Michael Sheen is to direct and star in a special stage performance of Dylan Thomas' play Under Milk Wood.

Sheen will perform alongside Scandal actress Kate Burton, the daughter of late actor Richard Burton, during the one-off production at the 92nd Street Y community centre in New York, where the play first premiered in 1953.

Sheen will read the part of First Voice, the role Thomas played during the original read-through of the drama about the residents of a Welsh fishing village.

The free performance will be broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales on 26 October (14), the eve of the centenary of Thomas's birth.

Sheen says, "To perform it again and give it new life in the same place where it was first born really, then that's incredibly thrilling and very moving...

"And for it to go out at the same time on the radio in Wales, knowing that everyone in Wales will be able to listen to it at the same moment as people in New York are able to sit and listen to it as well, it's terrific".

Sheen took on the First Voice role for a BBC Wales TV adaptation in May (14).

Richard Burton also played the part in the 1972 film version opposite his onoff wife Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

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