Our Town (Review)

Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938) Presented by Theatre SMC (Sault Ste Marie) D: J Lauzon & L Durat. With Vernon Bailey, Bridget Murphy, Alexandra McCauley, Andrew Lorimer and others.
     We went to see this play at the Quonta competition in Elliot Lake. It was the only one Marie wanted to see. It was well done, as far as I could tell a faithful revival of Wilder’s original vision (I saw the play many years ago in Edmonton.) The story, set in Grover’s Corners,  is well known: Emily, the central character, is shown growing up, falling in love and marrying the boy next door, eventually dying in childbirth. Several other characters recur, and the Stage Manager (who speaks directly to the audience) brings us up to date on the events in Grover’s Corners since the previous act. The set is a nearly bare stage, the story moves forward in set-pieces (many of which were even then already cliches of stage and screen), and the wonder is that this severely schematic script can and does engage us.
     Thornton’s talent was using stereotypes in a way that we forget they are stereotype. There is enough particularisation that we care about the characters, yet Wilder continually reminds us that we are watching what amounts to an almost abstract fable, a parable, about the value of ordinary life and ordinary people. This life is all we can be sure of having, so we should value the people that we love and who love us.
     The production was very good. Murphy as Emily was especially good. Vernon Bailey found just the right note of matter-of-factness as Stage Manager that his direct talk to us seemed natural. The pace was occasionally slower than I thought it needed to be, and over it there hung a whiff of Reverence for a Classic. But overall I enjoyed the play. Well done. ***