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"Our Town' at the Arden (1st review)
Robert Zaller
A town without tragedy
(or much of anything else)
ROBERT ZALLER
The Arden Theatre concludes its 20th anniversary season with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a play hardly in need of revival— as a program note tells us, it’s playing somewhere in America on any given evening. That’s no reason not to perform it here, of course, but it does raise the question of choice.
The presence of Ed Rendell, who made a cameo appearance in the opening night production, suggests an answer. Governor Rendell, who is listed in the program as “honorary producer” although his own tastes in culture generally run to cheese steaks and casinos, urged the Arden to do Our Town as a fitting way to celebrate its first 20 years. The presence of Wilder’s cousin suggested historic import, too, as did the laundry list of corporate sponsors read out by the Arden’s managing director, Amy L. Murphy. The Arden wants you to know: We are connected. We are important.
With all due respect to the Arden, which is probably the best mainstream stage in the city, this is perhaps not the kind of statement the inherently subversive enterprise of theater (subversive, if it hopes to be vital) should wish to make.
Co-opting the audience
Director Terrence J. Nolen sets the reverent tone in describing Our Town as one of the “sacred texts” of American theater, a theme emphasized by setting Act II, with its depiction of a wedding, next door in Christ Church, with its cemetery full of Declaration of Independence signers and Constitution drafters. Moving the audience back and forth between the theater and the church, with refreshments along the way, is also meant to co-opt theatergoers into the production, making us honorary members of the wedding and inviting us to ponder the presence of Founding Fathers. Since Act III itself is set in a cemetery, this bit of reverence is meant to rub off on the audience itself. Hurray for us! We’re important, too!
But what sort of play is Our Town, anyway? In thinking about it, I’m reminded of the composer Aaron Copland, who wrote the original score for Our Town (this is replaced by hymn and gospel singing in the Arden production), and whose music of the late 1930s and 1940s is now generally regarded as the epitome of patriotic Americana. In his time, however, Copland was regarded as a leftist critic of American culture.
Wilder’s sour vision
Wilder isn’t so much a critic as a satirist, and his evocation of small town life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, is less celebratory than sour and condescending. The townsfolk are decent but complacent, qualities that appear inseparable in them. They’re born to marry, bear children, grow old and die, more or less interchangeably. As the Stage Manager (Eric Hissom), who speaks both for and about the town, notes cuttingly, perhaps one life in a thousand is interesting.
Grover’s Corners is not even interesting enough to be described as smug; it hasn’t got enough self-awareness to qualify for that. The local choirmaster, Simon Stimson (Frederick Andersen), leads a life of quiet desperation, drinks a lot, and finally commits suicide (perhaps the one acte gratuit possible in Grover’s Corners), but we never find out what he’s desperate about, though the terrible singing of Mrs. Gibbs (Sherri L. Edelen) might provide a clue.
No Democrats, no culture
It’s no accidental grace note, in a play first staged at the height of the New Deal in 1938, that Grover’s Corners is described as “86% Republican.” It lacks not only Democrats but also culture, although it’s noted that the inhabitants follow the seasons and watch birds. So, presumably, do their cats.
The story of Our Town, insofar as it can have one, revolves around the families of Dr. Gibbs, the harried town physician (Kevyn Morrow), and Mr. Webb (Greg Wood), the editor of its newspaper. Their children, smart Emily (Rebecca Blumhagen) and athletic George (Peterson Townshend), fall in love and marry, as boys and girls next door are wont to do. Emily buries her brains as a farmwife and dies in childbirth.
She returns to relive her twelfth birthday, and is crushed to discover that the living don’t cherish their time above ground as they sleepwalk through their prefabricated destinies. This seems somehow tragic to her, but in fact it is the very opposite of tragedy, which entails high aspiration and significant choice. These options don’t exist in Grover’s Corners. This is the place without tragedy.
Indulging a specious nostalgia
Our Town has come to symbolize the vanished Eden of small-town America. No doubt places superficially resembling Grover’s Corners did exist, although they can hardly have been as dull and vacuous as Wilder’s prototype. The great world, the world of what Peter Mathiessen has called our great and terrible nation, gradually impinged upon them. But they had little of their own to offer that world, and in the case of Grover’s Corners, nothing at all save for the occasional levy of blood for Union and empire. These towns represent for us a specious nostalgia, a place where time is circular and history doesn’t exist.
Thornton Wilder doesn’t wish us to indulge this nostalgia. He grants its superficial appeal, but he wants us to recognize it as an aspect of our own false consciousness, and to reject it.
An interracial Grover’s Corners
It’s for this reason that the current Arden production is so misconceived. The actors do well, and it’s a pleasure to see such outstanding local performers as Carla Belver and Harry Philobosian back in action. But trying to make Grover’s Corners into a symbol of enduring American values, and associating it blatantly with national icons, does violence both to Wilder’s text and to our own historical moment, which calls for nothing less than the most painful truth and honesty.
A small part of that honesty is acknowledging that places such as Grover’s Corners were virtually all-white enclaves, and that a part of our nostalgia for them is for an imagined world of racial uniformity. I’m in general all for integrated casting, but in this production, where 12 of the 29 performers are African-American and both the Gibbs and Webb families are represented as seamlessly biracial, an additional level of liberal wish-fulfillment is added to the general boosterism that weighs the production down.
No doubt Our Town will be a big hit. So much of Philadelphia’s civic pride is being invested in it that it’s bound to generate respectful notices and big houses. That may say more about our city’s own provinciality than anything else.
To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review by Bob Cronin, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
(or much of anything else)
ROBERT ZALLER
The Arden Theatre concludes its 20th anniversary season with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, a play hardly in need of revival— as a program note tells us, it’s playing somewhere in America on any given evening. That’s no reason not to perform it here, of course, but it does raise the question of choice.
The presence of Ed Rendell, who made a cameo appearance in the opening night production, suggests an answer. Governor Rendell, who is listed in the program as “honorary producer” although his own tastes in culture generally run to cheese steaks and casinos, urged the Arden to do Our Town as a fitting way to celebrate its first 20 years. The presence of Wilder’s cousin suggested historic import, too, as did the laundry list of corporate sponsors read out by the Arden’s managing director, Amy L. Murphy. The Arden wants you to know: We are connected. We are important.
With all due respect to the Arden, which is probably the best mainstream stage in the city, this is perhaps not the kind of statement the inherently subversive enterprise of theater (subversive, if it hopes to be vital) should wish to make.
Co-opting the audience
Director Terrence J. Nolen sets the reverent tone in describing Our Town as one of the “sacred texts” of American theater, a theme emphasized by setting Act II, with its depiction of a wedding, next door in Christ Church, with its cemetery full of Declaration of Independence signers and Constitution drafters. Moving the audience back and forth between the theater and the church, with refreshments along the way, is also meant to co-opt theatergoers into the production, making us honorary members of the wedding and inviting us to ponder the presence of Founding Fathers. Since Act III itself is set in a cemetery, this bit of reverence is meant to rub off on the audience itself. Hurray for us! We’re important, too!
But what sort of play is Our Town, anyway? In thinking about it, I’m reminded of the composer Aaron Copland, who wrote the original score for Our Town (this is replaced by hymn and gospel singing in the Arden production), and whose music of the late 1930s and 1940s is now generally regarded as the epitome of patriotic Americana. In his time, however, Copland was regarded as a leftist critic of American culture.
Wilder’s sour vision
Wilder isn’t so much a critic as a satirist, and his evocation of small town life in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, is less celebratory than sour and condescending. The townsfolk are decent but complacent, qualities that appear inseparable in them. They’re born to marry, bear children, grow old and die, more or less interchangeably. As the Stage Manager (Eric Hissom), who speaks both for and about the town, notes cuttingly, perhaps one life in a thousand is interesting.
Grover’s Corners is not even interesting enough to be described as smug; it hasn’t got enough self-awareness to qualify for that. The local choirmaster, Simon Stimson (Frederick Andersen), leads a life of quiet desperation, drinks a lot, and finally commits suicide (perhaps the one acte gratuit possible in Grover’s Corners), but we never find out what he’s desperate about, though the terrible singing of Mrs. Gibbs (Sherri L. Edelen) might provide a clue.
No Democrats, no culture
It’s no accidental grace note, in a play first staged at the height of the New Deal in 1938, that Grover’s Corners is described as “86% Republican.” It lacks not only Democrats but also culture, although it’s noted that the inhabitants follow the seasons and watch birds. So, presumably, do their cats.
The story of Our Town, insofar as it can have one, revolves around the families of Dr. Gibbs, the harried town physician (Kevyn Morrow), and Mr. Webb (Greg Wood), the editor of its newspaper. Their children, smart Emily (Rebecca Blumhagen) and athletic George (Peterson Townshend), fall in love and marry, as boys and girls next door are wont to do. Emily buries her brains as a farmwife and dies in childbirth.
She returns to relive her twelfth birthday, and is crushed to discover that the living don’t cherish their time above ground as they sleepwalk through their prefabricated destinies. This seems somehow tragic to her, but in fact it is the very opposite of tragedy, which entails high aspiration and significant choice. These options don’t exist in Grover’s Corners. This is the place without tragedy.
Indulging a specious nostalgia
Our Town has come to symbolize the vanished Eden of small-town America. No doubt places superficially resembling Grover’s Corners did exist, although they can hardly have been as dull and vacuous as Wilder’s prototype. The great world, the world of what Peter Mathiessen has called our great and terrible nation, gradually impinged upon them. But they had little of their own to offer that world, and in the case of Grover’s Corners, nothing at all save for the occasional levy of blood for Union and empire. These towns represent for us a specious nostalgia, a place where time is circular and history doesn’t exist.
Thornton Wilder doesn’t wish us to indulge this nostalgia. He grants its superficial appeal, but he wants us to recognize it as an aspect of our own false consciousness, and to reject it.
An interracial Grover’s Corners
It’s for this reason that the current Arden production is so misconceived. The actors do well, and it’s a pleasure to see such outstanding local performers as Carla Belver and Harry Philobosian back in action. But trying to make Grover’s Corners into a symbol of enduring American values, and associating it blatantly with national icons, does violence both to Wilder’s text and to our own historical moment, which calls for nothing less than the most painful truth and honesty.
A small part of that honesty is acknowledging that places such as Grover’s Corners were virtually all-white enclaves, and that a part of our nostalgia for them is for an imagined world of racial uniformity. I’m in general all for integrated casting, but in this production, where 12 of the 29 performers are African-American and both the Gibbs and Webb families are represented as seamlessly biracial, an additional level of liberal wish-fulfillment is added to the general boosterism that weighs the production down.
No doubt Our Town will be a big hit. So much of Philadelphia’s civic pride is being invested in it that it’s bound to generate respectful notices and big houses. That may say more about our city’s own provinciality than anything else.
To read another review by Anne R. Fabbri, click here.
To read another review by Bob Cronin, click here.
To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.
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