Our Town, by Thornton Wilder

Our Town is the second play on Novel Conversations' five-year-long reading list--and comments at our last meeting suggest that some members are not fond of reading this form of literature. A play (or at least a relatively modern play) tends to be a fast read--sometimes it's actually too fast a read. You can easily just slide along reading the dialogue without really engaging. Because there is generally no narration and you are not seeing the actors bring the words to life, the dialogue (and, to a much lesser extent the stage directions) must carry the burden of conveying everything the playwright has in mind.

In a sense, however, the role of the stage manager in Our Town--a "character" who introduces the other characters and explains much of what is happening--gives Our Town a more novelistic flavor. Thornton Wilder uses the stage manager to introduce Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, the Webb and Gibbs families, and other residents of the small town, from the alcoholic choir director, to the brilliant paper boy destined to die in World War I, and the local constable. The stage manager also directs the reader's/viewer's attention to where Wilder wants it--to the changes in town, the "naturalness of marriage," the process of grief. The play's other key characters are Emily Webb and George Gibbs, children in Act I who will fall in love and marry in Act II; in Act III, the dead of the town welcome Emily to the cemetery. In truth, not a lot happens in the play, but that is the point--the everyday events are what make up a life and gain meaning by our attention to them.

Our Town was first staged in 1938; in 2010, it is in revival on Broadway and being presented at the Provincetown Theater in Massachusetts. An operatic version will be offered as part of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival this summer. Why does this apparently simple play endure? I think there are three reasons: the theme resonates with everyone, the play is not as opaque as many modern dramas, and production costs are low (there is no actual set and few props).

I don't think I've seen the play since 1966, when it was the senior class play at Rochelle Township High School (my brother played Professor Willard). I'd be interested in reflections from someone who has seen it recently. I'm hoping to see the PBS version starring Paul Newman as the stage manager before we discuss the play in book group.

Favorite passages:

Mrs. Webb: Emily, you make me tired. Now stop it. You're pretty enough for all normal purposes--Come along now and bring the bowl with you.

Stage Manager: Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. 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. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

You know as well as I do that the dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the pleasures they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved.