OUR TOWN AS PERFORMED BY THE ROSS VALLEY PLAYERS
OUR TOWN
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
A most enjoyable and elevating production of OUR TOWN by Thorton Wilder, directed by Robert Wilson, is currently being staged by the Ross Valley Players of Marin.
When people think of OUR TOWN, they immediately flash back to high school English. Too bad that there is that ever-expanding chasm of time between high school and the present: the message of Wilder is too important to be relegated to nostalgia infrequently dredged up from our adolescent years.
OUR TOWN is an important piece of theatrical Americana: it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 and for good, nearly cosmic reasons: Wilder seems to have grasped the Tao and to have reached the Zen awakening.
Regrettably OUR TOWN is taken for granted: "been there; seen that" is the usual response to Wilder. The reaction is ironic because the play is stern warning about taking life for granted. If ever there were a source of profound regret in life, it would be from postponing our recognition of the miracle of existence and not reveling in our ability to perceive the cosmos: we are the sense organs of the universe. We should be ecstatic. This is the warning Wilder sets forth so clearly in OUR TOWN: discover, while you are among the living, the magic contained in even the smallest details of life.
Grover's Corners, the setting of OUR TOWN, an indistinct New England hamlet is Voltaire's Eldorado. The citizens of Grover's Corners are gods as Shakespeare divined: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! . . . this quintessence of dust . . ."
As Jonathan Lethem wrote in this February's HARPER'S, "The surrealists believed that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity that has been dulled by everyday use and utility. They (the surrealists) meant to reanimate this dormant intensity." The anesthetizing effects of habit, trifling petty thoughts, the quest for security and life in the comfort zone all serve to blind us to the dazzling coruscations of life.
Just as Agamemnon observed from the Stygian depths, "Tis better to be a swain's swain that to hold sway over all these dead souls." Emily Webb, wonderfully played by Vivian Kane, discovers too late that the perennial urgings and admonitions of saints and poets were correct and could not be overstated. Wilder saw his play as "an attempt to find a value, above all price for the smallest events of our daily life."
Wood Lockhart, as the Stage Manager, narrates the show, weaving himself in and out of the story and rightfully exalting every mundane detail of life at Grover's Corners. As Whitman, ecstatically implores us THE SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD, "Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!" so too does OUR TOWN exhort us to embrace all of life and being.
If you have forgotten the insights you gained from your acid trips, or if you have not had a profound epiphany in years, or if you fail to appreciate the miracle of being, then OUR TOWN could be the wake up call you need.
For tickets call the Ross Valley Players box office at 415 897-7772.
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Sidewalk Politician and Arm Chair Liberal
AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.