"Our Town' at the Arden (2nd review)

An evening to remember

ANNE R. FABBRI

Stifle your yawns and banish your doubts. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, now at the Arden Theater, is everything theater should be but rarely is.

Never before in any production have I felt such warmth and good humor radiating from all members of the audience and cast alike. It seemed as if we were one family, rooting for each other, weeping for each other’s losses and sorrows and emerging from the theater with a new realization of the treasure of life itself. What a fitting celebration for the culmination of the Arden’s 20th anniversary season.

Wilder wrote Our Town in 1936, was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for it in 1938, and since then it has become an American classic, too often performed by high school and college theater groups or amateur organizations that emphasize its surface artifices without probing Wilder’s deeper convictions. This production suffers none of those inadequacies. Thanks to director Terence J. Nolen and a wonderful cast, the play is revealed in all its dimensions.

Our Town takes place from 1901 to 1913 in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, a small town that’s stranger to us than Shakespeare’s settings, which were more urban and closer to our concerns. A century separates us from the surface details of the townspeople’s lives. But the calendar year, household appliances and modes of transportation bear little relevance to the overall picture. This is a play about two families in a close-knit community and the events in people’s lives that linger in memory.

Adept at pantomime

All the scenes are knit together by the narrator, Eric Hissom, referred to as the Stage Manager, who explains, “This is the way we were in our living and our dying.” Hissom’s masterful performance conveyed just the proper approach of seeming objectivity, explaining everything and making us care. His was the voice and insight of the author that transformed the play from one of surface events to a deeper understanding of human nature.

There is no scenery in Our Town; props consist of a few boards, chairs and ladders. Everything depends on the cast to pull it off, and they do. Kevin Morrow as Dr. Gibbs, Sherri L. Edelen (Mrs. Gibbs), JoAnna Rhinehart (Mrs. Webb) and Gregg Wood (Mr. Webb) convey the spirit of community. The women are particularly adept with their pantomime: You know just when they’re priming the water pump, cooking or cleaning the vegetables. Rebecca Blumhagen as Emily Webb is a shining light in each act. Some of the actors play multiple roles, all individualized and well done.

A wedding in a real church

The second act wedding, appropriately, takes place in Christ Church, a beautiful building and a Philadelphia treasure. Also appropriately, the church bells peal as the audience walks from the Arden Theatre building next door to the church and the bride walks down the aisle. We all sang the Swedish Folk Melody, “How Great Thou Art,” and since I always cry at weddings, I was wiping my eyes throughout the act.

Each performance in this run will feature three special guests and a different guest choir singing in the choir loft of the church and in the theater. Ours was the Main Line Interdenominational Choir, with fine Gospel music.

The third act lingers in the memory forever. Many years ago it taught me to savor every moment of life. As Emily says, “It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another…Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it– every, every minute?” The Stage Manager responds, “No— saints and poets maybe— they do some.” Our Town in our town is an evening to remember.



To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read another review by Bob Cronin, click here.
To ead another review by Steve Cohen, click here.