TUESDAY night was Clwyd Theatre Cymru's first performance of their 60th anniversary production of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood outside his homeland, and afterwards rather endearingly the cast was enquiring whether it had been too Welsh.

What has devolution come to? This was one Welsh assembly that was wholly welcome in England, and surely the joy of Thomas's text, so butter rich with eliding adjectives, is that it is as Welsh as Welsh Cakes, or Welsh-English as some have called it.

The accents may be Welsh, the setting may be the fictional Llareggub, a small Welsh town by the sea, and Thomas's poetry may be as rhythmic as a Welsh valley, but the behaviour, hopes and dreams of blind captain cat, Mog Edwards the draper and his sweetheart Miss Price, Dai Bread and Mrs Dai Bread One and Two, NoGood Boyo, landlord Sinbad Sailor and especially Polly Garter, the single mother with a handful of children, could be matched in any town, Whitby for example, 60 years ago, or today.

Terry Hands, who ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for two decades, directs this revival with, above all, a love of language that nods to Under Milk Wood's radio play roots but also gloriously acknowledges one of theatre's greatest tools.

In the rush to embrace multi-media new technology and borrow from cinema in particular, theatre is in danger of watering down its unique qualities of storytelling, but Hands places the utmost faith in the power of Thomas's words.

Listening to those words flowing golden and full of wonder, amusement and revelation from the mouth of Owen Teale, in the narrator's role of First Voice, is likely to be a verdant verbal joy unparalleled on the York stage this year.

Teale does not tower over Hands's delightful production, however. In Fiftiesjacket, waistcoat and trousers, he hovers seamlessly among the terrific all-Welsh ensemble cast , who are attired in muted browns, beige, khaki and green to enable them to move swiftly between multiple roles and from chair to chair on a circular set design that echoes the curve of Llareggub's fishing harbour.

It feels unfair to pick out performances but Katie Elin-Salt's beautifully sung Polly Garter, Steven Mee's Organ Morgan and Sinbad Sailors, Richard Elfyn's poison-plotting Mr Pugh and Sophie Melville's contrasting women, fruity and frosty alike, are especially enjoyable.

Every detail has been choreographed and constructed beautifully by perfectionist Hands in his ever-evolving, ever-revolving production, with its rising tide of humour and passions. Movement is constant but there is never any blocking, and the sense of Teale's First Voice pulling the strings is typified is by fly-killing handclaps to close the first half and open the second.

Thomas creates the pictures in your mind with his mellifluous flow of words, but Martyn Bainbridge's set design is a lovely companion piece. The aforementioned circular framework is matched by a round map cum weathervane of Llareggub's houses and harbour, stood on its side, with house lights coming on and off and the sun travelling around the perimeter on the play's journey from the "dreams of the night to the rhythm of the day".

There is llareggub excuse not to see this brilliant show.