Review: ‘Our Town’ at the Broad, Jan 13 – Feb 12, (Worth the Risk)

Helen Hunt stars in 'Our Town' at the Broad Stage.

By Sarah Spitz

L.A. Opening Nights

Described in its day as “radical” and “experimental,” Thornton Wilder’s Our Town has in our own time often become sentimental, saccharine, and exiled to Community Theatre.

Now at the Broad Stage, Director David Cromer has tried to return the vital edge to Our Town with a production (imported from New York’s Barrow Street Theatre) that hews closely to the original intent of the playwright.

Cromer succeeds in being poignant without any treacly trappings—a significant achievement which may bring Our Town back to its deserved importance.

Wilder’s first of two Pulitzer-prizewinning plays was written in 1938, on the cusp of World War II, and looks back to a small town in pre-World War I America. It was a time presumably more innocent, but Wilder wanted to temper nostalgia with a heady dose of  “real life.”

The result is deceptively simple – very little dramatic action occurs, although we experience all the major highlights that mark human life and the “plot” is about finding the profound in the ordinary, the “eternal part” of our lives that make life worth living, here and now.

The straightforward language of Our Town speaks for itself: People will live, people will die, the world will go on.

The Broad’s striking architectural interior has been completely deconstructed for the production. The proscenium stage has been removed, along with a substantial number of the theatre’s comfortably cushioned seats–replaced by bleacher-style risers with folding chairs situated on four sides around a central area where the “action” unfolds. The staging is bare bones–with only tables and chairs for a set and actions such as cooking, delivery of stringing green beans being mimed by the actors.

Yet, how real it all seems in our imagination. Wilder would have approved.

The two plain tables represent the homes of the Gibbs and Webb families; their children Emily Webb (Jennifer Grace) and George Gibbs (James McMenamin) will grow up together, marry and – this is not a spoiler – Emily will die.

The Stage Manager, usually played by a man, is here performed by Helen Hunt, who introduces us to the town’s sights and citizens. Here–she points at one side of the theatre–is the school, there the cemetery, in another corner the Church and here are the people who inhabit these places.

We catch a moment of longing on the part of overworked mother Mrs. Gibbs (Lori Myers), who wants her never-take-a-break husband to take her somewhere they’ve never been. The Stage Manager tells us the dates when both she and Mr. Gibbs will die, so we are well aware of the fleeting and unrequited nature of her wish. Indeed, the play’s three acts signal the outcome: Act One is “Daily Life;” Act Two is “Love and Marriage,” and Act Three is “Death.” The entire span of life in a single play.

There are only two fully “staged” moments in the play. We witness choirmaster Mr. Stimson, the town drunkard, leading a rehearsal after a long, strong pull from his flask. There is an actual piano and an actual choir singing a hymn (“Blessed be the Tie that Binds,” led by the drunken Stimson, whose past is never revealed but is alluded to as the reason why he drinks. His end is revealed in Act 3, a suicide by hanging. The same hymn opens act 3, set in the cemetery.

We witness the wedding of George and Emily (student and student body leader) in Act 2, each wondering why they are doing this. Fears are calmed, jitters are put to rest, the wedding takes place without incident.

Nine years later, as Act 3 unfolds, Emily has just been buried (she dies in childbirth), she speaks with her fellow dead townspeople, leading her to ask: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

She asks to return to life for just one ordinary day. This scene is also staged traditionally, with a full kitchen set on a small proscenium stage where her mother is making breakfast for her birthday. The stark contrast of this vision to the bare staging of the rest of the play seems to point out that the preciousness of life appears to be visible only when death is present.

The Stage Manager says “We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.”

Perhaps the message of “Our Town” can found in the title of the late Ram Dass’s book: “Be Here Now.” While we are on this earth, instead of wondering or worrying about the afterlife, we should recognize and celebrate what we have while we are alive.