All the Christmases: A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.  Perf. Cerys Matthews.  BBC Radio 4, 25 December 2014.  Download on BBCiPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wgt8l until 25 January 2015.

Using the same set of reminiscences from Christmases past in Swansea – the town where Thomas was born and grew up – as the BBC Wales production of the same text (read by Matthew Rhys), this production offered a different version with specially composed music by Mason Lee.

Cerys Matthews’s performance was very different; rather than adopting Rhys’s more authoritative tone, she seemed more childlike, as if each new recollection of past Christmases transported her back into a mythical past where everyone enjoyed themselves, and the children could create their own fantasy-worlds of derring-do, interrupted only by such mundane rituals as meal-times.  Lee’s music, with its variety of melodies, functioned as a major protagonist in this production by setting up a dialogue with Matthews’s narration; on various occasions it “voiced” the feelings of the narrator’s friends, his relatives, and his muse.

Perhaps more dramatic than the BBC Wales production, but no less entertaining, it would be shame not to catch it before it is removed from the BBC iPlayer.