Spoilers ahoy!
Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town shouldn't work. Or so common theatrical wisdom goes. It has no real "plot" so to speak. No murder mystery, no drawn out romance against great odds, nobody feels the looming threat of bankruptcy nor is any marriage in danger.
It remains a classic, one well worth the watch, for everything else about its very real story. Wilder wrote myths out of the mundane. He wove a tapestry of life that we recognize. Because we recognize it, we see ourselves there, on stage, walking around and doing homework, gossiping or putting up with gossip, looking around and trying to figure out what to do. Falling in love with all the simple happiness and terror that entails.
We are literally introduced to the small, very ordinary town of Grover's Mill via the Stage Manager (Neil Thompson), a kind of folksy Greek Chorus, a friendly Rod Serling, a nice guy who's telling the story. Most productions make a big deal about who plays this part, given it is the largest role and the one who communicates most directly with the audience. Or seems to.
In this show, the attention is much more centered on the George (Casey Alcoser) and Emily (Faye Reynolds), whom we meet as children, when they are friends as well as next-door-neighbors. Later we see they have fallen in love by the time they get ready to graduate high school. Their wedding day, brief as it may seem, is a Big Deal, even if nothing particularly notable happens. Just a nice ceremony between two young people who want to share their lives together, will soon be taking over a farm. In fact they even have two children.
We care about them, very much. If we do not, the play will not work. To be sure plenty of other characters wander around stage--George's parents as well as Emily's (Cynthia Payo, Fox Carney, Larry Toffler, Kathi Chaplar) for example, the town's constable (Rob Schaumann) and a busybody named Mrs. Soames (Dianne Travis), plus Mr. Stimson (Tom Allen) who is the most tragic character I suppose.
Director Mareli Mitchel-Shields does a fine job of making the ensemble seem to be a bunch of pretty unremarkable people in the same unremarkable town--yet by their basis humanity worthy of remarks. Here lies the key to the play, and also to this production--belief in these people and this place. More than belief, we also feel kinship. Especially George and Emily. It seems in this world--and in many ways I mean the one wherein we ourselves dwell--the fact these two people found each other is the sweetest, most wonderful thing. And most tragic. For we are not immortal.
This cut deep.
At the end of the play, we shift our focus away from the living to the dead, and we follow Emily as she goes into her grave and starts to learn what it is like to be dead. She finds it frightening and sad, but not in the way she expected. Nor do we--and keep in mind I've seen and read this play before. Yet in the moment of it happening, it is all made fresh once more. Which is as much as any production can hope to achieve--on Broadway, on the West End in London, at the Globe Theatre all those centuries ago, much less the great theatre festivals of Athens.
Bravo to the Group Rep for this production, and the cast members including Jeff Dinnell, Christina Conte, Noah Dittmer, Steve Rozic, Lew Snow, Daisy Staedler, Cathy Diane Tomlin, and John C. Woodley.
Our Town completes its run Sunday December 21 as I write this (have cut it far too close, alas) at The Group Rep 10900 Burbank Blvd N. Hollywood, CA 91601.
