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Home , Our Town, Our Town (opera)

Welcome Back to Grover's Corners

'' never left the stage, but this season's productions are finding sharp new angles BY LORI ANN LASTER

AMERICAN MAY/JUNE ike many Americans, I first encountered 's Our Town during my pre-teens. I was crammed into a middle school auditorium with a couple of hundred annoyed eighth graders to watch the great American classic be performed by fellow stu- dents—iiicliidin£r my younger sister Amy in the role of Rcbecai. Dressed in a blue gingham dress, in pigtails, gazing up at the cnnstruc'tion-paper moon, bristling with excitation and nervousness, she called out, voice cracking: "Jane Oofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; ; United States of America.. ..Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; theKarth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God^that's what it said on the envelope." I immediately turned to the kid next to me and whispered, "What the hell does that mean?"

1 wore dark eye makeup and had a penchant for rebellion. My OÎ Our Tn-wmná the genius of its author. "Observers are finally dis- response to Wilder's "life of a village against the life of the stars" covering that, like an iceberg, two thirds of Thornton Wilder is under was to instantly dismiss it as ¡ust a sepia-toned postcard from an water" Indeed, Wilder is the only writer to win a Pulitzer Prize both insignifieant turn-of-the-eentury New îlampshire town^a dull for drama (twiee, for Our 7oïiin and ) ana fiction portrait of laconic Yankees coming of age, falling in love, getting (The Bridge of San Luis Rey), and his influence on acclaimed ilramatists married and dying. I'ccnagc courtship over ice-cream sodas and the who came later—Lanford Wilson, John Guare and Romulus Linney, provincial delight of the smell ot heliotrope in the moonlight was a for starters—is profound. Yet, it's not uncommon for the play to be little too saccharine for my tastes, despite the intrigue of a magical disregarded as a dusty, sentimental classic and its scribe dismissed Stage Manager who seemed to have the limits of time and space at his asa bathetic idealist, fingertips. A decade later, in college, I grimaced when I saw the play When Our Town was first staged at the MeCarter Theatre in on the syllahus of my required Fnglish class. But when I picked up Princeton, NJ., in , in an otherwise negative review, Our 'low» and read it beneath the Ilickering light of my dorm room, l-'iiricry remarked, "It probably represents an all-time high in experi- I was shocked. Was this bold, unflinchingly philosophical, intricate mental theatre." When it moved to Henry Miller's Theatre in New look at the human condition even the same play? York a month later, Brooks Atkinson wrote in the Neiv York Times., This season, IVt talked to artists at a diverse group of six theatres "Our Town has escaped from the formal barrier of modern theatre.... across the country that are all producing Our Town—and, by virtue of Under the leisurely monotone of the production there is a fragment •A range of innovative approaches and interpretive twists, refusing tn of the iniinortal truth." let audiences dismiss it as a nostalgic hymn to small-town life. This A bare stage, no props, the use of mime, breaking the fourth past fall the play ran eoncurrently at Two River Theater Company wall, dismantling the unities of time and place—these were radically in Red Bank, NJ., helmed by artistic director Aaron Posner; Indiana innovative devices that astounded audiences at a time when kitchen- Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis, directed by Peter Amster; and sink realism dominated the serious stage, and boulevard comedies and Connecticut's Hartford Stage, directed by Gregory Boyd. Three melodrama proliferated. Influenced by his Pluropean counterparts and more productions follow this spring and summer: The Hypocrites of the techniques of Shakespeare and the Greeks, Wilder was eager to Chicago mounts the play through June 8, directed by ; abandon the box sets and realistic props that were ubiquitous on the it opens at Pbiladelphia's Arden Theatre Company May 22, overseen post-World War I American stage. "I began to feel tbat the theatre by artistic director TerrenceJ. Nolan; and Chay Yew directs the play was not only inadequate," wrote Wilder, "it was evasive; it did not wish at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ash land J une 4-Oct. II. to draw upon its deeper potentialities.... It aimed to be soothing," It "We're in the dawn of this play's golden age," believes Tappan was by removing the diversion of realistic clutter and tapping into Wilder, the playwright's literary executor and nephew, as he watches the imagination of audiences that Wilder strove to make what was growing numbers of professional theatres rediscover the complexity onstage reilectthe verities of life: "Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind—not in things, not in seenery." Oitr Town was the vehicle Wilder used to not only eliminate the obtrusive bric-a-brac of scenery and props but to synthesize life to its barest elements: WliHe projecting the façade of the specific—the quotidian lives of two young New Englanders, F.niily and George, According to Tappan Wilder, and their Grover's Corners neighbors—Oz/r Town uses its deceptively it's widely believed that standard three-act structure to reflect the universal cycle of life. In the first act, "The Daily Life," adolescent F.niily and George get Our Town is performed schooled and grow up. The second act is "Love and Marriage," in which the two fall in love and are happily wed. Act 3—"I reckon you "at least once each night can guess what that's about," muses the Stage Manager, the play's somewhere in this country." omnipresent guide, as the inevitability of death (and speculations alwiut its metaphysical consequences) move to the fore. By constructing the play in this symbolic manner. Wilder was able to transcend the boundaries of the play's specific world to give his audience a glimpse of the universal and eternal. From left, Wynn Harmon, Joe Binder, Stephen D'Ambrose So how did such a pioneering and revolutionary work fade into and Erin Weaver in Our Town, directed by Aaron Posner, picturesque Americana, reminiscent ot Norman Rockwell? In some at Two River Theater Company in Red Bank, N.J. ways, the play is a victim of its own success. After its startling Broatlway MAY/JUNEOP AMERICANTHEATRE !• The company of Indiana Repertory Theatre's Our Town, directed by Peter Amster. premiere, Oin- Toii'n took on the pntiiia of a beloved American classic, with scripts in hands, while the Stage Manager commented on the and when it became available for production in 1939, with its large cast topography of the town and the background of its inhabitants—which, and low budgetary demands, it exploded onto the amateur stage—the in the context ofthe rehearsal framework, took on new tneaning as play was reportedly performed in more than 795 cotTiniunities in less dramaturgical source material. than a year. The show has also had a healthy life on the professional Amster craftily molded moments throughout Act 1 that solidi- stage, enjoying regular revivals both on Broadway and at high-priifile fied the rehearsal concept. When Mr. Webb (boisterously played by regional theatres—most recently at Connecticut's Westport Country Charles Goad) arrived late to give his sociopolitical report on Grover's Playhi)use In 2002, featuring superstar , and Lincoln Corners, a wigless Mrs. Webb (Manon Halliburton) ran on stage Center Theater in 1988-89 in a Tony-winning production with actor attempting to cover for her tardy cn-actor. "He'll lie here in a minute," and raconteur . There are several film and TV versions she stammered, "he just cut his hand while he was eatin' an apple." (the first of which was produced by Sol Lesser just two years after the This actual line of dialogue, usually uttered as a literal explanation, play's premiere), and it has been transformed, under the same name, here became a clumsy comic excuse—revealed a second later when a into such genres as , with music by and libretto by toilet flushed offstage and the disheveled actor rushed on. At the end J.D. McClatchy; ballet, by noted choreographer Philip Jerry; and ofthe 6rst act, tbe Stage Manager (Robert Elliott) abruptly stopped a musical for television, with . According to Tappan addressing the aetors and turned his attention directly to the audience Wilder, it's widely believed that Our Tiwn is performed "at least once for the first time, describing how Our Town was going to be included each night somewhere iti this country." in 3 time capsule. By breaking the fourth wall here rather than at the beginning ofthe play Amster ignited the profundity of Wilder's text BECAUSE OF THIS, MANY OF THE ARTISTIC DIRECTORS and made the trope of direct address powerful and immediate. For I talked to weren't surprised that the inclusion oiOtir Town in their the restof the evening, the audience listened to the Stage Manager's schedules was met with rolling eyes, accusations of playing it safe, and words with new ears. the ever-popular objection, "I saw it in high school." "People think The rehearsal idiom honored Onr Town's Brechtian facets and they know the play, but they just don't," contends director Boyd, who, Wililer's aversion to realism. The |)ulling away ot a layer of tabrica- like his colleagues who are revisiting the play this season, is dedicated tion from the theatrical act reinforced the audience's awareness that to dispelling misgivings ahout its relevance and acknowledging the it was seeing a play, a symbolic representation of life, not life itself, nuances of its prismatic depth. Each ofthe six productions is, in fact, and helped to crystallize Wilder's allegorical microcosm ot human offering new angles of insight into this familiar script. existence. As a whole, Amster's approach compelled audiences for That was certainly the case in Indianapolis, where IRT guest whom the play lay cobwebbed in memory to greet it as an entirely director Amster delivered an enlightening exegesis ofthe play by different entity. ".Audiences come with a certain nostalgia, but they staging the first act in the framework of a rehearsal for the original also come with a certain condescension," says Amster. "I wanted to 1^38 production. Resurrecting Our Town's hare stage, with footlights see if 1 could find a way to make tbat empty space new again." down front and radiators lining tbe back wall, Amster's production Two River Theater Company's Posner also strove to make audi- began with the cast playing actors of the 1930s, dressed to perform ences "hear it fresh," His production featured bunraku-style puppets as Grover's Corners characters and sitting at a large rehearsal tahle in the roles ofthe supporting townspeople and a thirtysomething

AMERICANTHrATPF MAY/JUNE"« , diiected by Greijory Boyd dt Hartford Stage in Connecticut.

Stage Manager, played by Doug Hará—whom Posner describes as members would often insist they saw the puppets' mouths and faces neither "iinri-Stage Manager" (as he fhanicterizes the late Spalding moving—"which, oi course, they never did." Ciray's performance) nor the "Mr. Peppcridge Farm" characterization The compelling imagery offered in the Two River production that has sometimes diluted the Impact of the role. drew the eerie undertones of the play's final graveyard scene to the A dynamic seven-inemlwr cast worked as an ensemble to bring the surface, fully unveiling its pathos. Wooden hutches, representing villagers to life through puppetry. Professor Willard, tor example— tombstones, loomed in a corner of the thrust stage overgrown with about three feet tall with a puff of wild white hair, wearing spectacles, grass. A stone-faced Mrs. Gibbs (Maureen Sillinian) sat in front of a pinstriped vest and bow tie—was agilely manipulated by joe Binder her tombstone, and in the foreground, Kmily (Krin Weaver) was (who played Cieorge), while actor Stephen D'Ambrose (who doubled dressed in her pristine wedding gown. The puppets, now sprawled as Dr. Gibbs) gave him the idiosyncratic voice of a pedantic man lifelessly in front of their tombstones or posed on the angled sides of enthused to hear his own thoughts out loud. Masterfully designed the hutches, no longer walked and talked as Fmily does—with no one Ity Aaron Oomie, each puppet had distinct features that animated its animating them, they were empty husks, corporeal symbols for the character's personality. Posner was able to use this ancient art form hopeful spirit that swiftly dwindles when one passes over to death. to serve VVilder's modern gctal of freeing tbe stage from the shackles The use of puppetry gave this scene an uncanny resonance. of realism and to give the production, in Posner's words, "a level of Our Town also presents a tailor-made opportunity for building t lieatricality that breaks it open so that people can invest it with their stronger ties with a community. Now in his first season at Two River, own imaginations." He adds that, after the performance, audience Posner used the play as a way to literally shake the hand.s of his new neighbors. Before performances, actors in costume mingled with tbe audience. Actual audience members (instead of cast members) participated in the scene in which editor Webb takes questions from "There is something about the the audience after his sociopolitical report. Our Town also launched Two River's 732 Project (named for Red Bank's area code), a multiyear play that is so inherently folklore enterprise that will use interviews from members of the com- munity as source material for a living history of the region. American," reflects Hartford Hartford and IRT also amplified their productions with out- Stage's Michael Wilson, reach operations. Both had well-attended student matinees and offered informational prologues and talkbacks, IRT initiated a new "that we want to cling to it program of community readings and discussions in libraries, parks and community centers all over Indianapolis. "We really wanted to because somehow we explore the sense of ownership that people have of this play," says feel like our innate goodness IRT artistic director Janet Allen. Both Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director Bill Rauch is within it." and the Arden's Nolan arc looking to physical settings for an invigo- rated Our Town. In Ashland, it will be the first 20th-century (or, for CONTINUED ON PAGE 74

MAY/JUNEn > AMERICANTHEATftC WELCOME BACK TO GROVER'S CORNERS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27

that matter, American) play to be mounted Philadelphia's actual historical legacy with level of honesty." on OSF's outdoor Elizabethan stage. "It's the events of the play, amplifying how its univer- The desire to blow dust offthe play and right play to ptjsh the boundaries," Rauch sal themes tangibly apply to the community resuscitate its shocking impact has led to says, "because, like Shakespeare, Wilder in all its diversity. some radical stagings in the past few years. put emphasis on the imaginative exchange The Arden production will feature A 2007 summer staging in Minneapolis by between audience and the actors." Sitting the largest cast that the theatre has ever Girl Friday Productions eradicated the role outdoors, amongst the rolling hills of the employed, using the natural accents of the of the Stage Manager completely, ascribing Rouge Valley, audiences will have "a more actors. "I'm eager to have a wide range of his prophetic words to various members of immediate connection to Wilder's themes our community represented on stage," says the cast. 's Transport Group, of human isolation and connection and the Nolan. Local musical groups will be incor- in 2002, cast a 12-ycar-old girl as the Stage vastness of the universe," RaucK believes. porated into each performance along with Manager while young lovers George and The official title of the Arden produc- special local guests (newscasters, teachers Emily were played by actors in their sixties. tion is Our Town in Old City—a reference and politicians). Governor Edward Rendell Going further back, the Wooster Group's to the historical section of Philadelphia is an honorary producer. famous and controversial 1'Í81 deconstruc- marked by narrow streets of cobblestone and The Hypocrites, a thriving non-Equity tion of the play, titled Route 1 & 9, threw historical monuments such as the Betsy Ross Chicago company known for offering alterna- blackface and explicit sex into the mix. house. Act 1 will take place at the Arden's tive and sometimes explosive points of view, By contrast, director Boyd's laudable theatre (which was once the grounds of Ben was still, as of press time, in the creative bare-boned approach at Hartford Stage Franklin's bookshop); for the second act, brainstorming phase of production. One attempted to celebrate the original intent audiences will walk next door through the idea currently on the table, divulges artistic of the author by handling the text of the play churchyard (where Franklin is buried) into director Sean Graney, is that director Cromer with reverence. "1 think there's a real purity the majesty of Christ Church, one of the may also take on the role of the ruminative in this production," the company's artistic oldest sanctuaries in America (and where Stage Manager. "Stripping away some of the director Michael Wilson says of the show, the pew of George Washington is diligently pretension of the character," asserts Graney, which ran last September and October. "It marked). Our Town in Old City will interweave "will endow the Stage Manager with a deeper is daring for it to be purely what Thornton

Announcing The Yale Drama Series 2009 Competition

Yale University Press and Yale Repertory Theatre are seeking submissions for the Yale Drama Series. The winner of this annual competition will be awarded the David C. Horn Prize of $10.000. publication of his/her manuscript by Yale University Press, and a staged reading at the Yale Rep. The winning play will be selected by series judge . Submissions for the 2009 competition must be postmarked no earlier than June 1, 2008. and no later than August 15, 2008. There is no application form. Please note that the rules governing this year's competition have changed from those governing last year's competition. • The competition is restricted to plays in the English language, though submissions are accepted world wide. • Submissions must be original, unpublished full-length plays written in English — transla- tions, musicals, and children's plays are not accepted. The Yale Drama Series is intended to support emerging playwrights. Playwrights may win the competition only once. • Plays that have had professional productions are not eligible. • Playwrights may submit only one manuscript per year

Send your manuscript to: Yale Drama Series, P.O. Box 209040. New Haven. CT 06520-9040. For complete rules governing the Competition visit: www.yalebooks.coin/drama

y ¿\ IP University Pr yalebooks.com

AMERICANTHEATRE MAY/JUNE08 CHAUTAUQUAT HEATER

Wilder wanted, which was actors, audience, for a simpler, more iconic America than the blank ,sragc and these words." More than any- one they perceived around them. Celebrating Our 25th thing, Boyd felt his job was scraping off the Today's America can be said to be expe- coats of'"Baskin-Robbins, Norman Rockwell riencing equally trying times: Since the tum Anniversary Season and Disney" that have been lacquered upon ofthe century a series of contentious elections the play over the years. His chief collabora- have called democracy itself into question, tor on the project was 82-year-old acting and Americans have endured the tragedy legend , who has a history of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and by with the play, having played rhe role ofthe Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Stage Manager twice before (at Connecticut's the torture at Abu-Ghraib, the Patriot Act, featuring Stuart Margolin Long Wharf Theatre in 1987 and 10 years serious threats to civil liberties and free & Amy Van Nostrand earlier in NBC's televised version, which speech, questionable expansion of presidential June 28 -July 6 earned him an Emmy nomination). Although authority and a polarizing split into "blue I lolbrooli liccame ill a couple of weeks into and red" states. So in today's discordant the run, his contributions helped deliver an America, do we not need again to be "filled Reckless authentic and austere Our Town, unscathed with a certain strength"? by Craig Lucas by easy emotion or grandiosity. A number of the artistic directors 1 featuring Vivienne Benesch Boyd and I iolbrook were deeply in tune spoke to noted that the play's ability to pro- July 19 - July 27 with the play's occasionally dire melancholy. vide comfort in times of trouble was part of "If you ignore what lies in the depths of the the appeal of producing it this season. Wiid- text," the director emphasizes, "you betray er's portrait of Cirover's Corners "reminds us A Midsummer the play," He likens its contradictory lesson ofwhat is eternal and good in the American Night's Dream to the ancient Sanskrit text Mahahharata: psyche and captures that indomitable spirit "We all know we're going to die, yet we live of inquiry that even our polarized social b/ William Shakespeare as if we're not." Holbrook's age and gravitas and political conditions cannot dampen or August 9 - August 16 underscored how much the play revolves deny," says the IRT's Janet Allen. "There is around mortality and loss. something about the play that is so inherently The darker elements of Owr Town were American," reflects Wilson, "that we want often lost during what Tappan Wilder calls to cling to it because somehow we feel like CTC/NPW the "Leave It to Beaver" phase ofthe play's our innate goodness is within it." life (from the 1950s through the m7Üs). But it also yields insight into "who we Two New Play Workshops which earned it an undeserved reputation are and what we mean by 'American' and July 10-12 and July 31-Aug 2 for sentimental shallowness—epitomized 'American values,'" says Posner. Wilder's l)y Sinatra singing "Love and Marriage" In classic both extols and deeply criticizes the the 1955 musical version. substance of broadly accepted American culture by exploring the nation's issues with BUT 'OUR TOWN' WAS WRITTEN AT isolationism, xenophobia, gender stereotyp- a time when hope was actually a precious ing and the tragic consequences of war. "The commodity. The threat of war was building trick is not to offer the play as a remedy," says in the far east while at home social unrest Allen. "It suggests that nothing is wholly and discord prompted by the Great Depres- good or bad. It doesn't set forth any particular sion was still roiling, Dysphoric uneasiness, course of action." Rauch agrees: "In such self-doubt and longing riddled the country terrifying times, it is the play's search for even as Roosevelt's New Deal seemed to meaning" that matters. promise light at the end ofthe tunnel. Our Many of these artists, like myself, first Town is set in a more tranquil time before the met the play in their formative years of middle war—a time Wilder describes in his novel or high school—and it was only as they grew when "every man, woman older that the play's meaning became clearer and child believed he or she lived in the best and its themes richer. "As they say with an\ town in the best state in the best country in great art," notes Wilson, "OÏÎJ- Town doesn'i the world. This conviction filled them with change; it's us who change." ES a certain strength." While summoning an idealistic time made the universal aspects of Lori Ann Laster is a 2007-08 Tickets on sale now | Box Office 1 i fe more resonant and palpable, it also ended American Theatre Affiliated Writer, (716) 357-6250 up serving a pressing sociological need: It with support by a grant from the helped satisfy members of the public's desire Jerome Foundation. CTCompany.org

MAY/JUNEOe AMERICANTHtATBE