By Nick Dermody BBC News Online

Lots of bottle: Helen Griffin as Caitlin Thomas on a good day in Mike Kenny's Caitlin

Both productions star a Swansea actress as Caitlin Macnamara, the bohemian dancer who shared the poet's life and artistic ambition even beyond his early death 50 years ago this autumn.

One offers a hard-bitten but often funny account of the joy and jealousies in their relationship, from the moment they met in a Soho pub until he died of alcohol poisoning on a reading tour of America.

The other gives a poetic, impressionistic portrait of the volatility and even violence - suggesting that Wales' most famous bard was a battered husband - which powered Caitlin from youthful idealism to a bitter old age.

The Thomas' marriage was a notoriously tempestuous and drunken partnership.

Both had affairs and both laid claim to an artistic licence to justify their behaviour - but only one had the talent.

She came from an artistic background and gave her wild nature few limits, while he immersed himself in booze as much as in his writing.

Helen Griffin, who starred in the Swansea-based car crime caper, Twin Town, gives a compelling performance of Caitlin's side of the marriage, in Caitlin, written by Mike Kenny.

Veiled verse: Angela Colderick delivers the poetry of The Same Boat, by Phil Bowen

The monologue, previously at Cardiff's Sherman Theatre, gives an honesty to Caitlin's account of how she moved from being a muse for Thomas, and others, to a drunken, jealous wife and widow.

The Same Boat, written by poet and playwright Phil Bowen, and starring Angela Colderick, offers a more Thomas-like version of her life and love.

It gives a lyrical, but still frank, portrait of how her attractiveness to men - she was in an affair with the painter Augustus John when she met Thomas - brought her agony as much as attention.

It has been performed in Laugharne, the west Wales village where the Thomases were living when he died and where Caitlin chose to be buried after living in Italy for many years.

David Woolley, literature officer at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, said visitors to the fringe should see both productions and make up their own mind.

Passionate pairing: the Thomases are buried together in Laugharne, west Wales

He said: "The plays are very typical of their relationship - he could not live with her and he could not live without her.

"I think she married him because he was an artist but was jealous because she didn't have any talent, but still sacrificed a lot to help him in his art.

"They are a typical contradiction but, through it all, I think they loved each other."