Theatre in Review: Our Town (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)

	Jim Parsons and the company. Photo: Daniel Rader

Even in an uncertain production, Our Town's power remains undimmed; this is good news because Kenny Leon's Broadway revival of the Thornton Wilder evergreen can't quite make up its mind about several key matters. The revival at the Barrymore has many things going for it, beginning with the director's decision to assemble a strikingly diverse cast, creating a Grover's Corners very much of our time. It's an approach that makes sense for a play with self-consciousness in its DNA -- it announces itself as happening on this stage, tonight, with these people -- and it features some inspired casting choices.

Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson are delightful as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs, bantering enjoyably and cracking up after the doctor tries to put the fear of God into their son, George, with a display of faux fury. Richard Thomas is amusingly world-weary as the newspaper editor Mr. Webb, chalking up his neighbor's foibles to the irreversible way of the world. Zoey Deutch and Ephraim Sykes are endearingly awkward as George Gibbs and his true love Emily Webb, stumbling into making a lifetime commitment. Julie Halston, as always, brings welcome laughter as the town gossip who loves to gush at weddings. Also providing solid contributions are Katie Holmes as a sensible Mrs. Webb, informing Emily that she is "pretty enough for all normal purposes," and Donald Webber, Jr. as Simon Stimson, the choir director and town drunk, slamming his hand down on the keyboard in despair over his singers' inadequate performance. ("Now look here, everybody. Music come into the world to give pleasure.") Newcomer Safiya Kaijya Harris makes a lovely impression as Rebecca, the younger Gibbs child, who gets one of the play's loveliest speeches -- it's almost Wilder's thesis statement -- about a letter delivered to "Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God."

Leon has staged many of the play's key set pieces with humor and insight: The production opens promisingly, with the cast assembling onstage, making a lively babble that could be speaking in tongues before shifting to "Braided Prayer," made up of hymns from the world's leading religions. The morning-of-the-nuptials encounter between Mr. Webb and George (his future son-in-law) is an amusing episode of wisdom haltingly passed on to another generation: "A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George," the elder man notes. "All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way." Eliminating both intermissions, the director uses the unbroken action to create striking theatrical effects: As Act II culminates in a joyous wedding tableau, the upstage wall flies out, revealing the Act III cemetery where, five years later, Emily, the bride, is to be interred. (Emily's transformation, from cheeky, squeaky-voiced schoolgirl to a mature young matron taking her place among the dead of Grover's Corner, is not soon forgotten.) It is followed by a heartbreaking bit of business in which Mr. Webb, silently racked with grief, nearly falls into the hole dug for his daughter's casket.

Each of the above contributes to the impact of a play that is often misunderstood despite being deeply embedded in the American psyche. Our Town has become a theatrical staple, especially in the community and school markets, because of its apparent celebration of homey small-town values. But Wilder's gaze penetrates far beneath the surface of Grover's Corners. "The day's running down like a tired clock," someone notes but, in the playwright's view, time is constantly running out on us all. Even amid the bustle of life, the playwright notes, we are passing away; the joys and sorrows that appear so vivid in the present moment look mighty small when seen from an Olympian distance. Quietly planting one intimation of mortality after another, the play guides us from heliotrope-scented nostalgia to the chill of the grave.

If the production were as sure in its intentions as the script, this would be an Our Town for the ages, but it is plagued by many niggling decisions that point to a certain blurriness of vision. Beowulf Boritt's weathered-wood set has the right rough-hewn feeling, but the trail of lanterns hanging over the stage and auditorium -- an attractive and original idea on its own -- may be too much for a play that neither needs nor wants decorative touches. Dede Ayite's costumes, which range from modern leisure wear to housedresses partially tailored to a 1901 silhouette, is a hodge-podge that creates visual confusion. Justin Ellington's sound design is packed with evocative effects -- thunder, horses' hooves, and train and factory whistles, among other things -- but the burst of classical music heard at the end of Act I is jarring, as are twenty-first-century pop music in a soda shop, and, later on, the Bebe and CeCe Winans song "I'm Lost Without You." Such directorial touches feel tentatively applied to the play's surface; they don't point to a coherent vision. The many attempts at planting its feet in two eras aren't done confidently enough, creating a sense of cognitive dissonance. (One exception is Allen Lee Hughes' lighting, which is exquisitely sensitive to the play's shifting moods while skillfully demarcating the line between past and present.)

There's also the matter of Jim Parsons as the Stage Manager; a fine actor -- he excelled only a few months ago opposite Jessica Lange and Celia Keenan-Bolger in Mother Play -- his delivery here is slightly pinched, a tad fussy, and ever so off-putting. The character is extremely tricky; he is both a sympathetic observer and the keeper of the play's darkest thoughts. He can be played astringently, as David Cromer did in the 2009 Off-Broadway revival (which to my mind, remains the gold standard of Our Towns). By contrast, Parsons communicates a sense of detachment that feels like impatience, as if he wishes everybody onstage would get a move on. This is especially notable in the Stage Manager's climactic speech. ("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.") At some of the play's most affecting moments, the actor's no-frills line readings leach some of the mystery and meaning from Wilder's words.

None of these faults are enough to prevent the essential spell of the play, which finds something beautiful and heartbreaking in life's tiniest, most banal details. The moment the dead Emily returns to life, just for a moment, and is overwhelmed by what she finds ("Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you") is, in its way, as profound a philosophical statement as American drama has to offer. Our Town, I find, offers something new in every decade of one's life -- which may very well be the definition of a classic. If this isn't the most fully realized revival, it nevertheless allows enough of Wilder's singular vision to come through. --David Barbour