This
may seem a ludicrously short review of a production I’d consider a
“must see,”
but Our Town
by Thornton Wilder remains a deceptively simple
affair—well, a
mostly simple
affair—in David
Cromer’s new
production, imported
from Chicago. In newly staging this look at small-town life
(a
microcosmic stand-in for the world at large), Mr. Cromer has fashioned
a playing
space surrounded by audience on three sides; with a perimeter path for
actors
between rows one and two. He himself plays the Stage Manager who guides
us
through the evening, with understated, easy confidence and the mild air
of a
cautionary schoolteacher who wants the lesson to be fun,
but not at
the expense of the lesson itself.
He
has surrounded himself with a cast who are, by and large, unknown
enough
and—here and there—off-center enough to seem as if they are indeed
just folks rather than actors, most of them in mildly symbolic
rehearsal
clothing, as if they’ve just entered the theatre off the street. Even
as
if—this will sound like it’s not a compliment at all when in fact it’s
only that—some of them were plucked from the ranks of
community
theatre. Not because there’s anything amateurish about them, but
because
they’re unvarnished, such that you could believe they were cast because
the
available talent pool had this, which
is close, rather than that, which
would have been exact, with sincerity standing in for perfect
archetype. As if
to show that Our Town not only
works with minimal props and rough materials, but with make-do casting
as well.
(Again, it’s not make-do
casting, it’s savvy casting of gifted people, but the fine line of
tacit
illusion creates the totally authentic
sense of a small town community bringing its small town sensibility to that of the
play.) As
described, it may sound like a hat on top of a hat, but as executed
it’s a
perfect merge of worlds.
Then
there’s Act Three. The graveyard act. In which a prematurely deceased
Emily
goes back to visit and relive an ordinary day in her life.
And
here’s where Cromer does…this amazing thing. This astonishingly
brilliant
masterstroke that has never been done before, that would seem to be
antithetical to the notion of Our Town, but that in fact just brings it on home
in a way that is so profound,
so moving, so completely memorable, that from here on in, directors
will be
stealing it for their own productions. And if I tell you what it is, if
I even
hint at it, it’d be akin to spoiling a mystery by telling you whodunit.
You
wouldn’t think Our Town could
contain such a secret…oh, but it does; and I plead with you: read no
other
reviews, lest someone in his arrogance, pedantry or simple myopia,
decides to
give it away; and stay away from internet chats, gossip and dish about
it.
You’ll want the rush of discovery to be total.
And
that’s all I’ll say. Our Town. Wilder.
Cromer. Barrow Street Playhouse. Go. Now.
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