TIME passes on, as Dylan Thomas is fond of saying in his play for voices. One constant, however, has been the steady stream of talent that has blossomed under the guidance of John Cooper.

He first staged Under Milk Wood in the open air of York in 1996, returned to it in 1999 and has done so again in 2010 with another cast of remarkable young talents. Chris Lakin, Ella Gamble and Izaak Cainer are all bound for drama school this autumn, and Anastasia Crook is surely destined to follow suit in a few years’ time.

Cooper retains his 1996 patent for a no-frills Under Milk Wood, save for moving the location to under the willow tree in the Minster Residents’ Gardens. There he assembles seven chairs in an arc; a lectern for the Narrator; and a cast of seven, six of whom must play 50 roles between them, all dressed in black from their home wardrobes.

There is not one jot of make-up, nor a prop to be seen or heard. Instead, apart from percussion and Anastasia’s cornet, every sound effect is man-made: from the hiss of a kettle to the gurgle of a laboratory; from owls to a cockerel and yapping dogs to grass-chewing goats.

Chris Lakin sets the tone as the mellifluous narrator of Thomas’s 1954 account of a day in the life of a tiny Welsh fishing community, where an inversion of the name Llareggub would suggest that nothing much happens but in reality there is life aplenty in a day.

Cooper stalwart Mark McDonald, Tracy Thornley and a particularly impressive Joshua Mason Wood join Lakin, Cainer, Gamble and Crook for a spellbinding performance that is at once bawdy, witty and sad.

Cooper asks them to focus on voice and movement, and they respond with lyrical Welsh accents and well-drawn, precise and distinctive characterisations, whether sensuous, manic, drunken, naughty, salty or scared.

“Just love the words,” Thomas once advised a cast of American actors, and how Cooper’s company take that advice to their hearts too.

Under Milk Wood, A1 Theatre Productions, Minster Residents’ Gardens, York (or 41 Monkgate, if wet), until Saturday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 939 0015.