Sheringham Little Theatre

Sheringham Little Theatre

Blue suit, a borrowed shirt, curly crown and soft-shoes befitting a crumpled clown, Bob Kingdom as Dylan Thomas charm-wrapped a Sheringham seaside throng in this 21st-anniversary farewell UK tour performance.

Kingdom inhabits like a glove the Welsh genius who lived hard and died young, taking us on a whistle-down-the-wind tour of Thomas's life and work: the pub-crawling charabanc outing of his Swansea childhood; a nostalgia-laden return to the bars and cafes of his youth; the drunken-haze years; then the American lecture circuit that sucks him dry.

He also gives us some of the best loved poems: Fern Hill; And death shall have no dominion; Do not go gentle into that good night.

Thomas was a man passionately in love with the shape and sound of words, who wrote two thirds of his output in his late teens and finished Under Milk Wood within a month of his death.

For those who already know Dylan Thomas, A Return Journey is like embracing an old friend; for those who don't, it could be the start of a wonderful romance.