Don't step on my blue serge suit!

Gwyn Thomas was a writer, raconteur, wit and schoolmaster and, while he once had a cult-following in the United States, his work has never become popular in Britain, outside Wales. Perhaps it is because, while drawing on universal themes, his context is a parochial one; he confines his plots almost entirely to the South Welsh industrial valleys in the early and middle years of the last century. Even within Wales his audience did not extend to the Welsh-speaking heartland, or to most of the more rarified pundits of Welsh literature. This was because he was an example of that strangest of all birds, a Welsh author writing in English about the condition of living in Wales. Today, undeservedly, his work is almost forgotten, whether in Wales or the world.

It was a pleasant shock, then, when in Cardiff recently, to discover a flyer for a new drama, based on  a collection of Gwyn Thomas' short stories "The Dark Philosophers", to be staged in a theatre in Newport. I bought tickets and on Friday last we  set off for that city to see a performance.

View from Cymmer Hill

Newport is an interesting phenomenon. It juggles the awkward facts that it is, geographically, closer to Chepstow than to Cymmer, historically, nearer to Monmouth than Glamorgan and, realistically, it is a bit of a cat in a kipper-box. An interesting place to choose, then, to stage a performance of a play based upon the work of a writer who said himself , "as soon as I get to Chepstow I feel very frightened."

The Riverfront (Glan yr afon)  Arts Centre houses the theatre, and we arrived early enough to buy some supper for ourselves. The menu was international; chicken fajitas and spaghetti bolognese clamoured for our attention beside brie-filled baguettes and "mouth-watering" panini.  Adding to this heady cosmopolitan ambience were the many spruced-up and well turned-out socialites, bon-viveurs and theatre-crowd types who, like so many gazelles or show-birds, disposed themselves around the foyer in elegant knots or careless agglomerations of chatter and self-assuredness.

We decided upon spicy (is there another kind?) chick-pea curry and yellow rice and moved to a bistro-style table in the foyer to await its delivery. Gwyn Thomas described his writing as "Chekhov with chips", and so perhaps this multi-cultural start to the evening was some sort of a portent.

Hardly had we begun to eat when a young woman, a little flustered and distracted, and talking urgently into her mobile phone, asked if she might join us at our little table. There were two empty seats, and so, of course, we agreed. As happens on these social occasions, we fell to talking and we discovered that she was the partner of the playwright and was, at this very moment, talking him in from the railway station to the theatre. Our little group of three was soon joined by a fourth (still not the playwright), a theatre director. He exhibited a healthy, and self-confessed, "south-west glow" and had travelled over from Bristol to see the play, for he and the playwright were colleagues.

Soon, we were all, severally of course, tucking into a serving of spicy chick-pea curry, and listening carefully for updates on the playwright's progress through Newport. The man himself arrived at length. He was a sunny-looking young fellow, quite ruddy, with a satchel and a green combat jacket, and he was clearly anxious for the play to get started. He thanked us for welcoming his partner to our table and was interested that I knew Gwyn Thomas' own play, "The Keep". He asked if I'd ever met Gwyn Thomas. I said that I hadn't, and he looked disappointed, but his partner smiled and ventured that she was sure I'd enjoy the play immensely. With a cheery, "Break a leg" we left his little party to find our seats in the auditorium.

The set was very effective. A dark space, the stage was occupied by a towering hill of old-fashioned wooden wardrobes, desks and chests of drawers. These became, at different times in the play, terraces of valleys-houses, hillsides, coffins and portals, and, too, they symbolised quite beautifully the domestic setting of Gwyn Thomas' work and the skeletons in closets that he often hangs out to air.

The play began ....

... and we left our seats furtively at the end, trying very hard to avoid meeting again with the playwright and his party, for it would probably have been embarrassing had we done so.

Quite how an ensemble can so thoroughly misinterpret and, therefore, misrepresent the genius of a writer is breathtaking. On this stage, Simeon is no longer a complex, brooding, enigma but a straightforward incestuous ram; Oscar is still vile, but the dark corners in the lives of those he squashes have been swept clean, and their own sinister cobwebs quietly disposed of. The result is that the pathos and wry humour of life's "big, sad, beautiful joke", bitter and sweet as the darkest chocolate, are overcome by sweet and sticky bathos and slapstick, and life is no longer funny.

A Commedia dell'Arte character, masked,  stalks the set throughout. As the action progresses, he walks among the characters, sometimes listening, sometimes teasing, sometimes telling them what they must say. That this Arleccino is intended to be the writer himself is undeniable, for he wears the unmistakable signature trilby hat and suit, but his purpose, other than to provide the glue that sticks the pastiche together, is unclear. He provides the suitably monstrous puppet-Oscar with its voice and takes part in an unnecessarily supercilious re-enactment of one of Gwyn Thomas' frequent television appearances. Maybe a theatrical metaphor is being dangled here. If so, we are, alas, either too short-sighted to see it, or too dull to understand it; perhaps both.

And, finally, what of  Walter, Ben and Arthur, the Dark Philosophers themselves? Perhaps they were too busy on this cold night, arguing over strong tea in the back room of Idomeneo's cafe, to make the complicated journey from Porth to Newport. Oh, but wasn't there a fourth among them? Ah yes, I remember, so there was ... and perhaps he was at Idomeneo's too, for though we searched, we could not find him at the Riverfront.