tim Spencer, Cait Harris and Bryony Weiss, they formed their own production company, Bambina Borracha, in 2007.

“We kind of realised really early on that there was this huge gap between what we were doing and community theatre – and even independent theatre in Sydney,” says Norton Lodge. Hughes adds, “there aren’t many companies that do what we do, or have open auditions or an open submissions process.”

In just over two years, Bambina Borracha has been nominated for the Sydney Theatre Awards (Best Independent Production – Beyond the Neck, 2009) and won the Adelaide Fringe Festival People’s Choice Award for Words They Make With Their Mouths (2010). Under Milk Wood, however, represents a unique challenge.
“I’ve definitely never done anything this ambitious,” Hughes admits.

What: Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas
When: July 1-18
Where: Sidetrack Theatre
More: www.bambinaborracha.com