Guy is an actor, theatre director, Olivier award-winning producer and a writer. Of Welsh and Italian parentage, he was raised in Port Talbot and London. He credits his love of theatre and literature to his uncle, Richard Burton, who introduced him to the poetry of Dylan Thomas in 1981 while driving Burton to Switzerland in a Mini Cooper S!
Guy gained a Joint Honours degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Cardiff University, emigrated to the USA in 1982 and, following stints in the restaurant business and as a carpenter, studied Drama at UCLA and started acting in Hollywood in 1985. Four years later he returned to the UK and attended LAMDA – The London Academy of Drama Arts – after which he formed his own theatre company, Guy Masterson Productions in 1992.
In 1994 he made a name for himself with an extraordinary, never-before-attempted, solo version of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood having learned the entire text while doing a nine-month stint in the West End in Robert Lyndsay’s Cyrano. The show was an immediate hit when it premiered in Edinburgh, and he has since given over 2000 performances all around the world.
Guy first appeared at the Arts Festival in 2015 with his second award-winning Dylan Thomas work, Fern Hill, but when Trustees saw him perform Under Milk Wood at Ludlow Assembly Rooms in 2024, they were mesmerised, and vowed to bring him back in 2026!
He is globally regarded as one of the finest exponents of solo theatre and especially of the works of Dylan Thomas. Alongside numerous other theatrical performances at home and abroad, he has presented over 150 shows in 31 seasons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and still holds the box office record for theatre at the Fringe – The Odd Couple, with Bill Bailey and Alan Davies, in 2005 – and has won numerous awards over the years.
Under Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas’s most famous and enduring work and is now translated into over 50 languages. A favourite since its first broadcast with Richard Burton in January 1954, it brilliantly conjures the intimate dreams and innermost desires of the inhabitants of Llareggub (read it backwards!) – a fictional coastal village somewhere in Wales.
“Masterson rises to the challenge with tremendous sensitivity and panache. It’s a feat of multiple characterisation, getting right inside the words, swelling them to their fullest extent while stopping short of over inflation. Masterson achieves this through a combination of impeccable timing, vocal dexterity and precise physical control. His smooth shifts in modulation and phrasing, his energetic yet carefully judged additions of gesture and movement, flesh out perfectly Thomas’s balance of sweep and intimacy, tenderness and menace, poignancy and absurdity. His characters are assiduously delineated through adjustments in accent, inflection and mannerism. Thomas’s bewildering descriptive wordplay is beautifully paced and weighted, frequently punctured by a shrewdly timed drop into pathos and laughter. It’s an absorbing, richly entertaining venture.” – The Guardian
Guy has a Website 
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