The amalgam, which premiered at the National Theatre of the Deaf in 2000 and is now enjoying a superlative production in a first-ever collaboration between BCT and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, seems seamless. Nearly all the beloved elements are present and accounted for (except, unaccountably, a personal favorite, surely the most useless of the “Useful Presents’’: “a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us’’). Burgess has managed, magically, to weave Thomas’s wisps of reminiscence into a compelling, cohesive story.
He has done so by taking a page from Tennessee Williams and framing the fragment as a memory play. The adult Dylan Thomas (played by Stephen Libby) introduces the yuletide scene as a flashback and stays onstage for most of it, occasionally even interacting with figures from the past - as when, for instance, some misremembered or disputed moment calls for a revisionary reenactment. Libby does a remarkable job summoning the late poet. He not only conveys Thomas’s musical, orotund speech patterns (under diction coach Christine Hamel, the entire cast achieves an impressive Welsh homogeneity), he even suggests a physical resemblance, skewing his mouth rightward, as the rich - and tongue-testing - torrent of poetry pours out.
Curly-haired Adam Freeman, who is in fact 9, plays the young Thomas naturally and engagingly. If he, as well as Linnea Schulz and Coleman Hirschberg (who play Dylan’s older sister and best friend, respectively) are any indication, the young thespians involved in BCT are getting awfully good training.
