Our Town

“Do any human beings every realize life while they live it?”

I saw Thornton Wilder’s 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning play Our Town at some point during my childhood and remembered it vaguely. Mostly I remembered that the plot followed two young people in a small town falling in love and that the boy loved baseball. I recently read Ann Patchett’s new novel, Tom Lake, which centers around various productions of this play. Patchett’s novel shares Our Town’s emphasis on the theme that life happens most profoundly during our small daily moments. Reading this novel, I realized it was time to revisit the play.

My curiosity was well timed, as Kenny Leon’s production at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre opened recently though the production plans have been in the works for this ensemble since the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that this production was, in part, conceptualized during the stay-at-home orders is interesting, given the play’s emphasis on quiet moments, stillness, and the passage of time. This is Our Town’s fifth return to Broadway.

There is so much to say about this superb production led by Jim Parson’s fearless performance as the stage manager. His take is edgy and somewhat sardonic and thus sets the stage for an unsentimental unfolding which ironically leads the audience to especially emotional and heartfelt conclusions.

The play’s three acts — Daily Life (set in 1901), Love and Marriage (set in 1904) and a final act set 9 years later in the local cemetery – unfold during a gripping 80 minutes with no intermission. The simple earnest arc of daily life makes all the characters in the small, fictional, New England town of Grover’s Corners seem vulnerable and deeply human. This play challenges us to understand that we cry during weddings and graduations and life’s grander milestones in part because we are all unbearably vulnerable. We never know what life will throw at us during the journey of the everyday small moments that define the arc of a life. If only the mysteries of the line between life and death were clearer, we might be able to learn from our loved ones who are no longer with us. And we might even see each other more lucidly and with even more compassion and love.

Reading or viewing this play would be a wonderful way to begin 2025 with renewed awe and abandon.