Drinking to success

The writer's new play The Head In The Jar features a period in the life of Caitlin Jones, the wife of Welsh poet and drinking fanatic, Dylan Thomas.

Caitlin (played by Gaylie Runciman) too was an alcoholic, a capricious creature who could fly into fits of rage as easily as she could dance on her lawn.

The lady, who died in 1994, had three children with Thomas (Stephen Clyde) and when he had affairs, she'd have her own revenge flings.

In short, this is not a woman who's perhaps not likely to be attractive to an audience. Why build a play around her?

"She was a woman in the forties and fifties at a time when it wasn't acceptable for a female to step out of line," says Deb.

"This was a woman who drank a lot, did cartwheels and spoke her mind.

"And I wanted to write about this creature who pushed against society. Dylan could be the raging mad drunk, and get away with it, but for her it wasn't so acceptable."

So she's a loud lady with a huge personality and a capacity for self destruction. But that hardly makes her a role model, or a force for good?

"I'm not interested if she was force for good," says the writer, in adamant voice. "I wanted to make her interesting."

Set in 1973, the story focuses on Irish dancer Caitlin's double addiction to alcohol and her obsessive love with the poet, who died twenty years earlier.

Caitlin rewinds on their descent into hell, from the hedonism of thirties London to her isolation and poverty in forties Wales.

Can she survive her painful memories? Will she pick up the drink and face her own destruction or will she confront her demons?

Deb Jones, who grew up in Wales, is ideally placed to write about the wife of the legend. She fell in love with the work of Dylan Thomas when, as a schoolgirl she read Under Milk Wood.

"I loved the language and the rhythm of it. Then as I got older I read about Caitlin and I was amazed by her. I was really interested in this woman who didn't give a damn about what people thought.

"But I didn't want to write her life story, I needed to find a way to come up with a play about her."

Deb reckons she found the through line in which to create the narrative.

"It's a story of survival," she maintains. "Caitlin lost the two things which made her life interesting, the love of her life and alcohol."

But the play is being staged in Glasgow, where drink has destroyed countless lives, wrecked almost every family. Why should an audience care about a Welsh woman who poured the best part of her life into a glass and drank it?

The writer is clear about her intent; "After Dylan died (aged 39) Caitlin was institutionalised, but then decided to get sober. She went on to live in Italy, met a new love and have another child. She turned her life around.

"She lived till she was eighty one. And I hope the audience will empathise with her. I hope some of them will see the journey she goes on as positive.

Deb Jones believes she understands Glasgow audiences. The playwright has lived in the city for fifteen years.

"I came up here in the early nineties in Spanky The Scarecrow and fell in love with the city," says the lady who also devises and performs her own work and has already won the David MacLennan Award for new playwrights.

Yet, she reveals there's another facet to the play which certainly offers universal intrigue. Dylan and Caitlin Thomas were two creatures who should never have been together.

The dynamic between them was always self-destructive, their shared dependence on drink, their need to shock the other by having sex outside the relationship.

"He was serially unfaithful to her," says the writer. "And her infidelity was in response to this.

"But I loved this idea of exploring why such a couple could be together in such an explosive relationship.

"For me, it's very much like the Liz Taylor- Richard Burton relationship, an incredible passion yet it produces emotions so strong that the end is an inevitability."

So we're drawn to such creatures?

"I hope so," says Deb. "I don't think Caitlin was particularly likeable but that doesn't stop her being amazing."

€¢ The Head In The Jar, Oran Mor, until Saturday.