#20 - Our Town

Lights to orange, play intro music. After the excellence that was On The Road, I expected Our Town to be a bit of fluff in comparison. Not so. Our Town is by Thornton Wilder, whose other work includes Merchant of Yonkers, which he readapted into The Matchmaker, which was then further adapted into Hello, Dolly! and was a happy, sunshiny musical. Our Town is known for being the second-most performed play in schools after Romeo and Juliet, and so I assumed it would be a simple, straightforward work. The plot of the play certainly contributed to that - the life and times of the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, in particular the marriage of Emily Webb and George Gibbs - but the result was something much more powerful. The play goes from Daily Life, describing the town's usual goings-on, to Love and Marriage, which shows the wedding day of George and Emily, and finally to Death and Eternity, which shows Emily's funeral and her experience in the afterlife.

The last play I read was Streetcar Named Desire, and I said that it felt too commercial, that it didn't seem like art. Our Town is an artistic play, a truly meaningful work. It gives a strong existentialist argument, saying that humans don't and can't appreciate the things they have in life until after death. The character of the Stage Manager was beautifully written, allowing him to cross in between the story and the audience seamlessly, even throwing a wink in to drive the point home. The Stage Manager also helps to make the other interesting part of Our Town work - the technical notes on it are the most intricate I've seen in a play. Every pantomime, every bit of blocking and every change of lighting is painstakingly noted. Wilder had such a vision in mind when he wrote the work, and he went out of his way to make sure that it wouldn't be betrayed by foreign hands. The back of the script had over 20 pages of notes on how to set up the lighting grid, which props must be supplied and which ones must be pantomimed, and even director's notes on how scenes should be run and what emotion characters are supposed to strive for. The result is something that truly makes daily life into something powerful and meaningful.

8/10