Theatre review: "Our Town" at Blue Barn Theatre

Thornton Wilder’s timeless classic Our Town remains full of life at Blue Barn Theatre. Director Susan Clement-Toberer’s imaginative use of the playing space becomes a vital, truly up close, personal sense of a close-knit community.  She and her cast create a vigorous, believable ensemble. Integrity.

This re-visit to Wilder’s enduring 1938 play makes it clear why it deserves its reputation. Although perhaps considered a nostalgic immersion into a simpler American time, the beautiful third act makes it clear that Wilder has much more there for us. A message that transcends time and place. A message to take home again and again. It’s about death. Yes. Death. The simple message bears repeating: Each of us will die. While alive, we should cherish what we have and those we love while there is time. No wonder a Pulitzer Prize was awarded.

Clement-Toberer’s interpretation seems to emphasis simplicity, not just in the way this is staged, which, after all, conforms with Wilder’s own bare-bones concept. Rather, her actors mostly come across as more generic than specific. As if these archetypes need not have clearly defined  personalities.

However, the deliberately elemental language about everyday life gets delivered by nearly everyone in the cast with clear, natural sincerity.

The core of the story concerns two intersecting, neighboring families, the Gibbs family and the Webbs. It follows them over 12 years during which time George Gibbs courts Emily Webb. They marry. She dies.

Benjamin Thorp’s personification of George starts full of endearing charm and emerges with natural depth. But Kelsi Weston’s Emily on opening night never developed beyond sounding like an insecure high school student. Early in the play that could be justified. Yet on opening night, the readings of most of her lines, even as a young adult, sounded as if Weston hasn’t learned how to convey their meaning. Wilder’s significant dialogue for Emily barely got its due. 

The almost equal roles of the parents, played by Michael Markey, Moira Mangiamelli, Benjamin Thorp and Emma Chvala, remain convincing.

The only other principal character is the Stage Manager, a memorable invention by Wilder. Nils Haaland gives him unassuming, easy-going friendliness, as if part of the scenery, rather than choosing to stand in the spotlight himself. Yet, he does deliver the eloquent third act monologue with all the beauty it contains, serving Wilder to perfection.

There are 22 other people represented, few of which could deliberately, briefly, clearly, stand out.

Of those, Dennis Collins leaves in indelible impression playing the alcoholic choir director Simon Stimson.

The playwright, characteristically at Blue Barn, gets no biographical print space in the multi-paragraph nine pages concerning everyone else involved in these performances.  FYI: His play The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) also won a Pulitzer as did his novel  The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Another play, The Matchmaker (1954), has become best known as the Jerry Herman musical Hello Dolly. http://thorntonwilder.com/

 

This production is Blue Barn’s final one at its Old Market theater and a joyous, loving way to wrap things up, especially given such an indelible sense of community.

Our Town runs through June 7 at Blue Barn Theatre,  614 S. 11^TH St. Thurs-Sat: 7:30 p.m. Sun: 6 p.m. Tickets $25-30. www.bluebarn.org